THSCC Forums

Here are two common mistakes I see people making in rallycross. Sometimes they can lead to dangerous situations, sometimes they may just be slow, but it depends on the situation, and they're both tied together.

1. Too much speed/bad position.
   This is the most common mistake I see in rallyX. It may be the most common mistake in autoX too, so this isn't surprising to me. Basically, people either misjudge their corner entry speed or don't think about their position at corner exit, and they end up pushing way wide. When this happens, it typically creates a huge hole with a big pile of soft deep stuff on the outside, which if you get into takes about 2-3 seconds to get out of. It's pure wasted time, usually completely avoidable, but people do it again and again.
   
   Look at this picture:
   
   This is supposed to look like the fast left before the finish of last event's morning course, and it's where we had one of the biggest holes develop. View the picture so cars enter from the bottom of the image and exit on the upper left. For whatever reason, 95% of people were taking a path that looked closest to the line shown in red. They pushed out way wide on corner exit and lost most of their speed. As if that, and crashing into a big hole, weren't bad enough, then they had to drive back to their left just so they could get in position for the next turn, which of course was a right.
   
   The lines in the picture are somewhat exaggerated for clarity, but I think you can see how the red line is slower than the more "proactive" green line, even though a car on the red line is going faster past the the first cone.
   
   The green line driver has to give up speed early, perhaps even before the first cone shown, to be able to set up well to the right of the red line. They're also starting their turn a lot earlier, and their corner radius is larger, so they're carrying more of their entry speed through to the exit. And the exit is the big thing here, because a tight line at the exit flows the green line driver right into the right-hander that follows, and allows him to be putting the power down and accelerating for that whole distance where the red line drivers are trying to recover from their mistake.
   
2. Not starting the slide early enough.
   This is more of an "intermediate" tip, and not something I'd suggest trying where the course is rutted. But, when the course is smooth and there's a clear approach to a corner, you can turn in way early (75-100') and carry a more-or-less constant angle, steering wheel pointed straight ahead, throttle floored, right up to the desired track-out location. It's "vector driving" at its best!
   
   It takes some experience to learn how quickly the car will hook up, and therefore where to start the slide, and I know I get it wrong sometimes, usually resulting in hitting the apex cone. But when you get it right it's a lot of fun, as you've hit your apex and carried full throttle all the way around the turn. It does take some real commitment to pitch the car that early sometimes, particularly when the "apex" is a bush like at the finish of the afternoon course last time. And you generally do want to aim for a very inside line on the exit, raising the stakes. But to drive those turns as if they were on tarmac is to miss the unique advantages of driving on dirt/grass!
   
   This is a case where the presence of ruts needs to change the game plan completely, though. When you are carrying a slide for a long distance, particularly when you're moving along quickly, hitting ruts can really unbalance the car and create a dangerous situation. I don't try a "long entry" slide unless I can see all the way to the apex at least before I commit, so there is time to change the plan on short notice if need be. A good example of that was the corner that was (more or less) the corner shown in my picture above, when it was run in the other direction in the afternoon. My plan from the course walk had been to pitch it in way early and try to take a tight and fast line going into the back section. But as I approached it on my first afternoon run, I could see that the whole thing had turned into a rutted mess, and the best plan was to try to get through there with as little sliding, as little drama as possible. That meant slowing down a lot before entering the hard right.

I had a few more, but I was it was taking too long to put these ones down already, so hopefully I get to them soon. Kevin, Jim, do you see anything I'm forgetting?

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

That first one covers 99% of the slowness. I misjudge how much speed I can carry into a turn sometimes, and it's a looooooong wait to get back on course when I do. Mike and I were talking about that one at the meeting and wondering, "do they really not feel the seconds ticking by as they wait to get on the gas?" Apparently not, since most people will do that every turn at every rallyx until the end of time.

Lately I've been using a lot of course segments that reward the guy who brakes early at the first turn & doesn't just throw the car into the turn hoping that it doesn't roll as he kills most of his momentum. Really separates the guys who know what they're doing from the hacks. The guys who late apex the whole sequence of turns end up FLYING through the last turn in the sequence, and the guys who early apex and kill momentum through every turn never get to build up the speed. Which is probably safer for them, anyway.

Just remember - if you're not at full throttle before the apex, you've probably blown the corner.

Also, remember that the time you add in the slow corners can't be made up in the sweepers. Blasting through a rutted sweeper instead of slowing by a few mph to hold the tight line can get you in big trouble - or maybe it will just bounce you off the good line into the soft stuff and make you have to brake more for the next turn. Once again, it's better to brake before the turn than in the turn.

I have some notes written down somewhere, and if I can find them and there's anything really useful I'll post it.

I'll propose this one. I don't know if it's common or not.

3. It's dirt! If some wheel spin is good, more must be better!

There comes a point where spinning an already spinning tire _faster_ just does not increase how much bite you get. In fact, it goes the other way: less traction.

A roundabout example:
In my rally car, which can generally (on this rally cross surface) spin street tires on demand, I sometimes hit the gas to *reduce* traction. Why would I want to do this? If my car is sliding at a 20 degree angle to it's direction of travel, but pointed where I want it to go upon reaching the apex, I want the car to remain skating along sideways. So, spin all the tires and like a bar of soap I just slide along. Then, reduce the amount of spin to near the travel rate of the car, and get some grip, and go where you want to.

Cheers,
Anders

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Lina Racing: As Seen On Radio

4. Don't Use The Clutch / Use The Clutch

I still have a lot to learn in this game (but it's fun) so I don't consider myself an expert by a long shot.

However, I was happy to ride along with a couple of newbies (Zev and his Dad, Alan) at the last event to give what guidance I could. I noticed on his early run that Alan was holding half clutch (slipping it) for a very long time after launch. I had to tell him to get off the clutch and stay off it. I think, to be fair, he was trying to be gentle with his son's WRX. Also Kevin rode along with me on a run and commented how I got off the clutch early and didn't use it on turns. I think, especially on a slippy surface, that as long as you're not spinning the wheels and losing traction, you're not really helping things along by slipping the clutch. I think the engine and the wheels should be fully engaged as much as possible leaving the accelerator in charge of wheel rotation.

On the other hand, at our first (and last) Rockingham (I think) rallycross, Anders gave me a great tip about using the clutch to get out of a bog if ever I found myself in one. Especially in the WRX where bogging down gets you out of boost range. Quickly bopping the clutch can the get engine spooled up quickly for the turbo to help you out of a sticky patch.

Of course, I try not getting bogged down in the first place if I can help it.

Simon

off topic. Mods please delete.

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Lina Racing: As Seen On Radio

Thanks for hijacking my thread by Reply 4, Anders...

Here's another one I think could be a biggie:

Failure to Adjust The Plan.
This one also has direct applicability to autocross, and may help explain why the fastest rallycrossers are also top autocrossers.

At any time during a run, for any of a hundred different reasons, you may find yourself not to be in the position you expected to be in, and the view out your windshield (or side window, in this case) is not what you'd hoped for. How quickly you can realize when you're departing from your original plan and put in place a good alternative is key to success.

The most common types of situations fall into 2 types:

• Driving errors
• Course surprises.

In autocross it's usually the first type, though I've certainly had cases of the 2nd as well. In rallycross, the 2nd category also includes changes to the actual course. In any event, at the time they're all basically the same in that you need to disengage from whatever you're currently doing and start doing something else as quickly as possible to avoid further loss of time.

How do you do that? Well, it's hard to come up with 1 good answer, but I can think of a few things that would surely help:

• Look ahead.
  The key to a quick recovery is a quick recognition of the problem, and the further ahead you can look, the sooner you can react, and the smaller the correction will need to be.
• Don't be too attached to an idea.
  If you've been telling yourself, "I am going to go flat through there this time", but you mess up the previous corner so that you're now out of position, you should immediately let go of the idea of taking that next feature flat out. Similarly, if you are all set to blast through a particular corner and you notice a big hole has developed there, then by all means slow down! (Unless you're driving a beater, of course! )
• Know what to do.
  This will mostly come from experience, of course. But I can give you a few examples of what I do in common situations:
  • Off-line: Slow down and get back on line as fast as possible. Almost never will I keep my foot in it and try to "catch up" later.
  • Big hole:Try like hell to squeeze by on the inside. If I can't, then slow down and try to minimize the blow. I never try to go "across" it, or all the way around it on the outside.
  • Huge rutted/soft mess: Try to get as much turning done as possible in advance, then go straight through, trying to lose as little speed as possible. Usually this means being floored, but there may be cases where you get thrown offline or sideways, and your first priority should always be to get yourself to the spot you want to be in. Correct position is more important than correct speed. (Isn't that one of Andy Hollis's tips?)
  If you have any questions about particular what-to-dos, please ask them in the Q&A thread.

Hope that helps!

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

Check out Kevin's pics at the bottom of the page. They were taken at the section just before the finish. Who is on the right line?


http://home.att.net/~kevinmallen/thscc_ ... 032506.htm[/url]

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Silver Honda
Green Ford
Blue/White Suzuki
Red Triumph
Grey BMW

"Never let life be shaped by fear of its end"

No, you're a towel!

• Marcus (too hot though- can't accelerate when that far sideways, but impressive job hitting the mark!)
• Matt Smith

Lots of photos on that same page of the corner in my earlier diagram. No one shown doing it right. Some look pretty scary. This one shows a good angle on the typical line- it looks like Keith is just getting to 100% forward motion here. If he were 7 feet closer to the cone he'd be perfect.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

The Lee is an amazingly loose car. I have trouble keeping it behind me somethimes.

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Silver Honda
Green Ford
Blue/White Suzuki
Red Triumph
Grey BMW

"Never let life be shaped by fear of its end"

No, you're a towel!

I struggled with that corner on pretty much all but my first run in the morning. I knew what I had to do to do it right but I never got the car setup right going into it.

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2010 Honda Fit Sport
Couple of bicycles

Replying to Kevin's note on the school thread here, since it seemed to apply:


Well, it seems to me that if you (or I) blow a feature, the thinking is going to have to change in one way or another. It's just a matter of whether you can get back to your original thinking, and if so how quickly.

If you mess something up but try to ignore it, or "catch up" when there really isn't an opportunity to, you're going to be out of position, out of sorts, and your chances of making further mistakes have gone up exponentially. What I propose as an alternative is to:

1. Spot the problem as soon as possible.
2. Give up whatever it takes to get back on track (if off-line) or minimize danger (if ruts) as quickly and efficiently as possible.
3. Resume the original plan.

Once you get in the habit of doing this, you can do it automatically (like catching a slide), and it hardly requires a change of mindset at all- it's just a brief correction.

It's also good if you can refrain from beating yourself up about it (I expect most of us have trouble with this). But the fact is that the mistake was made, you can't un-make it, and it doesn't have anything to do (now that you're back on course) with the rest of the run still ahead of you, so GET ON WITH IT. Don't increase your chances of making another mistake by diverting your attention from what matters RIGHT NOW.


It is certainly likely (particularly for the 2nd or 4th run groups) that the plan you made during the course walk is going to need some adjustment due to changes in course condition. But rarely should it involve changes to the ideal line- more likely changes in speed you will need to make to be able to hold that line, and concomitant adjustments to your braking points.

If you feel you are just out there trying to find clean spots to put your tires, then it's no wonder you don't feel confident. You're being passive and reactive, when you could (and should!) be on the offense, making adjustments as needed, but nevertheless attacking the course for time.

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Carl Fisher

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=4651531

When I walk the course I try to plan for a couple of lines through an element depending on when I get to run. So even though a turn looks nice and smooth I anticipate that it won't be by the time I get to it.

Simon

That's quite a bit stronger of a statement than I meant but looking for grip is definitely one of the things I try to do. Part of the issue is that I just don't have enough experience to know what surfaces are always good and what are always bad. Maybe another 20 rallyx's and that will be improved.

I wouldn't call the approach passive although in some respects it is reactive...

--Kevin H.

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2003 WRX (again!)

Adding this so that people will have something to study and discuss at the upcoming school:

Walk the course a LOT (and know it – don’t just walk around carrying on a conversation with somebody or looking at the pretty flowers). If the course designers need help with setup, be there to help. Make mental notes about where you have to be careful, where you can really push it, where it will probably get rutted, and any other useful things that might help later, when you’re actually running the course.

If the course is going to rut pretty quickly, line up at the front; if there’s mud, cut grass or something else that hinders grip that will disappear as the cars cycle through, line up at the back. You may have to hear some complaints about it later from those who were at the other end of the line, but if they really wanted to win they’d be there right in front of or behind YOU. So just smile and nod.

Be careful (but not SLOW!) on the first run, then attack on the next run, using your experiences from the first run to determine where to go faster. Compare your times to those of your competition to determine whether you can be safe on the runs that follow, or you need to pull out all the stops for at least a few runs. It’s much less stressful to get an advantage on the first course and protect it on the second than to have to come from behind to win.

Don’t hit cones! Autocrossers sometimes need to drive within an inch of the important cones to win; rallycrossers need to stay away from those cones, because they don’t get “throw-away” runs. Try to be within a foot or so of the important cones – it’s very easy to hook a rut or catch traction in the wrong place, and feel the car suddenly head right for the cone. If you run it over, that’s 2 seconds. If you lift or brake and steer away from it, that’s a time penalty, too.

Don’t just look ahead, THINK AHEAD. Remember the mental notes you made while walking the course and review them as you come up on the corners they apply to. But definitely look ahead as you enter a corner – you may see something that will require you to change the line you had planned to take, or maybe just a change in speed.

Remember that at least 75% of the people out there will either not know what they’re doing, not care what they’re doing because they’re just there for fun, or just keep making careless mistakes. So you’ll have to drive around their mistakes. The most common mistake people make is entering a corner too fast or turning late and understeering all the way through it. This will kill their times, and it will damage the corner with front tire ruts. Sometimes, if the corner is big enough, there will be ruts one or two car widths from the inside cones, with lots of loose dirt on the outside of that. In this case, you can just slow down early and drive on the undamaged, grippy area next to the cones to minimize distance. Sometimes the corner will be tighter, and there will be deep ruts to deal with. In this case there’s usually no room to go inside, so if you’re confident you won’t break something on the bottom of the car or debead a tire, you just have to slow down and drive in the ruts. Don’t bounce the car around, though, because if the tires are off the ground you can’t use them to accelerate. (Duh.) And if you can keep the tires out of the bottom of the ruts by driving slightly up on the outside of the ruts, do that. Sometimes you can then late apex the corner by letting the car come off the “banking” and going diagonally across the ruts instead of following them through where the hacks understeered out of the corner. If the corner opens onto a long “straight” and there’s not a huge amount of loose dirt or rough terrain on the outside, it may be better to go slightly deeper into the corner, around the ruts, and then use a really late apex to be at full throttle earlier so that you make better time on the straight. This works better with AWD cars, but can work well with 2WD cars if you do it right. Just remember that you will probably have to cross the ruts at the exit to make this work.

Get the car turned early! The understeer problem mentioned above is a great way to debead a tire, a great way to make sure you waste as much time as you can while in a corner, and a great way to come out of a corner at the slowest speed possible. If you turn the car early, you’ll set yourself up to hit the next corner at a good speed, and if there are several corners linked together that get progressively faster (which is ALWAYS the case on the courses I design), you’ll be flying when you come out of the last corner. If you understeer through every corner in the sequence, guess how fast you’ll be going… (not very).

Sideways is slow. Think about what the tires are doing while you’re counter-steering through a turn in an AWD car. The fronts are pulling you in the right direction, but the rears are just pushing you toward the apex. If you’re in a FWD car, you’re dragging the rear tires and slowing the car. If you’re in a RWD car, the fronts are just rolling along, while the rears are pushing you toward the apex and momentum is carrying you through the corner. Try to keep all the driven wheels pointing in the general direction you want to go. This will mean that you turn early, center the steering wheel and accelerate. If you throw the car into a slight drift, all you have to do to change direction is lift, turn in the new direction and then get back on the gas. You should be making very small steering corrections if you’re making any. If you’re constantly turning the steering wheel back and forth at huge angles, you’re not helping yourself any.

Don’t hit the ruts or rough spots too hard if your car can't take it – try to minimize the impact by braking a little and/or using a diagonal crossing. If you break the car you won’t win, and you won’t be having fun as you’re pushing or towing it off the course. You may lose a little time, but unless the competition is an alien, you can make it up somewhere else. And if you hit the rough spots too hard and make the tires come off the ground, you can't use them to accelerate, so slower will be faster anyway.

That's all I have for now...

we should find out how to make those lines move and dance, that way they could look like strobe lights, and yes, many people including myself.. started out turning too much, too late, and bad stuff happens, turn early, turn often...

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hey yall,watch this...