For driver development, the throttle, brake, and steering data traces are extremely important to look at in the data. The traces themselves provide a lot of information but I’m also going to highlight different ways of looking at the data as well as some math channels that can help us understand what is happening as well. For this article, I’m just going to focus on one data channel – the throttle pedal.
Speed is in mph and lateral acceleration is in g’s. Multiplying the speed (mph) by 1.46667 gets the speed in ft/s and multiplying the lateral g’s by 32.17405 gets the g forces in ft/s2. The radius of the corner then ends up being in ft. It is amazing how accurate this formula can be. In Exhibit 1 I used Google Earth to look at turn one at VIR and I drew a circle that has a radius of 122 ft.
With the winter months upon us now, a lot of racers turn to driving on their simulator to scratch that racing itch. This is great as long as the simulator is used in a manner that helps them and doesn’t enforce bad habits. One phrase that I picked up over this past year was: “A simulator is a great place to practice bad habits.” Here are some of the bad habits that I have seen driver’s reinforce when using a simulator.
Precision Driving Analytics