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RWDboy
Forums Junkie

Location:
South Australia
Registered:
July 2002

Re: Driving Techniques - How to stop the front end from 'pushing'

Sun, 13 June 2004 07:43

IRALLY posted something like this

Ive never found left foot braking a good option once the front has started to let go.. for two reasons,

firstly theres a tendency if while you are attempting to recocover, the front gives way even more, then you get to a state of semi controlled panic and overbrake, this causes more panic and more break then crunch

secondly, ive found that the best time to trail brake is on entry, then to balance the car mid corner, so really if your going to left brake youve allready got the car in control

another thing is that it can tie you up trying to get around all the pedals if you feel you suddenly need to drop a gear and hit the peak torque range in a hurry. the last thing id want to do in a semi panic situation is create more pressure if the left foot brake isnt controlling the slide. Nothing worse than trying to jump the left foot back across to the clutch and getting the toe of your boot caught on the back of the clutch pedal cause your rushing ( yeah ive never had that happen before riiight )

It depends whether you are driving a front (and to an extent four) wheel or rear wheel drive. If you have a front wheel car, you can use the left foot brake to modulate the braking effort between the front and the rears (and keep the fronts still going and not locking up), usually this helps work the rear tyres better (gets them to do some braking work rather than just trailing the fronts). Of course, you can only do about 20% of the braking that the fronts could, but that means you will be losing speed that much better. If you front end is completely loaded up, then you won't get any extra traction at the fronts by braking.

If you've 'lost' the front end because it won't turn enough (too big a slip angle or you are just going too fast and need to turn tighter) then braking will help by adding extra downward force onto the front tyres, thus increasing the tractive effort at the slip angle.

Like you said though, if the fronts are completely gone, then there is basically *nothing* that can be done to change the course of their travel until they come back on their own - keeping the wheel straight and braking as little as possible may aid the recovery, but you've already blown your chance at doing the corner quickly, and you may find that your car is destined for an accident.

This is where i think it's pertinent to point out what quality good drivers all have - good judgement! Over-cooking, incorrect gear selection or not setting the car up well into the corner shouldn't happen.

The car should be set up exactly for the corner that the driver plans out in their head, most of the work that the driver does for that corner should be completed by the first third or so of the arc of that corner. The rest of it may be just a bit of easy-as-pie steering correction as the power comes on, but by then the *next* corner should be in the mind of the driver.

My advice (aside from set up issues to aid your driving style) is that you should focus as little as possible on learning how to correct complete understeer over-cooking, and practise getting the entry to the corner perfect.

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