I appreciate the information, but I am not prepared yet to understand this....

Overdrive the entry? Could you explain this to someone who has never driven an oval?

I bet World is gonna tell you it's when y'all go into a turn too hot, (fast) -- for the tires to stick, (maintain traction).
We'll see.

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Pontificating Dogmatist

Ok, so he is calling the " entry " the point at which one enters any turn? The way he used the term it sounded like there is only one entry per oval.

It also makes no sense how a street vehicle could come into an turn on an oval too hot--or fast. Surely, the average street ride is going to top out at 140-150 on the straightaway, eh? And the guys who know what they are doing come in at 200, but slow before the turn?

OK World, I'll try to be a little more clear.

A tire only has a certain amount of grip (traction) available. You can use this grip to accelerate, decelerate or turn, but when you exceed that grip, by any of these actions, either alone or in combination, it looses traction and starts to slip.

First, devide the 180 degree turn into 3 equal parts. The first part we call the entry, the second we just call the center and the last part the exit. A racer will begin to brake for the corner while he's still going in a straight line. That way he has the maximum amount of grip available to him to slow the car down. As we turn the steering wheel into the corner, (entry) we ease up on the brake, so we don't exceed that set amount of grip that's available. The more we turn the steering wheel, the more we have to let off the brakes or the front tires, where 80% of the braking occurs, will start to slip. This is where most rookies will screw up. They try to turn hard and brake hard at the same time, exceeding the available grip and the car continues to go straight until it either scrubs off enough speed to finally turn, or contacts the wall. Guess which one ussually happens.

You may have heard drivers being interveiwed say that they "rolled the center". They mean that they are off the brakes entirely through the center part of the turn, giving them all of the available grip to turn the car. Then you squeeze the throttle down, as hard as you can without exceeding the available grip in the rear tires. I was taught to pretend there's an egg between my foot and the pedal. Don't break the egg. Simple huh? Just do that precisely and consistantly, lap after lap, and voila, you're a racecar driver!!! Oh and there are those other 25 or 30 guys who are trying to pass you and will knock you sideways in order to do it that you have to deal with. But basically, that's all there is to it.

Sorry for turning this into a novel, but it's as breif as i can make it. And I appologize to the thread starter for hijacking your thread. Didn't really mean to.

OK, I think I may understand it then. What you are saying is one needs to balance the uses of grip throughout the entire 180 degree turn. Overuse any " grip intensive " process and you lose performance, sometimes in a significant way.

So, balance the braking to acceleration before entry (brake a bit), then balanced through the middle of the turn, then coming out of the turn nearly full power but not use full power until the very end of the turn.

So you are saying most rookies enter too hot, and the balance of grip is off at the beginning of the turn.

So no matter how hot one comes in to the turn (entry), brake before the turn.

Unless I am missing something, the reason most rookies miss this is they are not used to pushing a car to its limits around turns, only on straightaways. When they come to a turn, more variables are at play, so the balance is tougher to maintain throughout the turn--especially at a speed they are not used to on turns...

Is that a reasonable synthesis of what you said?

Exactly World. An inexperienced driver almost always tries to enter the corner too fast (overdrive the entry) and even if he manages not to "stick it in the fence", as they say, he loses alot of time trying to gather it up in the center and that slows his exit, which is actually the most important part of the turn, in terms of lap time. When you're fast through the exit, you carry that speed all the way to the next corner. This is true for the vast majority of short tracks. There are exceptions, like Irwindale in California. There, the turns are long and sweeping and you drive it more like a super speedway. We actually are deep into the entry of the corner before we let off the gas, a small amount of braking just before the center (apex) and then put the throttle back to the floor. We refer to it as a momentum track. You're hard to the floor so much of the way around that anything that breaks your momentum, like a little slipping and sliding, will kill your speed and it seems to take forever to get it back. Hope I explained that OK.

Your explanations are superb, Hound!
You've obviously been around a track a few times.
I especially liked your explanation of Irwindale, the closest local, paved track to my home 20.
Although I live closer to Fontana, and the (now) Auto Club, California Motor Speedway, I find the racing at Irwindale to be far more satisfying. I'm a David Gilliland fan now, as he's a local (Chino Hills) racer gone on to bigger things in NASCAR. And I try my best to support him by eating tons of M&Ms.

Maybe we need an auto racing thread here so we don't continue to hi-jack other threads bench racing.
Ya reckon.
I find your posts to be informative and interesting. I hope you'll continue to enlighten us with your knowledge.

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Pontificating Dogmatist

Thanks Aftershock. Yea, I got a few laps behind me. I had an older brother who raced so I kind of grew up in the sport. My era is more when Davids father, Butch was running. I did run Irwindale the first few years it was open, but never had the dollars to run with all the rich kids out there spending Daddys money. Actually, Irwindale is the only track I ever raced at that I never won a race. Maybe I'll have to go back there some day and see if I can change that. Did you ever go to the now defunct Saugus Speedway? That was the toughest place to get around of any I've ever seen. I threw everything I could think of at the car trying to make it turn there. Finally, I did something totally rediculous, that I was sure wouldn't work, and the thing took off. Won a few after that. I still keep that setup in my little book in case I ever end up on a track with zero banking. Don't think there are any though. Start a new thread if you want to bench race some more. I could discuss racing all day, if that wasn't already obvious.

Consider it done.
See "BENCH RACIN'"
See ya there?

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Pontificating Dogmatist

Believe it or not, I just returned from purchasing a set of " throwaway " tires from Kohno which were so cheap I decided to see if they would last longer than the expensive Michelin Pilot A/S which have worn so rapidly and poorly.

If they do not last then I will simply get the Michelin PS2 tires I was planning to get. I did not get nitrogen in the tires, but I may try to talk my friend at COSTCO into putting them into my tires for free as an experiment.