You bunch of Figure 8'ing bad boys !!!
Lets get an update on this shall we...............
By now you will all have done figure 8 transitions to death, be totally proficient and able to enlarge or reduce the size circles that make up the figure 8 itself, you are ready to face Tsuchiya !!! Not !!!
Hopefully one of the things you noticed during all this tyre destruction is that when travelling faster on a larger circle that the car is still happy to hold angle and lock as you are effectively decelerating slightly during the initiation phase of the transition. This is something we can now look at tackling in more detail and means you can put this car balancing act to good use as you start to do your first deliberate drift courses thanks to - first stage initiation techniques.Im calling them "First Stage" as in my mind they are the slightly easier, slower speed type entries that would be used for predominantly 2nd gear courses such as Lydd or the regular Silverstone ATC track.
The first one is something we have already half covered....
The clutch kick.
As described before, what we are basically doing is taking a car in equilibrium that has just the right amount of grip at the front and rear to go round a course without sliding at a given speed. What we want to do is upset that equilibrium by deliberately overcoming the grip at the rear with power in order to get the back end sliding to allow us to hold good angle, rock a wicked style, get girls and star in movies
To enable us to acheive these noble goals we use our good friend horsepower to spin the tyres up by letting the engine build up a head of steam (clutch in, accelerator pushed harder) then releasing this pent up fury (clutch out suddenly) and forcing the rubber to release its grip on the tarmac. At this point we would be letting go of the steering wheel so it can countersteer for us and balance the car at which point we regain control of the steering wheel and newly balanced car with angle and use our skills at car balance and throttle/steering application to make the car change direction round the course.What does all that actually mean then ??
Well we're sitting waiting for a passenger at Santa Pod and we basically have a large kidney shaped course to follow which is like driving round the outside of a giant a flattened n shape if ya like. Now we are in the top right edge of this n shape facing left and we are going to drive round the top of the n down the left leg round the end or bottom of that leg, back up the n on the inside line round to the right and down the right hand leg, round the bottom of that one and then effectively come back left past where we started to come back over the top of the n shape again. I hope you are all with me on this
Im sorry I cant be bothered to do another bad drawing right now !!Because we have limited room and because when we begin at the top of the n shape we are turning almost immediately we will use clutch kick after a brief burst of straight acceleration just to get is through 1st gear and allow a quick change up to 2nd, in fact I often use the change to 2nd as an easy way to clutch kick as the speed difference between what the wheels want to do in 2nd and their current speed helps spin it up. As we dump the clutch we are effectively in a left hand turn and the back end will snap out to our right and we will need to let go of the wheel so it can countersteer right and balance the car. We are already coming up to a left hand corner thats tight !! so as soon as the car is balanced we look at the apex of this left hander, stay out wide as you would for the racing line, and then just ease off the throttle whilst edging the steering wheel a touch left, this should be enough for the back end to swing further round to the right effectively sliding us through the left hand corner and if we have got it just so we woul clip the apex with our left front tyre.
At the apex we should be back on the gas for a second to regain some momentum. We are still effectively on hard right lock with the nose pointing left, the back end to our right, looking out the right edge of the windscreen/right side window for the right hander that makes the bottom of the n shape. As with our figure 8 transition, look for the apex, lift off when you feel the right time is to allow the car to straighten, then apply the gas before the centreline and the back end should swing gracefully over to the left hand side as you let go of the steering wheel for it to counter, floor the loud pedal and clip the right hand apex with the front right tyre. Not alot of time to think as this trajectory only lasts for 20 or 30 yards as theres the left hander thats the bottom of the right hand leg of our n shape to negotiate. We approach this looking at the cone through the left windscreen edge or side window, ease off the gas, let go of the steering wheel, car dances across, hit the gas before the centreline, car balances itself, you take the steering wheel back and should be on course for another nice apex clip and then power, power, power all the way round the long left hander and maybe change up into 3rd gear if you have the grunt and the balls.
This is fantastically hard to visualise I know, but was the simplest thing I could think of that you could google away at to see what I was talking about. Lots of clutch kick is used to begin with, as well as to maintain the drift when the car has slowed for the inside part of the course which is much slower. The clutch kick is an exceptionally useful tool that we will also look at later for exending drifts, opening the line, and ramming other cars with
I also wanted to give this thread a bump so people have a chance to refresh themselves if the opportunity arrives and before we get into proper handbrake entries.
Cheers,
James.
....I used to be average, now I reminisce !!!
will have to have ago at it after a few more read throughs its interesting :-D
