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 Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2010 5:40 am
Here's one of those things that blurs the line between street and track: it is true that a driver should, as the street racers say, "become one with the car." However, where the street guys and girls treat this like some kind of Zen concept, it takes a different twist in the context of motorsport proper: instead of the driver mastering the car and "magically" extracting that "extra" bit of performance when he needs it the most, the driver will be integrated into the machine at the design stage, and the combination will be continually engineered in order to extract the best outcomes in any order of events: where the street racer pursues that mythological ideal, the professionals whose bread and butter it is to do such things, instead begin at the ideal and improve upon it according to existing and foreseeable conditions(or changes thereof)
This is why the driver is in constant communication with his Engineer: it is a constant development in pursuit of the best solution for a set of problems. There is no such thing as "perfection." If there were, there would be no point in competing, as everyone would be equally quick.
In this topic, I hope to share and discuss what I have learned over the years about driver and vehicle integration, with the Engineer being the interface between the two, as it were.
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Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2010 12:40 am
My question to you is this?
How do you, or an regular driver communicate the changes he wants made, in a way that the engineer can fully understand.
For instance with me, I can say something like, "I'd prefer a car that felt more loose than tight, but still grippy. I'd want my car to be able to tell me when the back end is about to step out, and if it does, I would want to get that slide under control."
Would anything like that make sense to a engineer, and depending on how good they where, would they be able to set up the car in the way the driver would want it?
What is normally the procedure when setting up a race car?
And then what kinds of concepts would need to be understood, to help better explain to the engineer?
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Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 1:27 am
Well one of the things you need to know along with what you want, is what the car is doing. Without being able to relay that information, which is probably the most important set of information the driver can give, the poor bloke won't know where to begin setting the car up and can only do generic settings which will get you somewhere-there.
For me, I keep a paper pad or a third laptop nearby which is separate from the logger and tuning unit(for the engineer/s) I draw up a "form" on this pad, which references each corner. When the car does something I don't like, it gets written down straight away when I get back to the pits. Whether the problem is consistent or erratic, it all gets noted down. That way, when you manage to talk to the bloke doing your alignment you'll be able to go over the information before-hand and give him an honest and accurate answer.
Telling the fellow what you want is the first part: he or she will get you close. To fine-tune, you need to know what the car is doing as well as the capacity to describe it in terms of time(this is why you have a track map photocopied: you can draw where what is happening and referance your notes)
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