I shameless stole this from Mr. Tran's FB page and I have a question about it: Why is he hittng 4th gear in turns 1 and 10? I assume there is a technical reason for it. He barely even has it in gear before he's on his way down to 3rd. Why bother? Is there a car control technique at work here?
Not sure I see what you're referring to. I saw a couple of times where he downshifts from 5th to 4th to 3rd very quickly though.
That's what I'm referring to. He does it at turn 1 and turn 10, the hairpin rights (technically 10 is a double apex, but whatever).
Probably using engine braking as well as the fact that it becomes habit after a while. I do it, too without thinking about it.
I harassed Chong about it last night. The condensed version is it's probably a style thing if the brakes and/or tires weren't already fading and he NEEDED the help. Otherwise it's just busy work for the sake of busy work. Total disappointment. I was hoping for some awesome, "well when you look at the chassis dynamics cross combobulated against tire heat and blinker fluid bearings multiplied by sticker count..."
You silly guy you! The cool thing about driving fast is you can make it look as fast as you want it to look especially in a slower car. LOL The video showed short and incomplete clips of the driver shifting, I saw him using 3, 4 & 5 gear H pattern. This is a common driving style in motorsports and is often found with drivers who are use to driving with sequel gears. Young drivers see this and they soak it up, it does work, but it's not fast if that's the question you're pondering about. Brakes are used for slowing down, weight transfer and controlling speed. Sure you can use gears for the same thing but it's taxing on the vehicle and driver's focus if you're using this method constently to just slow down. You end up increasing your braking distance, create more heat on the brake system and cause more wear the tires and most importantly you're scrubbing off more speed then you need to. I've had a student who love the busy work behind the wheel and are religious about this style of driving and he managed to blew turn 12 on a wet day at BIR. With very heavily sprung suspension he ended up losing grip on the rear tires from the abrupt nature of downshifting. It's more forgiving on a softer sprung setup.
