From the Driver’s Seat to France’s Streets One of the cool parts of being a Performance Engineer and Driver Coach is that I get to travel to some amazing places I might not have otherwise visited. This time, I was invited to support Robert Noaker Racing for the inaugural Mustang Challenge race at Le Mans, […]
Our 10 Year Milestone, One Lap At A Time Starting a business is never easy, and the saying goes that most small companies don’t last three years. Honestly, I thought I might be part of that statistic in 2016. Work was scarce, and I even tried running a franchise in another industry. That venture ultimately […]
How to Find the Right Driving Line Probably the most fundamental aspect of driving a car on the track is to make sure that you are driving the “line”. The better you are at driving the line the faster you will go, right? It sounds simple enough but how come this is something that seems […]
Driver Data: How Looking at it Differently can be Helpful Most of the time when I see people analyzing their data, they are looking at Time Distance Graph with all the normal squiggly lines – RPM, Speed, Steering, Throttle, Brake, and Gear. Exhibit 1 shows what I’m referring to here. Exhibit 1This type of data […]
An Example of a Driver Using Corner Radius Data A few weeks ago I was coaching one of my clients in his Spec Miata at the NASA National Championships at UMC and an opportunity presented itself to study corner radius data. This is due to the fact that my customer (Driver A) had some data […]
Using Your Car’s Controller Area Network (CAN) I want to preface this article by saying that I am NOT a Controller Area Network (CAN) or CAN Bus guru. But knowing at least some of the aspects of CAN has become very important when it comes to getting data off of cars and I have spent […]
Steering Is Required: The Importance of Steering Data In the last couple of articles I wrote about different ways to analyze throttle and brake data so it only makes sense to move on to the last driver control — steering. Steering data can definitely tell a lot about how the driver is driving the car […]
Throttle Application/Throttle Velocity In the throttle application graph seen above, there are four traces: Speed, Throttle (GasPedalPosition), Throttle Velocity, and Delta Time (lapdelta). The blue is generated by a professional race driver; the red by an amateur. The car and track are the same (a left-hand corner quickly followed by a right-hand corner). The hump […]
Braking Techniques to Help You Improve Your Speed Who Needs Brakes? Well, the answer to that question is, everyone! Last month I wrote about different ways to analyze throttle information. This month I’m going to go over some different ways to analyze braking information, or more importantly, slowing information. Obviously applying the brakes slows the […]
I want to Increase My Speed: Why Am I Driving Slower? In terms of how to drive faster, grip is important. As we all know, the grip level of tracks changes all the time. Sometimes it gets better after more and more rubber is laid down over the race weekend. But the grip level of […]