Month: October 2021

In an all out drive, you got to take advantage of every inch of the track. It necessarily shouldn’t be the asphalt. If its drivable then it’s track. Gutter is drivable and therefore it is track. Bank is drivable and therefore it is track. Shoulder is drivable and therefore it is track. Grass is drivable and therefore it is track. To put it simply, anything suitable for the necessary job support is gutter. Gutter cornering can be done in hairpins and corners.

There are two types of gutter cornering techniques.

Technique 1

This is an entry-oriented method that doesn’t let the driver understeer at the entrance. The inner tires are dropped into the gutter to withstand the centrifugal force of the turn. The whole idea is to drop the inside tires into the gutter on purpose and resist the centrifugal force by hooking it. In that way it is possible to gain more cornering force than the tires can grip. It allows the car to turn beyond the grip of its tires.

Normally a car shouldn’t be able to turn at a speed exceeding the tire’s grip. But if you can do this, you can turn at a speed exceeding the tire grip, even though the line is bad on the inside turn. To the naked eye it looks like a roller coaster or 4WD four wheel steering with low turning radius, because the car manures so sharply that it creates such an illusion.

This technique is too obvious and simple. But to successfully perform it, the driver must practice this for long time.

This technique is only to use the gutter as you enter the corner so you can prevent understeering. This Technique is best to overtake the opponent in a corner with a gutter. In order to do this, you should approach the corner from inside. This technique has higher entry speed. You should drop in tires as soon as you enter the gutter. You can maintain higher speed throughout the corner than, if you’ve taken the corner in traditional way; without the gutter. In conventional way, when you reach the apex you can able to reduce the steering lock and start increasing throttle focusing towards the exit. But now, with the gutter you can turn at higher speed, especially from the entrance to the middle of the corner, giving you the advantage to overtake opponent there, while opponent has less speed and turning ability due to neutral throttle. Your entry speed reduces, after the midpoint till the exit; where you release tires, but it doesn’t matter anymore, because you’ve already overtaken the opponent.

Technique 2

This is the same technique as above except it’s the exit-oriented method. Instead of using the gutter when entering the corner as the technique 1, this is used when exiting.

The idea is to reduce centripetal force and increase grip, but it also gives the advantage of the inside. This grip is then use to increase the exit speed.

This one emphasizes recovery after a corner. The timing to drop in the tires and release them is different than the technique 1. And this is tougher than the previous one.

This technique brings with it high risk, especially if you have to go through some open space / ditch / open gutter to get into the gutter / shoulder (see the 1^st photo: 2014 BRZ STI). Just a single mistake in timing would cause you to momentarily lose control.

This is best for catching up / time attacks / faster lap time. Leading driver can use this to widen the gap. Chasing driver can use this to close the gap. Driver can use this to turn the battle around at desperate situations. In order to do this, you should approach the corner from outside. In this technique, you can increase throttle from the apex result in higher exit speed. And this higher exit speed help NA cars to come out of the corner as fast as turbo cars.

Caution – Gutter techniques are almost impossible for lowered cars.

But for cars with an open underbody, these are game changing techniques.

• I do not own any of these photos. Please note that all photos belong to their original owners. If a photo posted here is yours, please let me know and I will remove them.

Rudolf Caracciola

Gutter technique is derived from Rudolf Caracciola.

Rudolf Caracciola used that technique in the 1930s during Grand Prix at the Karussell (Carousel), an extreme (201 degrees) hairpin on the Nurburgring Nordschleife (Greenhell). The Karussell was henceforth named after him. The maneuver quickly became famous and was copied so much that now the hairpin is named the Caracciola-Karussell.

However, the surface was then changed to deeper banking on the inside of the corner. It was reprofiled and the gutter was removed in favour of the banking.

Ron Simons, CEO of RSRNürburgring says how to master the Karussell,

“Taken in second or third gear, the ideal line is the combination of a maximum radius and using the banked section to its full potential. On approach, the track snakes left and right, but ignore this as you want to drive the straight line here. The final curb on the right marks your braking point for the corner. The key here is to ease the car into the bowl a little later rather than earlier, joining as smoothly as possible.”

“In the mid-section, find the maximum camber sweet spot and keep the car there. You want to be in the absolute middle of the concrete plates where the banking is at its steepest. This way, the biggest chunk of centrifugal force is converted into downforce, free of any weight penalty.”

“On exit, use a controlled release of the built up energy to slingshot you on to the following straight. The key here is not to steer out, but only to accelerate a little at the right moment, letting the banking ‘spit you out’ over the corner of the last plate. When perfectly timed, it will feel absolutely right, and add a few hundred RPM to your exit speed revs.” (Rudolf Caracciola info Credit: Road & Track)

History of Karussell

From Alfred Neubauer’s biography “Speed was my life”.

“Now, the description of a ‘ditch not much wider than a car’ probably needs a bit of context. It’s important to remember that a beautifully asphalted Nurburgring didn’t exist until the post-war era, and the very firsts were held on a track that was a mixture of shiny concrete planks, rudimentary asphalt and even gravel. So whether this ditch was lined with concrete or just hard-packed dirt remains unclear.”

“What is clear, is that Alfred claims it was a “Sebastian” who first discovered the line, and checked ground clearance alongside his mechanic “Zimmer”, but it was Rudolf Caracciola who put the theory into practice in the most spectacular fashion during the 1931 German Grand Prix.” (History of Karussell info Credit: BridgeToGantry)

Let’s enjoy some videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekV7eseF3-s?rel=0

Thank you.

This is one of the most dangerous games. This is Russian roulette in live. A real organ donation game.

This is a high stakes-high risk drive. In this handicap drive there is only one rule; all drivers tape their right hand to the wheel. This will limit the turning radius & that will result in limiting steering capabilities.

Steering can only be used to initiate the turn. You have to turn by sliding the rear tires through all the corners. You can’t countersteer much, which makes it harder to control the drift. And oversteering means possible spin. But if you go understeering into a corner, you might end up going down the cliff.

In corners, no matter how hard you steer the wheel you can’t turn. Right hand should take the shifting hand’s support to steer the wheel. Even with that you can’t make a full turn, because the right hand is glued to the wheel.

And because of these conditions you can’t reach your usual average speed under this infamous rule.

If you were pushed from behind in a corner then it’s very hard to regain the control in a spin or in a little imbalance.

Without extreme practice it is impossible to drive under this rule.

If you still think you can steer just get in your car and try for yourself while it’s stationary. Grab the wheel with your right hand only. Don’t let go of it, and steer all the way to either side. When you go as far as it goes, leave the wheel there and get out and see how much you’ve steered. You’ll be surprised to see how little the tires have turned.

This rule highly favours FFs. An FF’s accelerator eliminates oversteering, so FF can attack corners at much higher speed. And if you master left foot braking technique you can cut corners easier. But an FR needs to continuously drift and it makes turning a challenge, because hand is glued. And since FR can’t use much countersteering as usual, the driver should use brake & throttle control instead. So for an FR it’s too risky against an FF. And this makes turning is a real challenge for 4WD, because a 4WD should enter corners at full speed in order to drift, and steer & floor the gas to control the drift. So driving a 4WD under this rule is extremely difficult.

How soon you adapt to the conditions it gets easier to drive. It depends on your knowledge and experience.

You can attack a corner by shifting the load without steering. But to do that you should have highly trained load shifting techniques. That way you can go faster around corners with less steering.

However this can’t be considered as a real drive; it’s an ultimate test.

Thank you.

Inner wheel lifting can’t use for gaining traction. Because a tire off the asphalt can’t produce any lateral or longitudinal force. So theoretically, lifting a one wheel on purpose reduces 25% of car’s all available grip.

And furthermore even when not at inner wheel lifting, but at hard cornering, outside tires doing more work than the inside tires result in increased load sensitivity on outside tires. As load increases on a tire, the coefficient of friction between the tire and the road decreases. Lateral load transfer is the amount of vertical load increased on the outer tires and reduced from the inner tires when the car is hard cornering. A pair of tires with lateral load transfer between them is not capable of generating the same amount of cornering force that the same pair of tires could, if they were equally laden. Most performance/sport/touring/grand touring cars come in RWD & AWD and not in FWD because as the acceleration itself causes the front wheels’ traction to decrease.

Inner wheel lifting will change handling characteristics. Once lifted, roll stiffness will be dropped by significant amount and this will increase the chance of rollover. And if shifted load transfer reaches half the weight of the vehicle it will start to roll. Heavy vehicles will roll before skidding, while passenger cars usually roll only when they leave the road. So you should have good control skills and experience to do the inner wheel lift under complete control.

So, cars are built by default to reduce the load transfer. Lowering the centre of gravity towards the ground by reducing ride height and increasing the track width by changing wheel offsets are some of these things. Performance cars are designed as low as possible and usually have an extended wheelbase and track. In addition to these roll bars are fitted.

It is very difficult to change the lateral load transfer after a car is designed & built and came out of the production line. Suspension setup & tuning, caster angle, spring rate, stiff suspension etc. are very important in that case. These things never change the weight transfer (only lowering the CG & increasing the track width will do that), but they distribute the load between the axles in a much more controllable manner.

So now you know the theory let’s move on to practical. So how hard all try to reduce the load transfer; there are benefits of doing it. Practically inner wheel lift a good technique to; slip into tight spaces / get into the inside / slip pass overtaking / closing the gap / hard cornering / maintaining pace / momentum etc. You have to decide when & why to inner wheel lift. Sometimes that tight space or ditch is the point that will decide the outcome of the match. What is your strategy for it and how you tackle it would decide whether you win or lose.

Even after you do all the necessary tuning to reduce load transfer, you can still do the inner wheel lift at will. FR, MR, 4WD & FF; nothing is no exception. Setup & tuning could be vary, but technique remains the same.

• I do not own any of these photos. Please note that all photos belong to their original owners. If a photo posted here is yours, please let me know and I will remove them.
  
  

Thank you.