I saw at the wheel

[HustleRussell]

I have primarily raced lightweight sports cars on slightly rubbish control tyres. I have always sawed at the wheel, particularly on the way into the corner. It is a habit and feels natural. It seems to be a ‘confidence’ thing, if I am constantly varying the amount of slip angle on the front tyre I can feel where the limit of the front axle is, with that information I know what I need to do with my feet in order to hit the apex.

Taking an analytical view, I am wondering if this is a habit I should try to break?

[HustleRussell]

Jerry Can said:

are you the fastest in your class/championship?

Slightly binary way of looking at it!

R8Steve said:

If you do what you're doing in a RWD car there's a good chance you'll spin, it'll certainly make things a lot more difficult for yourself.

I have only tracked RWD cars and I don't do a lot of spinning.

I imagined that there would be some guidance on this in a book, or at least a general consensus that sawing at the wheel is bad / okay etc- you see some drivers at all levels of motorsport sawing while others are serenely smooth. Someone must've hypothesised which is the ideal / fastest?

Personally I'm expecting that in order to be both the fastest and the smoothest is a matter of practice and experience which I might never achieve visiting each circuit once every year or two.

[HustleRussell]

I did add in my opening post that I drive sports cars with slightly rubbish control tyres. I imagine if it were anything with meaningful amounts of downforce, smooth would be fastest.

[HustleRussell]

Jerry Can said:

if you are the fastest you don't need to worry about it.

however do you have a video of you racing we can view?

You need to understand the difference between your inputs, and the road's inputs back to your hands. It is difficult to drive perfectly smoothly without some additional 'sawing' due to bumps in the road.

Equally a smooth arc/rotation of the steering wheel to reach an apex won't work for all corners.

I think the best way is to rotate the steering wheel like the seconds hand in a perpetual motion watch. However the rate of perpetuity may increase or decrease according to corner severity, tightening or opening. This is true on the way out. That is 1 application of steering, 1 application of brake, 1 application of throttle. (you don't turn out of the corner, you don't reapply the brake, you don't lift off the throttle). But again these are not 100% rules.

Interestingly if you review touring car videos of the mid ish 80's ( 86-87 ) you can see that virtually all of the drivers are sawing at the wheel. This does not happen with today's BTCC. It may due to how to operate a tyre back then, or a latest faddy technique of the time. And yes pro drivers do suffer from this.

see 8.07 in the video below - is that what you do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT9J52oVeTM

The action is similar but judge for yourself. First through, read my excuses.

While I have done about four season’s racing I have rarely ran a camera in my own car. This is the most recent footage I have to hand , and conveniently it’s from Brands Hatch GP. Unfortunately it was my first visit to the GP layout and I only had about 25 minutes in total to learn it, including a pointless 15 minute free practice session in soaking wet conditions, mostly behind the safety car. It also isn’t my car- it’s far more expensive than I could conceivably afford to fix- so my lines around the unfamiliar Grand Prix sections are tight and nervous.

1964 Elan 26R spec – Dunlop historic tyres

https://vimeo.com/192027378

This was the fastest lap I managed. The lap time in our class placed us as third fastest out of six finishers.

Results sheets are here, Qualifying page 89-96, Race page 229-242

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/mstworld-motors...

In historic racing it’s a technical competition as much as a motor race and this result is not a particularly useful yard stick- Our car is neither the first nor second fastest in that class.

I did 50 races in my own Caterham in a spec series (2010-2013) starting out as a total novice, Had one pole, a couple of wins and numerous podiums. I never had fastest laps etc but it eventually became apparent that my engine was a bit crap and after I sold the car it emerged that the shock absorbers weren't working (I did promise excuses!)

ETA: Watching my Brands video again, I 100% concede that with practice I could've found much of the 1.2 second per lap deficit to the class winner. Very slow around the GP loop and clearways.

Edited by HustleRussell on Tuesday 6th December 13:30

[HustleRussell]

Thurbs- I sold my car and eventually it ended up with Dan Livingstone who used to race a clio that looked a lot like yours (Don't worry, the Caterham received new shock absorbers in the interim!)

[HustleRussell]

I thought it looked familiar. FWIW Dan didn't buy the car from me, it went through a couple of pairs of hands in between- but I was in touch with him about it and I did tell him the engine isn't the strongest.

[HustleRussell]

Mark A S said:

Had a view of your video and all looks pretty ok to me. Clearly you don't have a lot of grip, hence lots of smallish steering movements.
Generally the less grip you have the more [ to be quick ] you need to work at the wheel, big fat slicks and some downforce require less steering movement as the car is more planted,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, normally!

I hate watching videos like this, makes me want to compete again

Cheers, That was the third from last lap of a 40 minute race so the Dunlop bias ply historic tyres were going off (Is anybody counting these excuses?)

[HustleRussell]

Mark A S said:

Excuses are all a part of competing

You think your "busy" at the wheel, try even less grip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLy-8aAFHmI
Apologies for the language, but I had over pre heated the rears prior to the stage start and they were locking up way too easily,,,,,,,,,,,,,,see your not alone in excuses !

“Tidy it up, c’mon”…. Enjoyed that. Bloody slippy. No shortage of rotation!

I think I can take from this thread the suggestion that I could probably do with a more positive turn-in as I tend to have a bit of a jab. I’m going racing in my own car with grippier tyres next season- I’ll see if I can smooth it out.

[HustleRussell]

NJH said:

I watched your vid at Brands, going into Paddock in particular you take two bites at the steering angle required to turn in, both applying a similar amount of lock. Is it two bites because you feel a kick of oversteer coming? would be be odd to just do it like this for the hell of it but it looked to me like the car was staring to kick and your just reacting to it. Odd thread this.

I know the Indy circuit pretty well and I’m not sure how much more speed I could’ve found in Paddock Hill Bend. I agree though the turn-in action on the wheel was odd that lap. One of the setup issues we had with the car that weekend was a very rearward break bias- Driver #1 (Dad ) had already been off at paddock earlier in the race blaming the brakes. We couldn’t stand the car on it’s nose the way we like to in order to get rotation on turn-in. Perhaps the car didn’t respond the way I wanted it to on the first stab and I was trying to provoke it a little.