Steering Technique Thoughts

In my short but illustrious autocross career (okay, not really), the importance of correct turn-in/steering technique has recently come to my attention and I wanted to bounce a few thoughts off the far-more-experienced-than-myself collective and see what people's thoughts are.

First, a little preamble. I realize that the tedious breakdown of minute details in driving technique that follows strikes some people as an overly complicated or wrongheaded approach to learning performance driving. To that person, I certainly see your point. There is a lot to be said for focusing on outcome and the feeling of that outcome rather than isolated movements. An intuitive learning process is preferable, and I think it's part of the reason why those who start something at an early age are more likely to achieve mastery. For those of us over the critical age (16/17?), however, I think a little analysis goes a long way.

If you're still reading, the technique in question has to do with the speed and smoothness of steering inputs. When I first started autocrossing, the dictum of always being smooth with the controls was ingrained in my head (not literally), and as I result I've noticed in the past 5 months of events that I tend to turn-in almost lazily--and surely slowly--in an effort to be smooooooth. Of course, any good racer will tell you the importance of different medicine for different ills, i.e. different technique for different corners. Long story short, and the whole point of this post, is that I've recently been experimenting with more aggressive application of steering input, especially on tighter corners, to good effect. My reasoning is that the car takes a set more quickly, and therefore reaches maximum grip more quickly, which I think is a good thing. Before, the car would never really reach maximum suspension travel, never take a set, and feel kind of unstable as a result. My stock 1997 240SX is pretty softly sprung and has a slow steering rack, so this probably contributes. With karts I notice the opposite problem--it is difficult to not be TOO aggressive.

Yeah, I know I'm guilty of paralysis by analysis. It's just kind of tempting though. Performance driving isn't THAT complicated. Your feet and hands can only do so many things with the pedals and steering wheel - it's just finding those ideal inputs that is the difference between being a terrible driver and being Senna.

Begin turn in slow, but rapidly increase turning as you approach apex. Start slow, So it doesn't upset chassis balance. But quickening the rotation of the steering wheel causes it to ramp up in terms of rotation. But because it's gradual, it's controllable. So you don't lose control. But you don't lose chassis stability.

In my limited experience, I've found that most things at the autocross happen "right the berkeley now". I've been accused of not turning quickly enough, and therefore actually slowing down in order to wait for me to move the steering wheel. I showed a national champion a video (expecting accolades) and was asked what the berkeley I was waiting for with the wheel. I now attempt to flog the E36 M3 out of the son of a bitch. Especially in slaloms. There's no reason to go straight in a slalom, so the wheel needs to get from left to right and back yesterday. There are a few exceptions to the "right the berkeley now" rule, but they only generally apply when multitasking with the tires, like trying to turn while smashing the brakes, or trying to keep turning while smashing the throttle.

Also, I agree with Trackmouse's assesment, with the addendum that not starting slow is almost a physical impossibility, and that quickly ramping up is basically accelerating your hands as hard as you can.

Also, know that I have a 15 inch steering wheel, so my hands have to cover more real estate than some. Your results may vary.

Steering is only half of the equation though...throttle application changes and steering changes happen at the same time and need to be complimentary to each other. Sometimes you can set the steering position and use throttle for fast rotation control, if you have a nicely setup chassis.

Smooth steering doesn't really equal slow either...smooth and fast is the way to go and it helps if you are push/pulling the steering with thumbs pointing up on the steering wheel, not wrapped around it.

And it's not one hand being dominant in whichever direction needed to turn and the other hand supporting - it's about both hands being equal in force and speed, while moving in completely opposite directions simultaneously. Think of holding a frisbee by its rim with the palm of your hands 180 degrees apart (9 and 3) and with thumbs up...and you want to rotate the frisbee clockwise and counterclockwise as quickly and precisely as possible.

And it's about minutely feeling the pressure and resistance of the steering wheel/tires as opposed to roughly fighting angular distance needed to position the steering wheel... it's not a linear thing - more a logrithmic/parabolic thing.

Smooth is smooth, slow is slow. They are not the same thing.

Most simply drive too hard on an autocross course. Too much speed into a turn. Too much brake, too late. Too much throttle coming out. Cranking the steering wheel too far to compensate for it all.

In which case slower would be faster, and smoother.

You can be smooth and quick with your steering inputs. Smooth doesn't have to be slow inputs (although it seems to fit more for track days over autocross). Focus on making your inputs fluid from one movement to the other and don't be afraid to pick up the speed of said inputs. It should be pretty obvious once you push the inputs past what the car can handle. It's not much different from learning the grip limit of a tire. Push it until it goes past the limit, then back it off a bit to make the most of what's there.

Smooth refers to the contact patches of the tires not the operator input. You almost never want to cause them to break their grip on the road (notable exceptions for trail braking, Scandinavian flicks, power oversteer to adjust trajectory).

Think of it in terms of the tire and not the operator and you will never go wrong. I suppose that is focusing on the outcome though.

Speed up your input. When you plow straight through the outside cones with the wheel pointed over, back off a little.

Ronn Langford (driver, but more successful as a coach) explained it to me this way: There is slow-smooth, fast-smooth, and violent-smooth. We all start at slow but with some practice can work up to fast. violent-smooth is what separates the greats from the everyone else.

I think the easiest dynamic to feel is the moment your foot comes off the brake pedal. If you do that smoothly, a passenger would not be able to tell the exact moment your foot came off the pedal. But doing it fast AND smooth is really hard.

"Smooth is fast": Jackie Stewart. He was one of finest ever at knowing when to be slow-smooth, fast-smooth, or violent-smooth, and the infintely variable spaces in between.

For what it's worth, this young man has damn good car control, especially mid and exit. He's in an automatic 240sx on quite terrible rubber and gets more out of the car than he should.
Some of the 'flog the E36 M3 out of it' advice works better on proper sticky rubber. If you ask your car to do too much right now then you're going to have a bad time. At the next autocross try to get a ride with Peter in my old Civic if you can. That car is immediate. Now is a really good time to start hopping in with fast people and see how they drive. Don't worry about line, pay attention to how they interact with the car and how it feels. Houston has at least a dozen super friendly fast guys who are willing to teach you. A big mistake I see locally is the slower guys riding with each other. It's fun, but not very instructive.
I suspect quicker turn in on your car is simply going to induce understeer quicker, but give it a try.

Another good way to learn this by immersion is (assuming you have no frozen lakes handy) to go karting on one of those indoor polished concrete surfaces that offer almost no grip. When you first get there you will seem like you are parked and wonder how all these people are blowing past you - but once you get the hang of it you can go really fast. That sensitivity will make you fast on all surfaces once you develop the right "touch" on all the inputs at the same time.

Also, remember, the throttle and brake are steering inputs when used at the right time and the steering wheel can be a brake.

A few others have touched on it already that being smooth doesn't mean being slow with movements.

One of the biggest things I notice that separates me from those faster than me when I watch my videos after the event compared to them is the amount of correction especially in sweepers. Watching just the hands alone it appears they're out for a Sunday drive, steering wheel quickly turns to the desired angle and stays there, slaloms are a quick saw of the wheel one way and then the other.

I on the other hand seem to have this nasty habit of constantly re correcting, I turn the wheel then back off a touch then turn back to the original angle then back off repeatedly. It doesn't matter what type of turn and it always makes my videos look like I"m actively doing my best to avoid being killed by the car. Meanwhile another driver in the same or similar car barely corrects and still goes faster. I've concluded this is part of being smooth and the part I need to work on, rather than sawing the wheel through the turn I need to work on holding the wheel at the desired angle and then adjust the turn as with a skidpad using the throttle.

It's tough to do in the heat of the moment on course but I've also noticed I have a tendency to do the same re-correction of the trajectory throughout the turn on the street as well so I've been actively working on the street where possible to look through the turn, set the steering angle and hold it through the turn. I'm not sure this will help or translate to the track but we'll see.

mazdeuce wrote: For what it's worth, this young man has damn good car control, especially mid and exit. He's in an automatic 240sx on quite terrible rubber and gets more out of the car than he should. Some of the 'flog the E36 M3 out of it' advice works better on proper sticky rubber. If you ask your car to do too much right now then you're going to have a bad time. At the next autocross try to get a ride with Peter in my old Civic if you can. That car is immediate. Now is a really good time to start hopping in with fast people and see how they drive. Don't worry about line, pay attention to how they interact with the car and how it feels. Houston has at least a dozen super friendly fast guys who are willing to teach you. A big mistake I see locally is the slower guys riding with each other. It's fun, but not very instructive. I suspect quicker turn in on your car is simply going to induce understeer quicker, but give it a try.

This is kind of what I was going to say.

It depends entirely on the car and the rubber. The Abomination requires blinding fast inputs or you will always be behind the car. They also have to be precise, much like the karts that Huckleberry mentioned above, otherwise you will break the tires loose and then it's a handful to catch.

Not only catch rides with the fast guys, let them drive your car. I used to regularly offer the fast guys co-drives and fun runs with my video camera running. You will learn an amazing amount just watching the videos. Set your camera to not only see the course, but the driver. Like Huckleberry said above. The throttle and brakes are steering inputs.

Mainly you don't want to be late with your inputs, because late inputs put you off line and tend to be more abrupt and upset the car. When exactly you are late in a particular car comes down to how fast the car can go around the course, which of course comes down to power and grip.

A Street Prepared car is going to require faster inputs than a Street car and can also handle more direct inputs, which means that you need to turn in faster in a slalom in the SP car if you're going to get the most out of it, but because the SP car is tuned to have more grip it can handle those faster inputs.

See here for an example, Tamra Hunt (Ladies CSP champ) driving the Davis' CSP car at NNJR this past weekend.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygRmqfPKyRA

Ah, so much good advice to digest here; this is why I love GRM. I'm about 10 autocross events deep and have just started to be comfortable enough with the line and inputs to be able to do some refinements like this. Such a fun discipline... now if only I treated my career with such passion.

The general feedback I seem to be getting is that you can steer faster, but never let it come at the expense of smoothness; smooth AND fast is possible. I still think I'm onto something with the car not taking a "set" in corners due to steering too slowly--I think some more experimentation is in order.

Mazdeuce, hey man. Your advice to take a ride with an expert is spot on. I actually rode with a Martin in his white EF Civic at the last event; incidentally the only thing I took away from the ride was holy E36 M3 this car is bumpy (am I going to get a concussion?) and holy E36 M3 this thing grips violently. It was all over very quickly, ha. I'll try to pay closer attention next time. Also, check your PMs.

Developing an idea of what good driving is--what it looks and feels like--is something high on my priority list (yes, I have a physical priority list; I'm in way too deep), and I think ride alongs with good drivers is an effective component of developing that vision. This goes back to the importance of focusing on the outcome/feeling (in this case, the behavior/balance/grip of the car) rather than on the discrete movement. Anyway, this is a stage that is relatively new to me, as before the extent of my idea of good driving didn't go much beyond keeping the tires at the limit. Now, things like turning the car with the brakes and steering input are coming into play.

Other things: klodkrawler, Constantly sawing/adjusting the steering wheel (rather than making a single input that takes you all the way through the corner) is something I've struggled with as well, in track and street driving. I've been able to eliminate a lot of it in street driving just by making sure to look ahead and try to visualize the correct line through the corner. It helps me to try to visualize what direction the front tires are pointed and to visualize how the current path of the car is going to run down to the apex. It is something that has taken a lot of practice on back roads. Also, if your car is like mine and the steering is rather vague on center then this becomes more difficult as where your front tires are pointed is less clear.

Indoor karting? Went to K1Speed earlier this month and had a blast. Yeah, there's not much grip on the surface.

I've heard it said that if you watch a top level driver their hands are constantly moving as they test the limits of adhesion. If you're autocrossing and your hands are still during a corner you almost certainly aren't going hard enough.

With regard to moving hands... you want the oscillation to be testing the limit to make sure you are on it (or slightly over it) without causing scrub. You then are adjusting the weight on the tire contact patches with your feet and wheel.

On some cars these are very subtle, tiny adjustments and on some cars (like an old 911 on bias ply slicks) they are big inputs administered very quickly but the size and degree of them is chassis, setup and tire dependent. The goal is identical. To keep the maximum speed at the limit of grip in all conditions and place the car where you want it.

You only see the hands in the videos but if you put the camera on the pedals you will also see a coordinated modulation of the throttle and maybe a little brake brush (or a matted throttle and just brake brushes). You are balancing the weight of the car on the contact patches and distributing it where it is needed by combining all of the inputs at your disposal to generate the most grip where you need it and when. You can combine all of them at the same time only up to the 100% available at the time you do it. That potential grip is not consistent either - If you have 1 wheel in the air, or 2 very light on the rear under braking - you do not have the same 100% grip you did when you were in a straight line accelerating, etc. and you have to learn to feel that limit, settle the chassis and only give it the amount of input that it can handle without losing it's grip.

Next time you are driving - think of every input you make as a change in weight distribution and make a mental note of when the chassis is settled enough to make another change. Play with that.

I also just figured out that you have to steer the car faster to get the car to turn faster for autocross runs. Unfortunately, I read it in the SportsCar mag two days ago (in Randy Pobst's section) instead of a hotshoe telling me this last season.

Huckleberry wrote: Next time you are driving - think of every input you make as a change in weight distribution and make a mental note of when the chassis is settled enough to make another change. Play with that.

This is gold.

Autocross is a balancing act of awesome, and wildly out of control.

When it comes together, it is a beautiful thing to do, and almost boring to watch.

Huckleberry wrote: You only see the hands in the videos but if you put the camera on the pedals you will also see a coordinated modulation of the throttle and maybe a little brake brush (or a matted throttle and just brake brushes).

This is why I actually hate watching in depth driving instruction videos or even just people showing off. I understand keeping a foot camera is very difficult because of location, and all cars behave differently, but I think videos would be much more helpful if you could see foot action with what's happening outside the car. But I'm also more of a visual learner. Like a 3 view setup, helmet cam, foot cam, chase cam so I can see OK the cones are there, steer out and brake, hard swing in, roll on the throttle and out.

Like I understand a scandinavian flick, the action, the theory, the why of it, but I think it would be easier for me to learn better execution if I could see how someone modulates the pedals going through it more than just seeing someone flicking the wheel.

but I'm also an official race virgin. My first autocross is this saturday, and it's just test and tune day. I know of 3 other miata's that will be there, so I have every intention of offering up my car and trying to ride with others to get a better idea of how to handle things.

One thing I always share with my students is something they can practice on the street. It takes some practice to work out. I was given this advice by multi-time National Champion decades ago.

Prior to turn-in, turn the wheel very slightly into the turn. This sets the suspension. Then the fraction of a second later when you turn-in, the suspension is set and the turn looks much smother. On the street, think of driving a limo around a corner without upsetting your passengers.

This and you must have your brain tell you upper body to move your hands more quickly. Autocross maneuvers are much quicker than your normal street driving.

Once you begin to train your body to perform these maneuvers, it becomes more natural and you can do them quicker at an autocross.

Analysis gets you to fundamentals and "A master is one who has finally grasped the fundamentals."

How about pulling the inside hand down as opposed to pushing the wheel up and over with the outside hand? There is controversy over whether it matters, but pulling down is clearly the most efficient use of leverage and the large muscles of the chest and upper back. As the necessary force to turn the wheel is applied more efficiently, fine control remains at a higher level and endurance is increased. That's the theory. This is something I can practice on the street that at worst keeps me thinking about steering, and it might even help.

I recall reading about Bobby Rahal saying that the Indy car has to lean over and take a set when you go into turn 1 at the 500. It transitions quickly, but it takes time and smoothness is necessary.

Hard to learn good habits. That's all I got.

chuckles wrote: How about pulling the inside hand down as opposed to pushing the wheel up and over with the outside hand? There is controversy over whether it matters, but pulling down is clearly the most efficient use of leverage and the large muscles of the chest and upper back. As the necessary force to turn the wheel is applied more efficiently, fine control remains at a higher level and endurance is increased. That's the theory. This is something I can practice on the street that at worst keeps me thinking about steering, and it might even help.

This is the secret to having some arm strength left for precise driving late in a race. This is another one of those nuggets that I picked up from endurance karting. If you are a "pusher" in an endurance karting event you are not going to be able to drive the thing after 2hrs. In a car - power steering makes it possible to drive that way but you will still be better off using the right muscle group for the job.

I always pull with the inside hand and leave the tips of my fingers on the outside hand lightly touching the wheel for feel/feedback about what the tires have to say and to catch it if something goes amiss like having another car give you a bit of a shove mid-corner (that one isn't so much a problem racing in parking lots though...) ;)