So, saturday was about testing the car...tune, suspension, tires, brakes, clutch. The "Stig" was very helpful in pointing out issues along with the NF guys...(Thank you for your support guys) And of course some of the action here with the "Stig" [YOUTUBE]j3rVMUqBkNo[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]DngvsPn2nZY[/YOUTUBE] [YOUTUBE]fXP9w6UOSR0[/YOUTUBE]
Yes, however, you should consider the power to weight ratios, that RS has some significant weight reduction. The STi had 4 people,a spare tire and a subwoofer), tires, but the biggest factor is the driver.
I really enjoyed this short track, ...I wish it had the extensions...(red and white) Becuse when you go off track, coming back can be sort of challenging...but again, it's probably designed for simple low speed..not like some of us who were going fast. And the track surface is not forgiving on tires depending on how you push them...my tires look like slicks now.
Nice, whoever was driving that black 2.5RS was hauling ***. It's only got 165hp?!! No way! It must have some sort of swap or boosted?
That's why he is the "stig" not the stig...it's alot different watching videos than being in the car yourself to experience the real action...chicks were screaming in the back, shifting left and right as he was tossing the car around the turns.
He was holding back a LOT though. For how open that track was set up, the RS driver really didn't have a chance. If it was actually set up as a tight course, I could say different, but there was plenty of room for the STI to stretch its legs and walk all over the RS. Plain and simple the STI was putzing in a lot of places he could have been hauling ass. By the way, was there an event there or were you guys just sort...there? The surface is fine on tires really. It's just that non-high performance tires just don't last. For example, I had Toyo Proxies4 on my Rotas (came with them). I turned them bald in two auto-x events from a good 2/3 life. They are performance tires but really didn't hold up worth crap. I've been running RE01Rs now for quite a few years. My last set ran 4 summers of daily and auto-x, that's +20k miles. When the tire's designed for the abuse, they actually take the abuse well.
I believe the first application requirements states you must be equal or better looking then NF Performance. So that pretty much eliminates alot of people.
This was a simple example of what things look like when you have an aggressively tuned stg2 STI with F&R sway bars, Progressive springs, Rear strut bar, E85 and running on Falkin Azenis 615 tires and more. But this is not a very happy well balanced vehicle over all. Verses a Stock powered RS with LGT front brakes w/HP+ pads, Bucket seat, Sparco detachable wheel, rear welded diff and Fuji's BC Coilovers running on all season tires. So the video doesn't tell the whole story. The challenges the STI had was that the parts were not setup correctly and the tune was very abrupt effecting the drivers ability to put the power down, upsetting the way the car handled. This is why you shouldn't just start buying every part on the market or take every suggestion on the internet and start slapping it all together. This may sound harsh but in the end the whole combination was utterly useless. Having all that power is worthless unless you can use it. Now the RS was of something different. The obvious isn't so obvious for the majority as simplicity is bliss and by that I mean this car is setup to be simple and easy to drive and a walk in the park. A car with a setup list that will fit a single paragraph. How's that for kicking butt on the track on the likes of STI's and M3's and alike. The owner has been my student for the last 4 years, he's kept his composure and has shown discipline and maturity on the track. He's achieved a level of driving that most would have done in twice that amount of time. You can see how much more challenging it was to keep the STI on the track. We were just testing the RS's new suspension driving it with ease at 6/10ths drifting it around the course. This was a intermediate technical course until the other instructors came thru.
We were at a BMW Advance Car Control event over the weekend at DCTC. This was the car that was passing just about every car in the Advance and a few in the Instructor's group at Road America at last year's National BMW OctoberFest running stock suspension w/shaved Toyo RA1's. So yes I'm sure there's an STI out there that would love to walk this RS but that day has yet to arise, why because I've yet to meet a driver as such.
About performance driving: From your experience with various students, is performance driving more of a skill or a talent? Are there students who do not improve despite of having a good instructor and consistency in practice? I'm using the assumption that it is like trying to learn a sport like golf for example.
Speaking of the mental layers, IIRC...Are they the conscious, subconscious, insanity, and whatever... something along those lines? Again, what does a student have to do get physical?....go to the gym? (lose some weight, be strong...lol)
Personally I think these are subjects best suited for a conversation in person at a track. Very good question by the way, but here's one for you-how fast do intend to become and how much work are you willing to invest? Answer that and you'll know exactly how far you'll go. Don't get defeated before the game even starts. lmao
I think the physical aspect is 3-fold. There is basic weight loss. A lighter driver in a car does make a faster car. There is basic physical strength and endurance. Better seats tend to hold you in well, and if the car's steering is powered, you really are not fighting much. However, you do have to last for the duration of whatever type of racing you are performing, and this does require some physical stamina. Different vehicles will have different needs. Lastly, there is muscle memory. This is trained behavior. A good example is driving a rwd car. If the back end comes out, you countersteer. How much, how quickly, and when all come down to learning the car and figuring out what needs to be done to counter what event. Through experience, this is trained into the body in the form of automatic reflex. It's something you learn not to think about. It becomes automatic programming. An interesting note on drivers. Even the best drivers still have average reflex and thinking capacity. Even when you look at fighters, martial artists, or any other skilled physical forms, these people are not superhuman in the sense that they operate faster than you. Rather, it comes down to trained behavior (automatic reflex) and understanding what you should be mentally focusing on and when. Better drivers are not faster. They are simply more efficient at what they do. They've accumulated the experience and trained the body. They've learned what's important to focus on and when. They've gained knowledge, understanding, strategies, and so on to allow them to operate better. I'll give one silly example. Let's say it's winter. You're on an icy surface and you manage to start a spin. The reaction can be anything from freezing up to going weeeee! For one person, he/she may just lock up the tires and slide to a stop, wherever that may be. For another person, he/she may very casually do a 360 spin while staying where they need to be on the road surface, and come out of it driving like nothing ever happened. The two people are not different in their raw abilities. They simply have different preparation. Here's another cool example. I've done some martial arts in the past. How you kick comes down to training. You learn the form, get the form down very good, and you repeat the motion thousands of times. At one time I could round kick you to the head at full speed and force and miss you by 1-2 inches, and I could repeat it 10 times over and achieve the exact same result. The entire action involved me deciding to do it, picking an end point and relative speed and power. The mental process of the kick was done before it started. It basically means by the time you saw me move, I was already done thinking about that kick and thinking about something else. Everything that actually physically happens is automatic. It's trained muscle memory. When it comes to sparring, I was in a club for Tae Kwon Do that had about 8 members at most, two of which were black belt instructors. Basically it meant I was sparring people far better than me a lot of the time. It's a really good way to push yourself. When sparring well, you are often 1-2 moves ahead. The thoughts you have are just small things like block here, kick there. The mental time is mostly used up observing and planning, really higher level stuff. The entire physical fight is basically automated. You simply give high level commands which are just factions of a second. You can then get into a pretty fluid and aggressive sparring session at rather high speed without really ever getting mentally overworked. You've build up so much automation that you are given the freedom to do so. When it comes to driving, you can generate this same type of automation. However, it must be trained through learning of the techniques and repetition. That way you develop automated reactions to high level observation. If the car understeers, oversteers, you need to tighten your line, or grip changes, you've created automatic responses that work to fix the issue. The mind isn't busy trying to figure out how much steering input I need, how much brake pressure I need, and you sit there tweaking and tweaking in real time just to get the car under control. That's vey tough on the mind. It also wastes a ton of time, and you often get behind and create bigger problems. You do have the learn anyways, but you don't really want to learn at the race. You'd want to learn before, train, and automate before. Then you go into the race at far more comfortable high level thinking. I think the big challenge for most is simply just trying to get the training, just gaining that experience and comfort with a car and all of its behaviors. Not many people make the effort to learn or find the time to even learn. I mean I was lucky I was a fool when I was a kid and had the play area to do the stupid things I did. I beat the tar out of my cars and only luckily didn't hurt myself or others. I had back roads I bombed down daily. I even got into the physics of car control and even drifting through my own shear will to be better than I was. I do understand these are opportunities that many do not have. My foolishness did generate a sizable number of years driving cars very hard. The hardest part I have as an adult is finding a useful environment and the time to even do a fraction of what I did on a daily basis when I was younger. I see it as a huge challenge for anyone just getting into the driving hobby. Where do you find the time and the environment to push a car, test ideas, and get better safely? Things like track days, autocrosses, rallycrosses, and any other motorsports events are viable outlets. The only downside is they tend to be infrequent and short in duration. Just getting seat time affordably is a huge hassle, well if you don't want to do things illegally.
CK's face say's it all. Now that we have a baseline for your car's current setup we can start re-designing it's behavior along with the driver of course.
