Water cup is for normal driving. You can’t use it for serious drives and practice runs. This is where a G meter comes in.
This is one of the oldest and simplest G meter. However you can’t use this for dry sump systems. This works best with conventional wet sumps.
Normally a car uses an oil pan to circulate the oil throughout the engine. It is a gravity fed system use to pump oil through the engine. During high speed cornering a car will flip, sway and swirl. The red water on the dash demonstrates the effects of G forces as the car corners. Water move to left and right which is an indication of the side forces of lateral accelerations the car generate. If you corner hard left the water will start to move right. And if you corner hard right the water will start to move left. The same thing would be happening to oil in a conventional oil pan. Oil would also be forced to the side of an oil pan making it impossible to be move up to the engine during the sustain period of cornering. So the G forces will starve the engine of oil and it’d break down from the heat.
But now with the G meter you can know what should be your speed and margin. You can use this to practise the course and making pacenotes. And to prepare strategies.
Water cup is your first step. This is the next step. These things will help you to learn. Understand the car and physics. And improve your techniques. All the knowledge & experience you gain will contribute to your future growth.
You can be serious and go on the offensive when you are on real drives and practice runs. But other than that you should always ― always drive smoothly.
Being out on the road and pursuing your car to the limit put a lot of stress on the car. That’s why when driving normally you should treat her with care and respect.
Not only that, this is the path to master the car. This training is for that.
You should be gentle with the car. You should run at a slow pace. You should be completely at ease, considerate towards the clutch and transmission. It should be as smooth as until you feel everything about that is on a different level. When you shift up, you shouldn’t be able to feel the change in G forces. You should be able to perform such delicate clutch work while driving on both uphill & downhill winding mountain roads.
In other words a passenger should be able to sleep soundly throughout the drive. Accelerating, decelerating, braking, clutch work, shifting up & down, steering; if anything goes little rough passenger awakes. So you should be able to deliver smooth driving.
It’s not easy. But there is an outstanding method to develop this skill.
These legendary drivers contribute very to this phenomenon.
Hans Stuck – known for his domination of hillclimbing, which earned him the nickname “Bergkönig” or “King of the Mountains”. He developed his sense for hillclimbing while delivering milk from his farm to the city. His experience with driving began at the age of 22 with early morning runs bringing milk from his farm to Munich. For a long time he pursued the question “How do you drive when you have milk in the car? Because if you go too fast, you’ll damage the milk”. This eventually led to his taking up hillclimbing.
Jackie Stewart – Known for his very smooth driving. He developed it with his technique of putting a ball in an open bowl on the bonnet. The idea is to keep the ball inside the bowl without bouncing. This helped him to build his smoothness. Ball’s roll movements help him to understand how the load is being transferred and in what direction under acceleration, deceleration, braking, steering, change in velocity, etc. Keiichi Tsuchiya once demonstrated this with the “G-Ball” in Best Motoring – Drift Bible. Camera view shows a bowl with three ball bearings inside. Depend on how the forces act upon them (depend on the load shifting), balls roll in that direction. During acceleration balls roll backwards. Under braking to the front. And when steering it is to the left and right.
Best Motoring International Vol. 9 – Drift Bible (2003). Move from 15:41 to 42:00 at timestamp (set). Video Credit: jjunfer
Refer to the following diagram.
Your training is to put water in a paper cup and put it in the cup holder and drive without spilling it. Fill the water level according to your course. If you can drive without spilling the water then you won’t wake the passenger or damage any goods carrying on board the car.
And you can’t go fast, because it’ll make the water spill. In the beginning you’ll find it to be very difficult. Even when you drive very slowly, it will spill. Acceleration, braking, shifting, steering… If even one of them is a little rough, the water spills. And you can’t make any sudden moves. Everything has to be planned. Everything has to be synchronized. In other words, don’t react. Act. That means you should be able to drive effortlessly! And don’t accelerate with your sole. You should accelerate only with your toe and index.
The art is to roll the water in the cup. Water’s surface tension makes it roll around the rim of the cup. At each corner, you should roll the water to the edge of the rim (maximum level) as you drive. By rolling the water you are not breaking the water’s surface tension thus keeping it in the cup.
The main point of controlling a car is controlling the centre of gravity. In order to drive without spilling the water, you have to master the car’s CG.
Furthermore water cup is an excellent exercise to practice patience, prediction, rev matching (matching the engine revs when you downshift), braking, shift lock (downshifting without rev matching and this will lock the drive wheels. Shift locking will make the car jolt and cause the water spill), steering, etc.
Water cup act as a G meter. “Smoothness” is the purpose of this.
