A long time fan of Doug Lampkin, ever since he dominated the field on the TV show kickstart, here he is jumping a Red Bull F1 car.

You can see the jump does actually add a fair bit of lateral stress to the car – on a vector it wasn’t designed for! … A quick hub stiffness check perhaps!

What is also nice to see is that the Red Bull facility is fairly basic and still resembles a racing car workshop. For example, their pitstop practise bay looks kind of crammed in. Other F1 teams have somewhat more imposing infrastructure, one even nicknamed “Tracy Island” after Thunderbirds …

Always great to see Lampkin ride. Enjoy!

Driving fast is important in motor racing. Many people believe that top level racing drivers have superior reactions to others and that this is why they can drive faster. My view and research would indicate that this isn’t quite the case.

This is therefore the first post of what I plan to be a series of articles exploring the subject of how to drive fast(er). The aim is to start to unravel some of the mystery and help those interested improve their performance.

Driving fast

Perhaps it will be helpful to define what driving fast means, in the context of motor racing.

What driving fast means in motor sport is being able to pilot a vehicle around a set course, in less time than your competitors.

To complete the course in the least time, competitors need to use all the available potential their vehicle can give them.

I will discuss what goes into defining vehicle potential in a future post, because there is a lot too it. Plus if you understand the important dimensions well, then there is an opportunity for you to gain an advantage.

For this article, I just want to focus on the driver and how fast drivers manage to get the most potential from their vehicles.

So, to drive fast in motor sport you need to complete a course using all the potential your vehicle has to offer, and in less time that your competitors.

Reaction times

There has been a lot of research and study on reaction times. This is a nice literature review for those interested in the subject.

Essentially though, it is my view that to drive fast you need more than good reaction times.

Here is a video showing Formula 1 racing driver Jenson Button using a kind of reaction training machine.

What you can see is that his (poor!) engineer is not as good as him. But what this isn’t proving is that Jenson has better reaction times than his engineer, even though that is the message they are looking to get across.

This example is showing that Jenson’s engineer is not as good at finding the button that is lit-up. From what we can see in the clip, once he does see the button, his reactions are pretty close to Jenson’s, in my opinion.

This machine is trying to develop peripheral vision and, to some level, hand-eye co-ordination.

What does help in driving fast?

OK so if it is not pure reaction times, what is it that makes someone able to drive faster than someone else.

My theory is that being able to drive fast is about being able to imagine the experience and then adapt this imagination as you’re driving round.

In part this is about visualisation. Today, in his coverage of the Valencia practise session, former Formula 1 driver Anthony Davidson discussed this.

Anthony was particularly impressed with Sebastian Vettel’s apparent ability to do this.

Visualisation is only part however.

In my view, I believe you need to be able to imagine the experience, during the experience.

The better and fast you can get at doing this, the less effort and less reacting you need to do; in effect you just have to react to the differences between what you believe you’re about to experience and what actually happens.

This makes things much easier.

It is perhaps one of the reason why people who train a lot give themselves a better chance of doing well, because they have had so much more experience of different situations that they almost don’t have to instinctively react to anything.

One realtively well recieved piece of research within the Sporting community that backs up my theory is in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. He discusses a 10,000 hour rule, where to truly excel you need to train for at least 10,000 hours.

In summary

In summary, to be able to drive fast you need to be able to imagine the whole experience you will feel behind the wheel.

This involves visualisation before the event but also, critically in my opinion, the ability to refine this imagined experience, during the actual event.

Commonly the ability to do this is understood to be because of superior reaction times. In my view, this isn’t the case.

I believe the fastest racing drivers are reacting to their imagination of what they think will happen, based on their continually adapting vision and on previous experience.

If they do this then they only have to react to differences between what is happening and what they believe they’re about to experience; it is more a case of trimming than some superior “talent” or reaction ability.

You often hear the importance of “seat time” mentioned in racing circles. I tend to agree with this, as long as you’re building an appropriate experience set. That though, is another topic for another day.

To develop one’s ability to do this, short of 10,000 hours in a racing car, would be an interesting research study:

How do you develop a better ability to construct future experiences in your head, then to quickly recall and modify those imagined experience based on actual events, and changing your actual actions based only on a reaction to the differences between them.

I’d welcome peoples views on this.

What do you believe it takes to drive fast?

Any specific questions, please ask.

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Pace Insights is a start-up based in Warwick, UK. We are building a next-generation platform for easier high performance data analysis and management, specifically for the motor sports market.

A fun 10 mins or so.

Jealous ?

Motorsports is expensive. It is similar to my friends hobby of sailing – which he once equated to the experience of standing in the shower and tearing up £50 notes!

As competitive beings, we like to get out there and test ourselves; both against the environment and against other people.

We also like to achieve, to succeed and to win.

Now that humans don’t need to wrestle Lions for dinner, we instead look for other ways of getting the adrenaline pumping and that feeling of “being alive”.

Motorsports provides this tonic and sometimes a bit more, as Ant Davidson (@antdavidson) discovered over the weekend at Le Mans:

Tweeting afterwards he said: “Feeling a bit sore today, but generally just happy to be alive!”

The downside of motorsports, in this respect, is that you need equipment to participate. Further more you need competitive equipment to participate, so much so that at the highest level in motorsports, the equipment makes more of a difference on your results than your personal performance.

An assumption that is often made, however, is that the equipment is the limiting factor at any level in motorsports.

Clearly this can’t be the case. Therefore if you want to know how to save money in motorsports then one way is to invest more on understanding your own performance until you’re competitive enough to genuinely take advantage of that extra 5hp your £5k engine re-build will give you.

But I would say that

One thing we are developing at Pace Insights are some measures to help drivers understand when its worth considering those expensive “refinements” to your equipment to gain performance.

I am proposing to that save you money in motorsports use some measures looking at understanding your performance as a driver and focusing on improving these measures before you spend a lot of money improving your vehicle a bit.

For example, one that you might like to try is what we are calling your “Pace-Insights-Average” score or “PIA” score.

This measure looks at the consistency of your driving by comparing the laptimes you achieve in consistent environmental conditions.

To use it you look at your PIA number, compare this to your PIA target and your success on track and if you’re not winning or on the front row, then its time to consider having a look at improving your kit.

In practise you might consider saying to yourself and/or your team, “Until I as a driver can achieve a PIA of less than 0.5secs, we are not going to change the car.”

A couple of notes on that:

• 0.5 seconds is an arbitory number for this example. Consider 2% of total laptime as a good starting point. It does depend on your category of racing as to what this number should be.
• Clearly if you feel the vehicle is dangerous thats a different story and you’ll need to change it, but something you can take a view on at the time I am sure …

OK. So to calculate your PIA, you simply take your last three lap times and average them. Then you calculate the standard deviation on these averages, either as you go along or at the end of a session. This your PIA score.

A couple of worked examples:

The target PIA was decided as 0.5 seconds. The driver did two runs. On run one the lap times were too inconsistent. The vehicle performance was masked by the inability of the driver to lap the track consistently. The driver didn’t achieve the PIA target and therefore no changes were made to the vehicle.

On run two the driver improved a lot. The lap times easily beat their PIA target.

They now need to compare where they are with the competition. If they’re not up at the front then it might be worth investing in a few changes.

Simple!

One interesting thing about using your PIA number is that it copes with lap time inconsistency on a single lap; say if the driver had a lap ruined due to traffic or a mistake, the measure is able to cope with this (as per lap 3 in the above example).

The PIA score aims to unearth a drivers true consistency and ability to extract the most from the vehicle on a consistent basis. It proves a starting point for then deciding whether, or at what point, to invest in refinements to the vehicle.

In Formula 1 they have had a long running debate on how to save money in motorsports. It is a strange one as people will spend what they can get to give them a performance advantage. Particularly in such a high profile category. Measures such as a cost cap are therefore a nonsense as you then get into issues with accounting subtleties.

Gary Anderson has put forward what might be a nice solution for Formula 1 in his BBC commentary blog; namely to limit the number of chassis part changes per season, like the limit on number of engines etc. I quite like it.

I’d be interested to know what people think of the PIA score, once they have had a chance to try it out.

Its our belief that understanding your performance will help people improve and potentially save them a bit of money in the meantime.

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Pace Insights is a start-up based in Warwick, UK. We are building a next-generation platform for easier high performance data analysis and management, specifically for the motor sports market.

If you’ve not seen this then well worth a watch.

The most striking thing for me was actually seeing the driving position.

Fair play to them for doing this – guess they never liked that BMW car anyway …

Safe is Fast is a new initiative led by Bobby Rahal and with backing from the FIA. The target audience for this website is not 100% clear to me but if you have an interest in motorsports its well worth a look, especially on their (self-hosted) video section.

They have created S.A.F.E. into an anagram for Skilled, Assured, Fit and Empowered. The overall premise being that to finish first, first need to finish, and safely.

Driving standards always seem to be a hot topic of conversation; most notably by those who feel they find themselves on the wrong end of said driving standards.

This site goes way beyond just that debate however.

The most novel part, I feel, is that you have a opportunity to put questions, “racing driver to racing driver”, each week to some well known names in professional motorsports, notably Jenson Button soon. The Q+A is then published the following week, with an opportunity to win a “3-month” subscription to iRacing.com for the best questions.

Although well intentioned and with some genuinely interesting videos, my favourite being this one on the emerging role of the driver coach, the site does come across as a little patronising at times. I am not sure what genuinely new value someone already on the path to becoming a professional driver will get from this. For an amateur racer again there is stuff there of interest but it will be difficult to understand how to apply some of the advice.

I see this as a good resource for any motorsport enthusiast. However, it is really not clear what they are aiming to achieve with it. Commercially, iRacing should benefit as various drivers endorse the use of the game as a training aid. Furthermore, the website will harvest a good number of contact details from people who register, filtered by there “Level of experience” – the choices are: Karts, Amateur Racing or Pro Racing. It is just unclear what you’re registering for, with no “opt-out” from further promotional material etc.

What is the site aiming to achieve? What does success look like? What value is it delivering and for whom?

- Is it a connect with the drivers fan site?

- Is it an opportunity for the “Pro’s” to talk down to others? – I doubt this but still …

- Is it aimed to be a useful resource on helping people get more tangible value from their racing?

For me it just seems like an opportunity wasted at the moment, the “Focus” video I felt was especially underwhelming.

Perhaps I have missed the point?

I’d welcome any thoughts people have.

Samir

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Pace Insights is a start-up based in Warwick, UK. We are building a next-generation platform for easier high performance data analysis and management, specifically for the motor sports market.

The 2012 Le Mans build-up is well underway. Away from the fanfare of which Audi will win this year, it is great to see that the Delta Wing has made it.

The car is there. It works. The drivers have qualified. The garage 56′ers will be in the race.

This is not small achievement given the state of the project only a few months ago. The guys have put in a herculean effort to prep the car.

OK it doesn’t have all the technology they initially intended (torque vectoring etc) but it does still have that little 1.6ltr engine and they do still aim to complete the race with far less fuel than the others.

What I’d be really interested to know is how they have gone about setting up the car, what with the unique configuration. Perhaps we’ll be able to provide some insights here from the team in time but it will certainly have some fascinating challenges. If you are an Autosport subscriber then here are some good thoughts on the subject, in an interview with chief designer Ben Bowlby.

It will be good to see something positive come of the design after Le Mans, although that seems less clear at present. A one-make series has been mentioned but hopefully the bigger benefits Ben is trying to prove will also form the legacy of this fascinating project.

Good luck from the team at paceinsights.com, and here’s to a finish!

If you’re interested in a bit of Delta Wing action prior to Le Mans, then this is a great video in-car of the Delta Wing project car finally making it on track.

Enjoy the in-car:

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Pace Insights is a start-up based in Warwick, UK. We are building a next-generation platform for easier high performance data analysis and management, specifically for the motor sports market.

UPDATED Image showing hole:

The rear wing on the new Mercedes W03 Formula 1 car has been declared legal. It is great to see the innovation of the Formula 1 teams and I wonder how many points of drag this apparent stall system reduces.

The image shows a close up, best I could find at the moment, of the rear wing of the W03 Mercedes 2012 Formula 1 car. The area I have highlighted is where the small top wing comes into contact with the rear wing end plate (the bit with aabar written on it – same on both sides).

The reason for highlighting this area is because the little wing is what rotates open when the DRS* system is activated.

It seems that as the little wing (or flap) opens, it is revealing a hole that channels air through the rear wing end plate. This air flow is apparently being used for other beneficial purposes.

This seems to either be to further reduce the aero drag being caused elsewhere on the rear wing (most likely on the beam wing for example) or, and possibly more far fetched, to reduce the lift on the front wing, by channelling air back up from the rear to the front of the car …

The rear wing benefit is fairly straightforward – just reducing straight-line drag giving you more acceleration potential when using the DRS.

The front wing benefit is possibly more involved. One idea is to re-balance the car in high speed corners so that the DRS can be used more often in corners on a qualifying lap. I am not sure about this, as really on corners you want as much downforce as possible. It is however an interesting train of thought.

Possibly a more likely benefit would be in reducing high-speed ride-height variation at high speed.

The car often changes ride-height quite a lot at high speed because of the down force generated by the wings. The downforce is really for the corners; on the straights its not as important. However, the car will run the lowest at the end of the straights as this is typically the fastest point on the track.

The cars are typically set-up so the front is lower than the rear. This is called rake angle and what was used to good effect by Red Bull last year.

The cars also have a limit on how low they are allowed to run. Go with me on this if its new to you but the lower the cars the better.

What happens is that the front wing generates downforce and pushes the car into the track. The faster the car goes the low it gets to the road.

This is all great until that lower limit comes into play. That limit is controlled by-the-way by an extremely sophisticated (!) blank of wood under the car. It starts life at 10mm thick. After a race it can’t be less than 9mm thick; with one notable German having previously been disqualified for planing his plank too low.

Anyhow, so what the engineers have to do is something like this:

1) Work out the fastest speed the car is likely to be travelling at any point on the circuit.

2) Work out how much the front wing will be reducing the ride height of the car at that speed.

3) Then set the ride heights so that they don’t plane the plank. (There’s got to be a better description than that but anyhow …)

Now clearly this leads to quite a few compromises which I won’t go too into here, but includes things like choosing appropriate suspension spring solutions to trade off high stiffness suspension and low stiffness suspension. Again, something for a future post …

The idea I think they are trying to get to is that if they can reduce the front wing downforce on the straights, they can run the car at a lower overall ride height.

A lower overall ride height would have quite a big benefit all round.

It’s an idea anyhow. The issue is that this would be great in qualifying but then you can’t change the ride-height (officially) before the race. In the race you’re not going to be in control of when you use the DRS so you’d end up planing the plank as before.

Now if the front wing worked on its own and just stalled all the time at high speed, through the pressure differential air switch, discussed here and here. Then that would give you the reduced ride height variation and the ability to run lower overall.

And …

If the rear beam wing stalled when the DRS was opened, through the channelling of air from the little exposed hole in the end-plate, then you’d reduce the drag and go even faster on the straights.

Phew.

There a clever lot these F1 guys.

Of course there is another theory, that the air is being channel down the end plates to create a curtain between the wheel and the difusser, therefore improving the effectiveness of the diffuser in qualifying …

All just ideas but its fun guessing.

Comments welcome as ever.

Notes:
There are some good pieces on the written Mercedes wing ideas here:

http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/mercedes-f-duct-front-wing-operated-by-the-rear-wing-drs/

*For those unsure about DRS, check out this video. Mark Webber explains the Formula 1 DRS system with some nice animated graphics. Scroll to about 1m25 for the DRS bit.

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Pace Insights is a start-up based in Warwick, UK. We are building a next-generation platform for easier high performance data analysis and management, specifically for the motor sports market.