IRS in a gmt400

0xDEADBEEF said:

I don't agree that you can only late apex.

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I didn't say to only late apex. My point was that trail braking is typically for late apexing. Instead of being 100% on the brake you're lifting the brake to give some traction back to the steering. I think there are limited places on track where that's an advantage.

But, thinking to my driving style, maybe I do tend to trail brake and I've never recognized it. I think I cut closer on the circle of traction on corner entry than most drivers and I've always just managed it.

One thing I don't hear discussed often enough is how the straight that follows the corner should affect your apex, which also affects your braking. Don't late brake in a turn onto a long straight. Do late brake into that first turn in the twisties if you can do it without throwing off the second corner.

0xDEADBEEF said:

I didn't mean go to 0% throttle. I mean going to a maintenance throttle position for a fraction of a second to get the car neutral balanced. Every track has some kind of bump, dip, or something that it just makes more sense to alter what you would want to do if it wasn't there.

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I get you now. Yeah, that's managing the throttle at the limit of traction. By my thought process you're still at 100% of the throttle that the circle of traction can accept.

Erik the Awful said:

I didn't say to only late apex. My point was that trail braking is typically for late apexing. Instead of being 100% on the brake you're lifting the brake to give some traction back to the steering. I think there are limited places on track where that's an advantage.

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Most of your braking is done at the point, so you don't need 100% of it for any one thing. (That's my method anyway.)

You will absolutely get run over in sim racing if you are braking 30 feet earlier than everyone else. Best case is that you just get passed and can cross over.

Erik the Awful said:

But, thinking to my driving style, maybe I do tend to trail brake and I've never recognized it. I think I cut closer on the circle of traction on corner entry than most drivers and I've always just managed it.

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It becomes instinctive after a while.

Erik the Awful said:

One thing I don't hear discussed often enough is how the straight that follows the corner should affect your apex, which also affects your braking. Don't late brake in a turn onto a long straight. Do late brake into that first turn in the twisties if you can do it without throwing off the second corner.

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Yes, there's some turns that you just "throw away" to set up for a better exit of the next one.

Erik the Awful said:

I get you now. Yeah, that's managing the throttle at the limit of traction. By my thought process you're still at 100% of the throttle that the circle of traction can accept.

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Holy crap, we have an agreement on something!

Most corners will have a late apex. Trail braking isn't necessarily related to where the apex is, making that correlation is not something I would do. The only corners I don't trailbrake are corners that have a very small delta in speeds, but even then often I'll sneak some in to rotate the car. Also, as an instructor the biggest mistake I see folks making is having too late of a turn in and too big of a turn in. A bit of a necessary evil I guess to keep folks from killing each other in groups 1-2, but by 3 that's a tough habit to break them out of. The corner isn't just point shoot and go, the whole thing is a constant negotiation and your feet should be doing as much turning as the wheel, if not more.

Supercharged111 said:

Most corners will have a late apex.

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If you have the horsepower. If you have a "momentum" car you'll want to be back on the gas quickly or you'll get destroyed on the straights. We raced a 120hp 4A-GE powered MR2 for years, and pretty much as soon as you turned in your were trying to get back on the power. It was soooo slow.

Erik the Awful said:

If you have the horsepower. If you have a "momentum" car you'll want to be back on the gas quickly or you'll get destroyed on the straights. We raced a 120hp 4A-GE powered MR2 for years, and pretty much as soon as you turned in your were trying to get back on the power. It was soooo slow.

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Throttle application does not equal apex though. Where most cars might use maintenance throttle you guys were WOT because the thing was nutless. My username actually stems from a car that had a supercharged 4A-GE. They run better with boost.

If you apex earlier you can straighten the wheel sooner and get back on the throttle faster, which means you're at a higher speed down the entire following straightaway. That's why you want to early apex the corner before a long straight. Your higher exit speed translates into a noticeably faster lap time.

Rough guide to apexing:

If you went 4 wheels off at track out, you had too early of an apex.
If you went 2 wheels off at track out, probably right.
If you had no wheels off at track out, you had too late of an apex.

0xDEADBEEF said:

Rough guide to apexing:

If you went 4 wheels off at track out, you had too early of an apex.
If you went 2 wheels off at track out, probably right.
If you had no wheels off at track out, you had too late of an apex.

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This. The apex is where it is, and this is a decent metric to use to decide if you screwed it up.

Patch panels for inner fenders are almost done. They still need straightened out and sanded. Next up is air tunnels for the fender vents and then fender wells. After that is a number of odds and ends like brake lines, abs module mount, rear wheel speed sensors and a bit of wiring. Slowly but surely it’s coming along. I also bought an ac/dc tig welder so that will be fun to start learning soon.

Alteca said:

Patch panels for inner fenders are almost done. They still need straightened out and sanded. Next up is air tunnels for the fender vents and then fender wells. After that is a number of odds and ends like brake lines, abs module mount, rear wheel speed sensors and a bit of wiring. Slowly but surely it’s coming along. I also bought an ac/dc tig welder so that will be fun to start learning soon.

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You will have a lot of fun with that TIG welder once you get past the step learning curve, I taught myself to weld aluminium by watching videos on sites like "Welding tips and tricks" where they walk you through the most basic stuff like settings and then progress through to the tricky stuff. Nothing like watching someone else do it first. That front suspension looks so cool.