Here's an interesting graph. The Prodrive Driver Performance team are at the N24, mainly to support messers Mucke, Turner and Lamy, but also to giggle at myself and Meaden. They strapped a heartrate monitor to me before I went out in qualifying.
To recap, I went out on slicks not knowing if the track was wet or dry. It turned out to be more than 3/4 wet. I only completed one lap. The stint is clearly marked on the image. It lasts 50 minutes, I burn 402kcals and my average bpm is 113, peaking at 136.
Spikes in heartrate match damp bits of track
Apparently some of the pro drivers reach much higher heartrate numbers in the heat of battle. John Camilleri from Prodrive was moderately impressed by how low the numbers were, to the point that I thought he was going to ask me to try a little harder in the race! What is interesting is the initial ramp up in bpm as I get rolling in the car - that syncs perfectly with the sensation of leaving the pits. I always feel a delicious hit of adrenaline as I join a live race track. Don't know why, but it always gets me.
The GP circuit was quite slippery and the tyres had not been in warmers, so the thing immediately oversteered far more than I'd expected, and this explains the sustained rise as I simply tried to ride out the slidey rear axle and get some tyre temperature.
The beginning of the old circuit was dry, and this is always settling because you just let the seat take the cornering forces and relax into the line - it's another great feeling and I always seem more relaxed like this. There are lots of small spikes, but I think these are effort-based because I was trying to get a wriggle on.
Aston does have TC but still requires concentration
At around 26 minutes there's a big spike and looking at it brings back the unpleasant memory of entering the devilish Metzgesfeld. With rain in the air, you're reading the road surface for damp patches, but also looking for new strips of asphalt and dirt, etc. Coming into that left-hander at 120mph I thought the dark section was a new surface. When the front pushed wide and then the rear needed correcting, it became apparent that I'd made the wrong call.
That dampness quickly gave way to a fully wet track - on slicks that isn't much fun. You very quickly forget about setting a lap time and move into self preservation mode. Even with the TC in position five (12 is the lowest intervention) the car will move significantly, and I was trying to see how much slip it would allow. Hence the gradually decreasing bpm as I'm resigned to not really pushing for a time, punctuated by the odd spike where the thing gets a bit big on a prod of throttle where I want to know what happens on certain parts of the track.
I'll wear the monitor for a full stint in the race and we'll overlay it with some lap data to see what's really going on.
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