Driver styles/preferences

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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Jersey Tom
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Adrian Newby wrote:Once again, even with the best case robot-driver scenario, in the slowest hairpin, everything goes right - you are still accelerating directly at the wall you are trying to avoid.
At some instant in time, yes your instantaneous inline acceleration vector is pointing outside the bounds of the track. So what? At all points in a corner you are invariably pointing outside the track. But since you're cornering and rotating and not driving in a straight line, you can continue to rotate and follow your intended path even while accelerating.

Now then, my position hasn't changed. I'll grant you that what I think of as the apex of a path may differ from yours and that may have been a source of consfusion. As I said, to me it's the point of tightest radius rather than where you come to clip a kerb. IMO it's an easier working definition as from car data you don't get to see an overhead of where the car was on the track - you just have the sensors. Additionally, outside the scope of road racing you can take a corner on a big track (particularly with variable banking) or on an asphalt pad and never really come close to any inside boundary.

Irrelevant of where that max curvature point is, I maintain that trail braking is the fast way around your generic corner. That's not just my opinion or experience as an engineer. Car data from Michael Schumacher to Lewis Hamilton shows that that is the preferred method. Performance driving schools teach it. Literature covers it. Assuming that they've got all that pretty well figured out, it is just not possible to trail-brake a corner while on a constant radius. It would ask either too much of the tires on entry and you'd wreck, or you'd be diabolically slow mid corner. Ergo we can conclude (and again, car data will show this - either with "real world" or sim racing drivers) that the ideal line through a corner is variable radius. Furthermore, the general wisdom is that "slow in, fast out" tends to be the fastest way around the track. To do so, taking what some would call the "late apex" (or really late clipping) line geometrically requires that the tightest part of your turn be before the 50% mark. It's unavoidable. The whole premise is to maximize path radius on exit so you can get back to throttle quickly, at the expense of some corner entry performance. There are times however where that may not be possible - particularly while attacking, defending, or in traffic.

In my mind, that's all been pretty well proven out in the world of racing. It's not just this one guy's opinion. So to that point, I'm pretty content being left to my own devices and I'll admit that my views aren't going to change. I'm just trying to give some explanations and reasoning behind how that all pieces together. But indeed, I will grant I have not grasped your points. I'm certainly willing to hear them out if presented with some data / car telemetry / personal trackside experience which back them up.
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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Jersey Tom
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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I see it as accelerating along your path. The tires have the lateral capacity to do it, so you can accelerate without at all deviating from the trajectory; you don't run yourself out of room at all.

And if you are trail braking on a constant radius path, then it is unavoidable that at that point in time you must not be using 100% of the max lateral capacity of the tires. As you slow down further and then release the brakes completely you will be severely under-utilizing the tires and carrying very low cornering speeds. So sure, it can be done, but the result is a very slow corner (and lap).
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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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raymondu999
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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Perhaps both sides can introduce diagrams to this argument?

AN - I don't quite agree with how you say you can trail brake in a constant radius though. Say you hold 30 degrees of steering lock, and at that lock, your car can use 100% lateral and travel at EXACTLY 185kph. With me so far?

As such - when entering that corner, you would have to brake early enough that as you turn your steering wheel from position 0 (dead center) to 30 degrees, at the point you reach 30 degrees, you cannot be 185.1kph - correct?

So say you manage (as a human would) to hit the 30 degree mark at 184.9kph. With me?

So say you're holding a constant radius - by holding that constant 30 degree lock. Why would you want to trail any more braking?
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Adrian Newby
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raymondu999
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Adrian Newby
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raymondu999
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timbo
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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The fastest way to drive at constant radius curve is at constant speed with max lateral g your car can handle. You simply CANNOT go faster. So if you trail brake or accelerate along the constant radius curve it means you're not at optimum.
There's simply no point in trail braking at a constant radius curve -- you should do it on straight line, then apply some throttle and go at constant radius. Even this alone shows that holding constant radius for a long time is not an efficient way to go around most corners. The exception would probably be something like 8th in Istambul.

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hollus
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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I think we are all forgetting that a F1 car can brake at about 5G (max), has a lateral acceleration of about 5G(max), but can only accelerate at about 1G (~750HP), no matter what grip the tyres offer. The traction circle has a flat bottom due to the engine.
It would follow that you want to start to accelerate as early as possible and then let the superior lateral acceleration capability transform that speed, initially pointing out of the track, into speed along the track.
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Adrian Newby
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Re: Driver styles/preferences

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