Seat time in another car?

[NJH]

I would like the collectives thoughts on this question. I raced with someone who used a completely different car to his race car to drive on track days fairly regularly to learn tracks and I guess keep up his seat time. Now in my own case I have two cars that are fairly different but not a million miles different to drive on track. One is a normalish but very trackable road car the other a non-road legal race car. I am tempted to do a load of winter track days in my road legal car to build up seat time but am concerned it won't necessarily make me any quicker in the race car. What say you? BTW I know I am way rusty on seat time, only drove my race car once on track this year and only been on track twice thus far (one half day in each car). Both occasions I was fairly happy with my corner and exit speeds but was braking way early as I didn't have the confidence to get it all done neatly and cleanly prior to getting stuck into a corner, ISTR this took me about 3 times out on track in previous years to get properly comfortable with and if the time gap is allowed to be more than about six weeks its almost like starting again.

[Altrezia]

Of course it will make you quicker. Seat time is seat time.

[Jerry Can]

Altrezia said:

Of course it will make you quicker. Seat time is seat time.

so long as you are thinking about how to go quicker. There are plenty of track day, and for that matter race drivers who haven't got any quicker from about the third time they were on track.

GP drivers train in road cars, so I reckon it might be worthwhile for you to do.

[BertBert]

I feel slightly differently. There is obvious merit in getting to learn tracks and lines however you can and seat time is unlikely to be a bad thing. However I think it only takes you a certain way. I'll talk entirely about what happens to me.

What I do sticks in my head. So I find that if I do track days, I get into the track day way of driving which is different to how I drive on test days (and race days). If I am running road tyres instead of slicks, when I am back on slicks my driving has dumbed down to the less grippy tyres. If the race car has aero and you do track days without, again I lose the aero-confidence.

I have used road-car time to learn a circuit, for example Thruxton. 30 mins with an instructor showing me the lines and how to get round it was really good come test time.

I also used a sim (plus instruction) to learn silverstone before driving it which was really helpful.

But I still need to get lots of testing time in the race car with good tyres to even have a hope of being near the front.

I am a bit rubbish though

HTH
Bert

[NJH]

I am thinking along similar lines Bert hence why I have started this thread. My two cars which whilst in theory seem very different actually seem to go fastest by following a very similar cornering approach or technique. However the race car (944 S2 on 1B/1C tyres) has way more grip than my Megane R26 on road tyres. The biggest difference however is control weights, 944s/968s are very physical cars to race anyway but mine has no PAS making it a proper workout to drive hard, I sweat buckets in that bloody thing. The Megane is a modern car with modern road car physicality i.e. more or less none. The small differences in positions of things in the cars is also an issue but one I get used to very quickly.

I have a sim model btw of my race car that I developed several years ago, this is why I can quickly get on up to the corner speeds and visualisation of lines etc. Computer sims are also great for making your visual reactions really sharp, if you get a bit of oversteer on the way in you're on it straight away. Big problem is though the weight and feel on the controls is just nothing like my real race car and this seems to effect me when it comes to the braking phases more than anything else.

As an example if you have not driven a car for a year and find that every 1/5th gear shift is not quite right, or every 1/3rd heel and toe not right it sticks in your mind and you then never have the confidence to push that phase of driving as you know that a messed up shift or heel and toe in such circumstances will lead to a spin or worse. This is my issue really and why I want to try and do track days through the winter such that I don't spend Feb/March just blowing away the cobwebs. I have no idea if doing all that stuff in the Megane will carry across into the 944.

[BertBert]

can't you do track days in in 944 and test days where they are available? Why use the other car at all?

[NJH]

I can but there is always going to be a period when I am doing some work on her over the winter. The 944 (or mine at least) is also pretty awful in the wet. Its also a nause doing all the trailering about in the dark/cold/wet, securing the thing over night etc. etc. compared to just jumping in the Megane and heading off. Took the 944 on track last year at Silverstone in Feb when it was damp and 5 degrees or cooler, really wasn't much fun tbh sliding about going nowhere fast, I don't think I learned much that day either. Its not a car that really works at all in such conditions, honestly the Megane as a bone stock road car would wipe the floor with it on days like that, probably by a much bigger margin than the gap between the two in the dry going the other way.

[carl_w]

If you're going to do it, even though they aren't mandatory on track days, I would at least wear the same lid, gloves and boots. Race suit not necessarily so.

[BertBert]

I understand what you say about the conditions. But wet is wet. Get to know it and love it in the race car. As for the faff of trailering it. Man up. This is racing. A serious business. Worth a sacrifice and some hardship

[Jerry Can]

so OP what are you trying to achieve?

familiarisation with the race car, or familiarisation with the track? If the former, then there is no alternative but to track day the race car, if the latter, then any car will do. Equally you will probably drive the race car better the more track experience you have even if gained in the road car.

[RobM77]

In my opinion it would definitely help with certain aspects, yes and if SWMBO would allow it, I'd definitely get myself a cheap trackday car purely to practise in. Rob Wilson (famous coach to lots of top drivers up to and including F1, e.g. Kimi Raikonnen), uses a totally normal road car to coach, as does Mark Hales (another highly regarded driving coach). There are a huge number of aspects of driving fast that are common to all cars. Sure, there are some car specific things, but I would say a majority of the skills required are common amongst all cars.

You'll need to be actively learning, not just driving round and round. One of the major issues you'll find is that timing and datalogging is banned at track days, so you won't be able to work out the best lines or methods of taking corners through anything other than feel. That aside though, I'm sure you'll learn heaps of things that are transferrable to your usual racing car.

The other benefit of taking a road car on track days is that if you have a passenger seat you can get some tuition, which is a bit tricky in many racing cars - even saloons and sports cars often have controls, roll cage or extinguisher blocking the passenger area. A good coach can give you plenty of homework to do on track days, so a day's coaching every third or fourth track day could work wonders.

The final thing is that by doing track days you can really improve your circuit knowledge - check out cambers and gradients offline for overtaking, which kerbs are flat and which are steep, which bits get slippery in the wet, which bits of track end with a nasty edge and which blend into grass, which bits of the track dry first after a rain shower, things to look for to guide you round tricky blind corners like T2&T3 at Cadwell, or even just feeling at home somewhere to get a psychological advantage - the list is endless.

[BertBert]

RobM77 said:

You'll need to be actively learning, not just driving round and round.

This is a key point and I actually find it very hard to do on my own and much easier with help. Interestingly in my transition from track days to racing, I thought I would always need a passenger to get good help with my driving. But actually having a pax in the car put me off from concentrating on what I am doing. The very best driver coaching I have had has been from video and data. Just a thought.

Bert

[NJH]

Funny thing is I feel like I am learning more now and improving faster than I was 5 years ago, to easy to get into a rythm and then just drive around all day doing the same things. For some reason the various breaks I have had from track driving, changes to the car/s and some tuition did enough to mix it all up that I play around with things much more than I used to. Simple example: I have become fairly convinced that in a lot of cars the quicker way through the two chicanes at Combe is to break the braking up into two different sections, sometimes this will definitely need throttle in between those 2 breaking phases. I hadn't even thought of it until Ben Demetriou did it in my car in the first chicane and carried mental more speed than I was into that corner, he just seemed to do stuff like that as a natural thing. Then I noticed Nigel Greensall doing a similar thing in this coaching video where he broke the lap record 2 up:
https://youtu.be/HxwvCEJPT-s

How many people do you ever see doing that! That is the sort of stuff I want to play with and see what might work or not plus of course get my feet working slickly again, something I find takes me a lot of seat time to get comfortable with.

[BertBert]

NJH said:

That is the sort of stuff I want to play with and see what might work or not plus of course get my feet working slickly again, something I find takes me a lot of seat time to get comfortable with.

I still come back to needing to do it in your race car. These things working or not are down to finding 1/10s. You won't know if you are doing that if you are not timing and not in your race car.
Bert