Too slow to learn?

I believe a slower car will teach you technique, how to make the most of not much.  Now take that and put it into a faster car ....... 

In reply to maj75 (Forum Supporter) :

Having a slow car does not suck unless you are running with groups that have open passing with point bys versus designated passing zones. In that case you can often run one group down and negate the issue.

Myself and a couple of other instructors run in the intermediate group because we have slow cars. We seldom have cars stacked up behind us, yes I may have to do point bys 4 times a lap but I don't find it an issue. 

For other folks here is where I'm coming from: 

I started racing on a 125cc grand prix bike, it made a whooping 30hp and ran on 80mm wide tires. If you picked up the throttle to quickly the bike had just enough power to start sliding but not enough to maintain the slide. If you got it wrong the back would step out and then grip, high siding you into oblivion, all in an instant. These bikes really taught you what maximum corner speed was while also teaching you how to roll into the throttle.

For the sake of this discussion and difference in horsepower:

In most corners, in my 80whp car, if an inexperienced driver managed max corner speed and matted the throttle at the apex they're going off the road. Either from sliding the car and having it snap back or running wide or both.

The key words are "max corner speed".

Realistically how many new or novice drivers are actually going to run a car though a corner on a trajectory? This is where the "a low power car doesn't teach throttle control" comes from. In a Miata  at 80-90% of lateral grip you can mat the throttle like a gorilla and not spin the car instantly. Not so much in a 300-400hp car. The lower power car teaches you to roll into the throttle in a different way than you would in a horsepower car, but at the end of the day you still learn the technique of squeezing the throttle.   All roads lead to Rome.

One more thing for the record; I have no issue with folks who don't want to drive more than 75% in a corner and just want to drive faster than you can on the road. Same goes for someone who buys a wazoo car and just wants to enjoy it. Truth be told I'm pretty sure I wouldn't flog a GT3-RS the way I do my Datsun.  

So it seems that we as a group can basically agree that any car from this century is definitely not too slow to have productive track time. 
 

I was asking the question just for fun to see if anyone had thoughts about it!

Its all about technique as usual. 

On rifles you squeeze the trigger.  Handguns you press the trigger,  Shotguns you whack the trigger.

All the major points have been covered but a big one. 

Consistency.   

A slow car is not setup to be consistent, its camber and alignment will change with corner speed more then a "fast" car. It will be even more apparent on sticky rubber. SO you end up fighting the car more then you do learning. IE you come into a corner at 5% more speed and you et vastly different handling character.  This is not condusive to learning to be fast and its not good and making you trust your equipment. 

In reply to CatDaddy :

With nearly a decade of race car experiance I started vintage racing my 54 horsepower MGTD 

A year later the same car with the same tires was 20 seconds a lap faster than my first track sessions. This was on a 3 mile track.  

In reply to wearymicrobe :

It's been a long week but I'm not sure I understand: did you mean IF a car is not set up to be consistent?

Tom1200 said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

It's been a long week but I'm not sure I understand: did you mean IF a car is not set up to be consistent?

Slow car have crap rubber in the suspension so everything moves around. Add in a new driver and they never learn. 

The worst cars to learn on in my opinion are ff, followed by awd, m/awd, fr, fmr, then mr/rr.  Don't worry so much about power, worry about driven wheels, weight distribution, and engine placement. If the car is "too powerful" to learn on, put less sticky rubber on it. 

wearymicrobe said:

Tom1200 said:

In reply to wearymicrobe :

It's been a long week but I'm not sure I understand: did you mean IF a car is not set up to be consistent?

Slow car have crap rubber in the suspension so everything moves around. Add in a new driver and they never learn. 

Sorry just to clarify I was only referring to horsepower as far as "slow". Assume the suspension is prepped

In reply to frenchyd :

That's a great bit of knowledge! 20 seconds driver mod with well Under 80hp! 
 

wearymicrobe said

Slow car have crap rubber in the suspension so everything moves around. Add in a new driver and they never learn. 

We are not going to be on the same page on this one:

I've had loads of students with low power low tech cars, including a guy in a super beatle, and they all learned the fundamentals. We also got them to be very consistent.

I can teach someone trail braking and throttle steering as well as the aforementioned throttle control in a 70s mini pick up. Those trucks are about as flexi flier as it gets.

In reply to CatDaddy :

In the past decade we've made the Datsun 15 seconds a lap faster. 7 seconds was the bigger motor bit the other 8 was detailed improvements.

In reply to Tom1200 :

That's exciting. 7 seconds is not a small

number especially considering there is no "technology" involved. 
 

I'm sure we will be on track together sometime within the next year or so, Stan T. was telling me about your antics and seemed impressed with your driving!  

CatDaddy said:

In reply to dps214 :

In reply to you and 1200 Tom, 

now this is interesting. So perhaps somewhere under 80hp with enough grip to never run wide the learning curve may end quickly. 
 

I have a 1200 as well and it's definitely not fast! 
 

it's an interesting thought experiment so far!

And to BuZz,

What 3000lb car has 80whp?

My 1967 Series IIa Land Rover is 3000 lbs and has 42 rwhp.

Down a twisty road, it thinks it's an MG TC. Talk about momentum driving.  You don't use the brakes because momentum is a precious thing and the brakes don't really work anyhow. 

Tom1200 said:

wearymicrobe said

Slow car have crap rubber in the suspension so everything moves around. Add in a new driver and they never learn. 

We are not going to be on the same page on this one:

I've had loads of students with low power low tech cars, including a guy in a super beatle, and they all learned the fundamentals. We also got them to be very consistent.

I can teach someone trail braking and throttle steering as well as the aforementioned throttle control in a 70s mini pick up. Those trucks are about as flexi flier as it gets.

 

I have had a similar experience. My slow cars have been the most consistent on track because I can extract 99% over the course of a day. Not so with my big power cars. 

CatDaddy said:

I'm sure we will be on track together sometime within the next year or so, Stan T. was telling me about your antics and seemed impressed with your driving!  

So the typical reaction to my driving in the 1200 is "holy crap dude, you drive the f*#8ing wheels off that car. They are such fun little cars, you work hard to get the most out of them but it's really satisfying

If you go to Youtube and type in "Scuderia Pokey vs Alfa", you can see me in the 1200, Stan in a Volvo 544 & an Alfa GTV battling it out for the glory of 16th place overall in the B-sedan group.

When you get your 1200 on track let me know; perhaps we can manage to get all three of them on track at the same time.

As for the decreased lap times; it was little things like fine tuning the motor, slight alingment changes and upgrading some suspension parts.

So back to the learning in a slow car; the 1200 has been a great tool for instructiing; over the years people who've ridden with me have told me it made them realize they were driving no where near the limit and really needed to focus on their driving rather than the car.  The same thing happens with drivers in my group, I routinely get asked questions about how to improve.

Again I think low power cars are great learning tools, although I will admit some folks may find them less fun.

CatDaddy said:

In reply to frenchyd :

That's a great bit of knowledge! 20 seconds driver mod with well Under 80hp! 
 

It was fun because there were so many similar cars in our group. The 60 horsepower and better aerodynamics of a TF made them a whole class faster than us but they hung around most of the race to give us a challenge.  
A friend with a supercharged MGTC  did the same and it bit him in the butt. I sandbagged a little tucking behind him on the straights  and the last lap tucked in behind him I used my better brakes and wider tires ( 4.8 wide compared to his 3.2 wide ) to out brake him into Turn three. I held him off until the short shoot leading into turn 10 when he eased back past me. But I kept him inside of me going into the turn. The tighter radius he had to make gave me a slight lead up the main straight.  I beat him by a cats whisker at the start finish line.  3 feet further he was past me but too late.  
Everybody was laughing and my face actually hurt the next day from smiling. 
 

You can learn a lot with little power and someone to push you. 

914Driver said:

I believe a slower car will teach you technique, how to make the most of not much.  Now take that and put it into a faster car ....... 

Nope!!  I had a lot more fun with 20+ MG T series. Than either my Corvette or any other powerful Car I raced. 
   When you get in those faster classes ego's seem to get in the way of fun. 
 

I noticed the same thing in FV and to a degree FF 

or any other group where driving skill beat money.  

In reply to ShinnyGroove (Forum Supporter) :

Yes, but those karts weighed 300 lbs and cornered at 2.5g. Even a Briggs kart on most tracks is fast enough to need to rotate in and modulate out. 

I honestly love driving slower cars on track more than the big hp cars anyway.  But like was said earlier, these days slower cars are the rarity at DE events.  I remember doing a track day once driving a friend's IT 240Z.  I kept getting a guy with a M3 flying up behind me, only to leave him in the corners.  Finally I let him by, but that was a huge,huge mistake.  He ended up parking in the corners so it reduced my time into parade laps.  We need events for us old and slow guys!  

In the same vein, I remember a few years ago my friend was running a Nissan GTP car in a vintage race at Road America.  In the same practice group they let a woman out in a Fiat 850.  I think he had a closing rate on the straight of something like 160mph.  She had to be nervous out there with seriously faster cars.  His fastest lap would have put him on the 3rd or 4th row of the Indycar race there that year to give you an idea of the speed.

Back to topic, I learned to autocross in a '83 RX7 with Sears Roadhandler tires.  They were so hard that after the season you couldn't even tell they had been driven on, much less autocrossed.  What I learned most during that year was car and throttle control.  Not much about braking because it was never in a straight line.  So much fun however! 

In reply to racerdave600 :

That's a terrifying thought, a GTP car with a fiat 850! 

If driving a slow POS fast made you better in a fast car, I'd have a F1 contract right now.

I started running HPDE events with a bone stock (135 hp and zero torque) E30 318is on 195/14" all seasons. You really feel it when you mess up: seems like the engine stops revving for a few seconds as all of your gains disappear. It made me really pay attention to corner entry. As I got into "less slow" and eventually "fast" cars, the ability to enter corners at the absolute maximum speed keeps paying dividends.

My experience (20+ years instructing; 7 years club racing) is that the guys who started on E46 M3s on Moton coilovers and Hoosier R7s take a much longer time to learn the "fast-in/fast-out" approach. Some, frankly, never get there: you just can't convince them that they're leaving entry speed in the table.