Not realising that the accelerator pedal is more than simply an on/off switch is what seems to catch a lot of people out when driving cars that are more powerful than they are used to.

Indeed, in my earlier post I spoke about learning car control on a track which taught me a lot about the dynamics of how cars respond at the extremities of their dynamic range. In my case this was a very standard VW Bora. This was good because the top of that range was approachable by normal people.
As has been mentioned by others the ‘tasty’ cars available today are way beyond what normal drivers are cabable of keeping hold of. Hence when drivers try it they inevitably screw it up. See all the The Ring tourist track day vids on YouTube.

By the way I am in no way a tasty driver either, I just got good tuition and keep it sane.

On the roads I don’t make progress, unless the road is in the arse end of no where and I can see it’s deserted. That combination for me happens maybe once a year, if I’m very lucky. The rest of the time I drive like I’m not a massive dick.

YMMV.

plumslikerocks
Maxtorque…..I was thinking TVR fast rather than GT3 fast!

er, i’d rather drive an 911 GT3 (997 or later) at the limit than a TVR!

(mainly because Porsche spent more than £3.57 on the handling development……. 😉

Energy is proportional to the square of speed so goes up exponentially.

The speed itself is dangerous.

Can somebody who understands how their car behaves on the limit of grip and beyond be potentially safer?

No, IMO, it may mean they are more likely to enter that dangerous zone thinking they can handle it so they are potentially less safe.

Being smooth and observant is good, add courteous, humble, careful, considerate, and excellent anticipation.

Does anybody set out to be jerky or unobservant?

In most modern cars, even reasonably powerful ones, they are set up to be really pretty benign, and the safety net of the stability electronics helps the average driver feel in control. Something like a TVR, is light, and although not that powerful by modern std, a bit flighty, often rather non-linear in-extremis, and lacking that electronic safety net! It is a car where too sudden an input can result in a reaction that cannot be controlled, particularly by an in-experienced driver who compounds their initial excessive positive input by adding a similarly too large negative one (be that handwheel or throttle input)

I’d certainly recommend doing an tailored airfield limit handling day in your particular car (ime, no two TVRs actually handle the same, not when new, and certainly not now they are getting on a bit). What this should show you (and maybe scare into you) is how quickly things can get out of hand if your not smooth and linear with your inputs) It should also help you to recognise the obvious once shown, but sadly not often noticed by drivers, signals from the car that you are approaching the limits.

With TVRs sensitivity to road surfaces (camber, surface etc) the std advanced techniques for positioning and line choice will really help a driver maximise stability at all speed, again, something noticeable by there absence in most drivers (who tend to make multiple, jerky, handwheel and other control inputs whilst setting up for, negotiating, and exiting a road feature. So, i’d recommend some generic advanced tuition as well as the specific limit handling stuff.

Does this count?

andyl
Does this count?

In what looks to be an old Rover 400 saloon, er nope, it doesn’t!

(might be an old lexus or Toyota Camery, which are just as S**T 😉

Even if you learn to drift on a track, a track is nothing like a road. On a road you’ve got much less width (even if the road is closed), a constantly changing surface and random hazards popping out. I’ve driven a lot of distance on narrow roads in ideal conditions: closed roads on the Circuit of Ireland, the Ulster rally, the Epynt ranges… in a well-prepared car on cut slicks (which are much, much more forgiving than any road tyres), with pace notes. It’s fraught, it’s hard work, it requires a totally automatic set of learned reflexes. You’re doing it for hours on end so get into a groove.

How useful is that whilst being courteous, careful, considerate, smooth, economical, patient etc. driving on the public road. somewhere between useless and totally useless. I’m so far away from the limit while driving without taking risks that all that stuff learned in competition is useless, and that’s when the speed limit isn’t the limiting factor which very often it is.

All you need are a pair of sturdy leather driving gloves.

In what looks to be an old Rover 400 saloon, er nope, it doesn’t!

(might be an old lexus or Toyota Camery, which are just as S**T

but what if I drive it wearing a pink velour tracksuit with “tasty” written across the bum?

Energy is proportional to the square of speed so goes up exponentially.

Since energy is proportional to the square of speed it goes up with the square of speed… not exponentially.

Sorry, I can’t not comment on that!

Since energy is proportional to the square of speed it goes up with the square of speed… not exponentially.

Just going to leave this here…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_function

Have a serious chat with John
http://www.john-lyon.com

His course includes, track, skid pan, test tracks and the road, exceptional.

Edukator -I’m so far away from the limit while driving without taking risks that all that stuff learned in competition is useless

Sorry, i disagree!

Sure, for 99.999999999% of the time, high speed, instinctive, seat of the pants car control is a useless road skill. But you know what, that 0.00000000001% time, it might just save your life!

(15 years ago, on a development trip for the Focus RS (mk1, the proper one 😉 ) i was driving at around 85mph on an italian Autosrada, when a rear upright failed. The car yawed 180deg sideways, i instinctively floored it, banged in full countersteer, and then the car snapped back straight, in the blink of an eye, and somehow (to this day i don’t actually know how) i got all the counter steer off perfectly to avoid a massive tank slapper. Luckily at that point, the entire rear wheel departed company with the car, meaning i could carefully coast down to the shoulder in a (reasonably) straight line. That day, having spent years rallying undoubtly saved a much bigger accident from developing

The other factor is that a lot of people don’t have the intrinsic skill or experience to feel a car getting close to a loss of control. I’m not talking about skidding, i’m talking about the point where it all starts to go non-linear, where lag approaches 180 phase delay, and normal handwheel inputs become an un-stabilising force rather than a stabilising one. That point is almost impossible to learn without experiencing. Sure, you can’t learn in a short time to do anything about it, but you can learn the signs as a warning to stop doing what ever you’re doing….

position to indulge in silly fast / lairy cars, but up until now have no fast road or track experience, how would you a) avoid killing anyone and b) get the most out of it?

That’s your problem silly fast cars are a bit dull. You simply can not enjoy them on a public road (most of the time)

Get an MX5 on narrow hard tyres. Then go and find a deserted wet road with a nice 2nd gear open corner and practice oversteer fun/locking the car up/steering under braking/lifting off half way through a corner.

My current car is silly fast and rear wheel drive but unfortunately it also has very fat tyres so lots of grip even with the traction off. It’s only in near zero temperatures and greasy wet roads that you can have fun at sensible speeds without doing really stupid things to provoke the rear end. Great feeling though using just enough throttle to keep accelerating and not induce oversteer, or taking it just a little too far

The other big thing to learn is stopping distances. Sounds daft but you arrive at the next corner much sooner carrying a lot more speed. You have to brake much sooner than you might think!

Best place to learn car control is on a track/skid pan. Failing that get out when it next snows. You can learn how to control a sliding car at very slow speeds

Does anyone know of an outfit who combine fast road and track / skid pan tuition?

Certain Customs/UK border teams (whatever they are called) get to drive normal cars at silly speeds on UK roads as part of their training.

Crash Investigators also get to drive a number of types of car (including very fast ones) and are encouraged to drive them too quickly beyond the limit of control. To learn what’s safe, you have to know what’s beyond the limit

Both careeers where to get to drive fast.

(15 years ago, on a development trip for the Focus RS (mk1, the proper one ) i was driving at around 85mph on an italian Autosrada, when a rear upright failed. The car yawed 180deg sideways, i instinctively floored it, banged in full countersteer, and then the car snapped back straight, in the blink of an eye, and somehow (to this day i don’t actually know how) i got all the counter steer off perfectly to avoid a massive tank slapper. Luckily at that point, the entire rear wheel departed company with the car, meaning i could carefully coast down to the shoulder in a (reasonably) straight line. That day, having spent years rallying undoubtly saved a much bigger accident from developing

The other factor is that a lot of people don’t have the intrinsic skill or experience to feel a car getting close to a loss of control. I’m not talking about skidding, i’m talking about the point where it all starts to go non-linear, where lag approaches 180 phase delay, and normal handwheel inputs become an un-stabilising force rather than a stabilising one. That point is almost impossible to learn without experiencing. Sure, you can’t learn in a short time to do anything about it, but you can learn the signs as a warning to stop doing what ever you’re doing….
Given that you don’t know how you saved it, how do you evaluate the relevance of your previous experience with regard to not throwing the RS off the island?

http://www.polfed.org/campaigning/trained_drivers.aspx

Tasty driver? Here you go!

Let us know how you get on …

About 25 years ago I was briefly an instructor at Brands Hatch racing school. Most of the people who came along thought they were “a bit tasty”. They’d turn up in their Nova’s, XR2’s or M3’s. With the exception of maybe 1% of them, they were clueless. Most of them drove like it was a real life version of Turbo Outrun, all the controls seemed to be treated like on/off switches, including the steering wheel. There were regular spins, which was quite an achievement in an XR3i, and after all the locked wheels, understeering corner entries and silly line choices, most were amazed to find they were about 10 seconds off a half decent lap time.

We could teach them about the racing line (different to what you would take as a fast line on the roads), encourage smoothness and demonstrate how to do it properly, but you can’t teach someone how to be Lewisham Hamilton because it’s all about “feel” and either you have that or you don’t.

If it’s something you want to do, then go on a closed circuit course with the attitude that you know nothing. Then drive on the roads slower than you do at the moment. Roads are not racetracks. Screw up and people get hurt, generally those who are totally innocent. If you have a need for speed, then that’s what track days/karting is for.

.if you suddenly found yourself in a position to indulge in silly fast / lairy cars, but up until now have no fast road or track experience, how would you a) avoid killing anyone and b) get the most out of it?

Well if its on public roads, staying within the speed limits or close to and being an observant driver should help keeping everyone else alive. IMO roads are too busy and cars are too fast to be able to drive them at the limit on public roads these days.

If you want to get the most out of it do a couple of track days. I also think skid pan is worth it if you have no idea on understeer/oversteer, cadence braking, etc.

Now you may shoot me for saying this, but I think racing sims like GT also help with learning racing lines, braking, car balance, etc. But they are also not a substitute for actual track days, you learn so much about your car on a track day: It’s characteristics and how much tyres, brakes, fluids cost.

I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun in a road car than my Hillman Imp in the snow at about 30mph.

The car yawed 180deg sideways, i instinctively floored it, banged in full countersteer, and then the car snapped back straight, in the blink of an eye, and somehow (to this day i don’t actually know how) i got all the counter steer off perfectly to avoid a massive tank slapper.

Rarely have I read such an incoherent post.

The car broke, with suspension broken enough to put it 180 sideways (perpendicular to the direction of travel).

At that point the obvious thing to do is simultanously stand on the brakes and pull hard on the handbrake locking everything and removing any directional influence from the tyres. The car then slides in a straight line wherever it’s heading – hopefully in this case roughly in the direction it was initially travelling along the motorway. While it’s doing that you may chose to let off the brakes at some time if the car is going to roll in the direction you want, if not you just slide to a stop if you are lucky enough not to hit anything.

And yet you “instintively floored it”. How could flooring it possibly be the right instinct? Perpendicular to the direction of travel (180°) in top gear the engine was at zero revs or very close, as in stalled, as in of no use. If you’ve done years of rallying you’ll know that: Go completely sideways on tarmac and if you don’t declutch you’ve stalled.

Who are you Maxtorque? You big yourself up with tales of 223 mph on a closed road in Saudi. Are you the mechanic, the tech, the driver? I know we operate under pseudos but you keep inciting people to do dangerous things on these drivig threads on the basis of your credentials. You need to get more specific because claiming an upright on a competition car broke drivng in a straight line with no extreme inputs on an autstrada at 85mph is already stretching it and then claming to have gathered up a car with one wheel at an angle extreme enough to have put the car completely sideways by flooring it (counter to rally driver instinct) is really pushing it:

For what it’s worth, in case you’ve forgotten or others on the thread are interested where I’m coming from, I’m John Underwood

1984 BTRDA and MSA (RAC) British Autotest champion.

1984 Ken Wharton autotest – on the winning team, it wasn’t often England beat the Irish.

1985 Nova Junior Cup – based on the national rally championship, 3rd IIRC

1986 The home internationals in a Group N Samba, just one class win, on the Welsh Rally

The “other driver” with Russ Swift in the dance routine in displays in the early years 1985 – 1992, Ken Irwin and Harald Hazard were the other “other drivers” in this period.

1998 a 9th and 13th place scratch in European cup Winter triathlon rounds (France and Spain), first Brit and 27th scratch at the World Championships. 40th World championships 2000. After that I changed to French nationality for competition purposes.

2006 Veteran vice-champion French Winter triathlon championships, sixth overall.

Numerous podium finishes in age group and a few scratch in Triathlons, X-C sking, MTBing and ski-alpinism.

And today in a car I’m perfectly anonymous, if I drive past there’s nothing different to the rest of the population. You may notice I’ve left more of a gap between me and the car in front or that I pay more attention than most to speed limits, but none of the experience above justifies or encourages me to do more than trundle along carefully with the masses.

Nice one Edukator!

fast roads – in this country!

Get something smaller, like the MX-5, that is pleasureable to drive on normal roads legally without putting other people at risk.

Reserve your fast, risky, driving for the track where you are only likely to injure or kill yourself.

Sorry, Ed, i forgot you are the most awesome man alive today. I’ve amended my records and won’t forget again!

😆

(ps, and no i’m not about to even start getting into a willy waving completion with you)

The car yawed 180deg sideways

Brilliant! And in only two pages. 180 degrees isn’t yawing, it’s facing the way you came.

ico
The car yawed 180deg sideways
Brilliant! And in only two pages. 180 degrees isn’t yawing, it’s facing the way you came.

Sorry. Clearly got that wrong, meant 90 degrees obs!

(and guess what it wasn’t actually 90 degrees either, probably more like 63.527 degrees, just to get that in before the rest of the pedants who can’t read anything they see on a forum and apply their own common sense to what is written, to understand the point the typer is trying to make, rather than to just analyse precisely what has been typed and to expose every mistake and flaw and omission!)

The car yawed 180deg sideways, i instinctively floored it, banged in full countersteer, and then the car snapped back straight, in the blink of an eye

This makes no sense whatsoever.

“180deg” ….. ok, so now you are travelling backwards at 85mph.

“i instinctively floored it”…. in reverse ?

“banged in full countersteer” …. counter to what ? You are going backwards.

“and then the car snapped back straight” …. another 180deg spin to be facing forwards again?

[edit] slow to hit send, but still. Difficult to read and believe. Sounds a bit sufmatt.

Clearly I’m doing this ‘driving’ thing wrong.
What possible reason is there for trying to get to, and past, the limit of your car, on the public roads?
On a track, fine, I can see that’s fun. On the road? Why?

Sorry. Clearly got that wrong, meant 90 degrees obs!

I thought that was a pretty obvious typo given the rest of the post.

And we’re off for another multiple pages of bollocks topic 😆

The best answers were on the first page, cheap quickish car, trackdays and some time with an instructor should sort you out.

Would now be a good time for some troy queef?

Coming in code red to an especially testing series of esses I rolled off the hot pedal to see what was what and all at once the Tivoli’s taut tail came into play. I simply caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.

The Ssangyong Tivoli 1.6 EX is a bitch. And I spanked it.

Now I love a face-full of dong as much as the next man, but given the option of tall tales or willy waving then I’m with Maxpork on this.

I’d asssumed perpendicular realising you probably meant 90° and said as such, Maxtorque. All my reply is based on perpendicular hence the stalled engine comment. I was being the opposite of pedantic, correcting an obvious confusion and replying accordingly.

Care to answer the questions about these “years of rallying” and all the other credentials you’ve posted. Just a few verifiable results to indicate that you were in the driving seat of a rally car on a special stage in a competition rather than thrashing the service barge.

So give up on the smileys, drop the references to willy waving and:

put up or shut up.

Would now be a good time for some troy queef?

If the rest of his writing is like that, he’s well named.

On the road? Why?

Because roads can be fun to drive on, it is not always dangerous to drive a car beyond its limit of grip.

Besides which knowing how to control a car that is sliding will help you if you get in to that situation.

This is the best post on this thread!

goldfish24 – Member

Since energy is proportional to the square of speed it goes up with the square of speed… not exponentially.

Sorry, I can’t not comment on that!

You should have kept schtum… 😆

Cougar – Troy Queef is a spoof car reviewer article on the sniffpetrol website.
It’s quite amusing and does a good job of taking the pee out of the ‘Evo’ style of motoring journalism.

There’s a big difference in knowing how to control a sliding car and driving on a public road in a manner likely to cause that slide. The first case is using that knowledge to increase safety, the second is decreasing it.

If you want to deliberately push the limits of your car or yourself then the only safe(r) place to do that is on a race track not on public roads where there are too many variables outside your control.

Besides which knowing how to control a car that is sliding will help you if you get in to that situation.

Unless you are doing it day in and day out it probably won’t.

Right here goes. I’ve got a spare hour, so i’ll tediously type out what i said yesterday, but make sure i do in such a way that the STW pedants can understand:

1) A Mk1 RS focus is a fwd, reasonably powerful (230bhp for the time, project was started in 2002, that was more power than any other 2wd small European market passenger car) Front Wheel Drive (FWD) “Hot” hot hatch.

2) Unlike modern high power FWD cars, it didn’t use any particularly clever suspension layout to try to tame the high tractive effort that it could generate at the front axle. As such, front tyre slip (and hence grip) would vary enormously depending on the engine torque applied at any given moment by the engine. Hence, it would understeer heavily underpower, and to counter than effect, and provide a quick lap time and “fun” handling balance, the car relied on it’s rear suspension to carry most of the dynamic cornering loads. ie the rear tyres get loaded with the lateral loads, the front ones with the tractive loads. What this long winded and complex explanation all boils down to is that the car has a yaw stability and rotational acceleration that is highly dependant upon the torque the driver is applying. Lift off at high speed, mass transfer loads the front tyres, unloads the rears, there is little tractive force, so front tyres grip like crazy, rears loose grip, and long story short, you’re experiencing a very rapid yaw.

3) Whilst travelling at around 85mph, the car requires approx 50kW of wheel power, which is around 1/3 of engine BMEP (Brake Mean Effective Pressure) i Top gear, or about 1/4 of engine BMEP in 4th gear. That tractive effort is being applied continuously to the front tyres, and hence the front suspension, even when the lateral acceleration is zero. ie travelling at a constant speed. It is generating tyre slip, even if you can’t feel it, and limiting the lateral capability of those front tyres

4) The rear upright that broke was a prototype part. The cars on the development trip were a mixture of AP, CP and one PP1 prototypes. The AP level car i was driving had a hand modified upright, used to stiffen the intersection between the ‘control blade’ (part of the rear suspension member than connects the upright longitudinally to the chassis) and the wheel bearing carrier. Unbeknownst to us at that time, the loading applied by the much larger wheel and tyre package, and the much higher rear lateral stiffness and wheel rate lead to small cracks appearing around the wheel bearing location Circlip. The particular car i was driving was inspected and signed off by the Ford Dunton Prototype workshop before the trip, but it is likely those small cracks were present during the inspection, and missed (file under #S**t Happens)

5) Just before failure, i had accelerated to around 85mph, in third gear, and moved off a slip road and into L1 of the Autostrada. The road was reasonably traffic free, and our 3 car convoy maintained good separation from each other, meaning i had a nice big “bubble” in which to drive. I was sat at consant throttle at 85mph in 3th gear, about to shift up into top, when there was a loud “thud” and a large vibration from the rear offside of the vehicle. Almost immediately (<1sec) the car yawed heavily in an anticlockwise direction. As suggested by other posters, braking, or even lifting off the throttle would have resulted in an immediate spin and corresponding complete loss of directional control. (see section 2) again if you don’t understand why). The only way to counteract a massive rear slip angle is to immediately (over)load the front tyres to a similar slip angle,hence i floored the throttle (and in 85mph 3rd gear, with the engine at around 5300trpm i effectively had pretty much full power availiable). Turning into the slide, full throttle created an opposing yaw acceleration that slowed and (luckily) reversed the initial yaw. I’d estimate the car got to around 60deg of positive yaw (ok, i typed 180deg earlier, when i mean’t 90, but for this “long winded account” lets make sure the pedants can’t pick up any other pointless fact to womble on about and miss the actual point of the whole story). At this point, the car was still doing about 75mph (no, the vehicle did not accelerate above 85 because the tyre drag from 3 tyres at >50% slip is enourmous, despite full engine power being applied).

6) Now came the tricky bit, to get it all facing the right way again! Note for Pedants: I previous typed “i don’t know how i did it” not meaning i didn’t ACTUALLY know how i did it, but to highlight how difficult it is to get a perfect compensating handwheel and throttle input of this magnitude, and at that velocity applied and removed without leading to a secondary oscillation. As the yaw angle reduced, i spun off the handwheel input, but the yaw rate at this point was probably in the order of 300deg/sec, ie massive. so thanks to a degree of luck, and some intrinsic skill, in that split second (actually around 200ms) i managed to recover the vehicle to a nearly zero yaw rate, facing straight(ish) down the middle of the road. That action also caused the rear wheel, which had only been held on by the rear brake caliper, to part company with the vehicle (tearing off the rear outer arch as it went, which was carbon fibre on those prototypes). Without the wonky wheel, there was only a small destabilising lateral force remaining, so i was able to coast carefully to the shoulder and stop (the brake pedal was “long” because the rear hydraulic system had been compromised when the caliper snapped off the upright assy.

Have i missed anything? Got anything wrong? Would someone who wasn’t there, has no idea who i am or what i do (or have done for 25 years now) like to bring up some pointless, pedantic fact to further derail this thread? 😆

BTW to make up for the long, tedious nature of this post, here’s a bonus picture of myself and Neil Briggs from Ford (now of BAC Mono fame) at the stop of Stelvio with CP6, an RS in possession of it’s full complement of wheels! (Neil and i developed and signed off the RS’s chassis dynamics)