Driving techniques for different types of motorsport are interesting.
For racing on a smooth track when the track has been practiced on requires very smooth driving to keep the best speed into the corner and especially out of the corner. The speed is carried through the corner as smoothly as possible and any over-steer will lose time as the speed will decay a bit.
I on't know much about hill-climbs, but 'nick...' can advise on the optimum technique as he is the expert on here for that discipline.
Then we come to rallying, which is the most difficult. For tarmac rallying on pace notes, again over-steer is to be avoided whenever possible because it prevents the carrying of the speed through the corner. However, this relies on the pace notes being very accurate (mine always were/are
). For driving 'blind' on tarmac you need to look at the corner, assess it and brake into the corner provoking a bit of over-steer for safety then getting hard back on the power as soon as you can see it is safe to do so.
Driving on gravel always requires some over-steer. On pace-notes keep the over-steer to a minimum, but remember that you can't really get back on the power early unless you have a bit of over-steer or you will go into under-steer and thus lose a lot of time.
Blind driving on gravel requires over-steer into the corner on the basis that'sideways is safest' to quote Hannu Mikkola. So you flick the car the opposite way whilst braking, then as it swings back you feed in some over-steer and balance it with power and opposite lock. The same applies on ice, but slightly more so.
But for racing, keep it totally smooth and have full throttle as early as possible out of every corner.
The other thing is to optimise the suspension set-up to suit each circuit.
I won't go into the techniques of left-foot-braking in both front- & rear-wheel drive cars as that requires some advanced capabilities and is very difficult to learn. I used it in a SAAB 96V4 I had many years ago with good results, but I have always found it difficult in a Mini. Paddy always says that he could never get the hang of it the way Timo and Rauno did in a Mini.
I hope this is of interest even though is departs a bit from the original post.
50 years ago in the wet, I had great confidence in my ability to "left-foot brake" my 'warmed' mini pick-up round most bends, but I never felt as secure in a saloon, which was 4" shorter in the wheel-base.
That was, until I drove a Hydrolastic saloon. Taking the roundabouts on the A40 leading to Hanger Lane at speed on a wet night was really exhilarating.
Edited by DeadSquare, 01 August 2018 - 09:57 PM.
