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https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/category/features/how-to-drive/
Por Steve Sutcliffe:
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https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/blog/how-to-drive-with-steve-sutcliffe/
How to drive, with Steve Sutcliffe
Tomorrow we are launching a new series called ‘How To Drive’, written by Ti contributor Steve Sutcliffe. And for those hoping for a learned treatise on the correct application of the ‘mirror, signal, manoeuvre’ rule and how to learn the Highway Code in double quick time, it is possible we’re going to disappoint you. But then you weren’t really expecting that from Steve, were you?
There are two kinds of driving – the first is being able to conduct a car from one place to another, ideally without crashing it. The second is everything else that comes after that, the bit that makes us love cars and want to subscribe to geeky online automotive publications like The Intercooler. It is to driving what the tasting menu at the Waterside Inn at Bray is to a Big Mac.
So every fortnight Steve will take a single subject and explain precisely how to do it to the very best of your ability. Topics covered will include everything from driving in the wet to why and how you should left-foot brake.
As for our choice of author, there is simply no one better qualified for the job. Steve has been testing cars, week in, week out, for over 35 years. He started on WhatCar? in the 1980s, graduated to the road test desk of Autocar, became its road test editor and then its enormously successful editor. He’s been freelance for 20 years now, filling his time with regular contributions to Evo, Octane and Auto Express as well as the Sunday Times and Guardian newspapers.
Steve is also a vastly accomplished track driver, blessed with preternatural car control. He has raced everywhere from the TVR Tuscan Challenge to the British Touring Car Championship, and in numerous 24-hour races. Perhaps his proudest moment was lapping Silverstone in Jenson Button’s Honda Formula 1 within half a second of the official test driver. In the wet.
We hope you enjoy our new series, that it might help you brush up your existing skills or even teach you some new ones. Finally, if there are any aspects of driving you’re particularly keen to learn about, please do say so in the comments.
https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/features/how-to-drive-in-the-wet/
How To Drive: In the wet
It’s easy to just drive somewhere – to start at point A and arrive at point B having had no incidents en route, mind and body intact. But to merely drive from one place to another isn’t a lot of fun and takes even less skill. And I suspect most of you who read The Intercooler hardly ever want to just drive to get somewhere.
If I’m right, you’re the sort of person who enjoys this mysterious art of driving a whole lot more than most, even if it’s just down to the shops and back.
I’d also suggest you already regard yourself as a pretty decent pedaller because you take pride in the way you drive. And if so, you’d be right. Simply caring about how well you drive puts you in a different league to the average motorist. But we can always get better. Once we pass our test, though, no one really tells us how to improve our techniques. Most of us are self-taught on the stuff that matters most.
So how do we become better at our cherished art? Stay tuned over the coming weeks and I’ll attempt to show you how, including all the geeky tips and secrets I’ve picked up over the years, starting with how to drive well in the wet.
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How to drive in the wet, by Steve Sutcliffe
It’s a strange admission, perhaps, but I actually like driving on wet roads and tracks. In racing cars I’ve always backed myself to be quicker than the next nutcase on a drenched circuit, perhaps because I’ve gradually become confident in my ability to catch a car when it begins to go out of control. Or maybe I just feel less stressed about sliding around on wet circuits because I’ve spent so much time doing so during my day job, making cars do silly things for cameras.
Ultimately, driving well in the wet is about confidence. It’s about understanding what a car is doing beneath you, then making it do what you want it to do.
A good way to work out how to drive properly in the wet – and it goes without saying you should pick your moment very carefully – is to swallow hard and switch off the traction control and any other safety systems fitted to your car to see how dangerous it does or doesn’t feel. It won’t be particularly dangerous because unless you drive like a complete madman, it isn’t, but I guarantee you’ll slow down a fair bit to begin with – and become more aware of your own limitations. You’ll feel vulnerable momentarily.
As a result you’ll brake more smoothly and turn in less aggressively, using the accelerator as if it were primed to go off like a bomb if treated with anything other than the delicacy of a ballerina. Your synapses will be a blur of activity to begin with, frantically trying to decipher the messages being delivered to your hands, feet and backside via the steering wheel, pedals and seat, each message being processed in milliseconds to tell you just one thing: how much grip there is available at each tyre.
But at some point your brain will decide that everything is, in fact, okay. That the grip beneath your backside is still there, and you can start to try a little harder. To push a touch further. Soon after this you’ll realise that all cars (okay, most of them) remain perfectly drivable in poor conditions. And that’s when the penny has dropped. This is the eureka moment.
Arriving at that precise moment and then building on it is what driving well in the wet is all about. There are some tricks and techniques you can use to help get you there, starting with short-shifting. This is an effective means of managing traction on the way out of corners, particularly wet ones. You do it by shifting up to the next gear well short of the rev limit while keeping the throttle wide open to maintain load through the car at all times. Although it works well enough on the road and keeps the torque flow neat on slippery surfaces, it is even more effective on a race track.
If you have dampers that are electronically adjustable, put them in their softest setting for wet conditions. After all, a softer chassis will always pick up more grip than a stiff one on a wet road. Similarly, forget aggressive throttle modes in the wet and stick to a comfort or normal map if there is one: the smoother the power and torque is delivered – either by you or the electronics – the more effectively it will be deployed on a low-grip surface.
Same with tyre pressures: drop the pressures at whichever end provides the power by a pound or two and your tyres will naturally generate more traction and grip on a wet road. And it goes without saying that keeping your tread depths well above the legal minimum will give you more grip everywhere, especially under braking.
Don’t be afraid to use the brakes hard on a wet road. Unless you drive an older car that doesn’t have anti-lock (in which case ignore this advice entirely) the combination of modern tyres and ABS will enable you to slow down way faster than you’d expect in extremis, even on soaking wet tarmac.
Which isn’t the same thing as leaving your braking to the very last second. In fact, in the wet you should look even further down the road than you do in the dry. Don’t fret about what’s happening at the end of the bonnet – you’d be amazed how good your spatial awareness is within 40 yards of your own car, even in torrential rain; it’s the stuff happening 400 yards away that you need to focus on most.
Armed with that toolkit of wet weather driving tips, I have no doubt any keen driver will grow more confident in the rain, not to mention more skilled.
Next time: how to drive front-wheel drive cars
Actualización a 03/01/2025: Más:
https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/features/how-to-drive-left-foot-braking/
How to left-foot brake, by Steve Sutcliffe
Left-foot braking is essentially about three things: altering a car’s natural inertia before a corner; maximising its balance and trajectory towards the exit of that corner; and improving its traction on the way out. And it can be used in a variety of ways to achieve these results.
It’s really just a tool to allow you to place a car more precisely in any given corner, specifically the nose of the car. The more accurately you can place the nose at the very beginning of a corner, the sooner – and harder – you can get on the power to drive through that corner towards its exit. Get the nose where you want it to be on the way into a corner and the exit will almost take care of itself. As will the apex if you can get the car pointing in the right direction early enough.
And right there is basically what left-foot braking is all about: setting a car up well before a corner’s apex so you can accelerate cleanly through it – without over-stressing the tyres on the way in, during, or on the way out of said corner.
By trimming the brakes at the exit of a corner while keeping the accelerator open, you can keep the torque flow clean and manage the traction yourself. This is essentially what torque vectoring is all about, except you do it manually by tickling the brakes yourself from apex to exit. Be warned though – if your car’s ECU won’t allow the brake and accelerator to be used at the same time without cutting power, you won’t be able to use this technique; and unfortunately not all do.
Left-foot braking is not an easy technique to master, be under no illusion about that. But if you can do so you’ll be a quicker, safer driver on the road. Done right, left-foot braking keeps a car loaded all the way through a corner, which keeps it better balanced, period.
How so? Think about how much more comfortable a car feels if you take a corner flat out, without having to brake or lift for it. Then think about how much less stable it becomes if you have to lift, brake, then get back on the power to accelerate through. By tickling the brakes but keeping the accelerator open on the way into and through corners you can drive through them without ever removing the load from the chassis. Thus, that car will always stay better balanced into and out of a bend, which will ultimately make it, and you, quicker and safer through any corner – if you do it right.
That, of course, is the tricky bit. To begin with it will feel weirdly unnatural using the brakes with your left foot, but you’d be surprised how quickly your touch will come. Try just brushing the brakes gently on a straight and quiet piece of road to begin with – mainly to get the feel of the brake pedal through your left foot.
Once you’ve got comfortable with this, do the same thing but keep the accelerator open while tickling the brakes, noting how little pressure you need to apply to the brake pedal to start slowing the car down: the braking power of any car will always outweigh its ability to accelerate. As you perfect this, also notice how the car feels ‘tied down’ as it accelerates.
So then try all this again but through a corner. To begin with, just brush the brakes on the way out of the corner while keeping the accelerator either close to or fully wide open. Feel how you can trim the car’s energy via its brakes while still accelerating cleanly through the corner. Get this relatively simple discipline right and you will already be well on your way to working out how and why to left-foot brake.
Next, find a quiet but faster, more open corner, then drive through it conventionally, i.e. drive towards it, brake for it, allow the car to settle, then accelerate through it. Then go through the same corner but brake with your left foot, and brake more gently for it and don’t come off the brakes before you accelerate. Instead, stay on the brakes (gently) but accelerate sooner through the corner and get on the power harder all the way through it.
If you get this bit right, you should feel how much better balanced the car feels at the apex and through to the exit.
Next time: how to drive in the wet
https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/features/how-to-drive-steering-like-a-pro/
How to steer like a pro, by Steve Sutcliffe
To steer a car properly, you need to constantly read the road ahead in as much detail as you can, placing your car just-so long before anything so much as a corner arrives. Why? By reading a road properly, you’ll naturally put less stress through a car when the corners do eventually arrive. That car’s trajectory will then be smoother and you’ll end up cornering both more quickly and safely.
Someone who steers well will appear to be disarmingly calm behind the wheel, whereas someone who can’t will look more frantic as they over-react to everything appearing in their windscreen. These are the kinds of drivers who will saw dramatically at the wheel, believing themselves masters of their hard working art. The real pros, however, will appear to do almost nothing with the wheel when driving the same car, along the same piece of road, probably at far higher speed and certainly in greater control.
By deliberately relaxing your hands on the wheel a touch, your entire demeanour at the wheel will hopefully follow suit – because the more relaxed you are behind the wheel, the better you will steer and drive. Conversely, the moment you feel your hands gripping the wheel harder – maybe the person in front has just cut you up, if so try to forget it – the worse you will steer. And the worse, inevitably, you will drive.
You need to look as far down the road as possible. Do this and you’ll naturally end up steering better because the more you know about what’s going on in the distance, the less you’ll need to react to it when it arrives. Remember: less input at the wheel equals better.
Then think of joining up three zones to begin with: first, the area in which you brake and turn in, then the corner’s natural apex, then the corner’s exit. You don’t need to be going at crazy speeds to understand how well this technique can work. Try it at a deliberately low speed through a nice quiet corner to begin with, then turn around and go back through that same corner, but gradually increase your speed so the three zones eventually blend to become one longer, smoother, more cohesive event.
Ideally your hands shouldn’t add or remove lock from the moment you turn in until you reach the exit, when you can begin to unpeel the lock. This will enable you to open the throttle sooner and harder towards any corner’s exit.
If you do find yourself having to correct a tail slide, focus hardest on how to wind the lock off, not on. Most come unstuck not just by applying too much corrective lock, but failing also to take that lock off fast enough. Inevitably this sends them violently in the opposite direction and the abyss. There’s no way of teaching it really, you tend to learn the hard way.
Similarly, if you feel a car is understeering – pushing wider at the front than you want – the only thing you can do with the steering is… not much I’m afraid. Just don’t wind more lock on as it makes it worse. Just remove as much speed as you can, quickly but as smoothly as possible by lifting or if that’s not enough using the brakes, then hope you still make the corner.
Next time: how to left-foot brake
https://www.the-intercooler.com/library/features/how-to-drive-front-wheel-drive-cars/
How to drive front-wheel drive cars, by Steve Sutcliffe
If you lose the nose of a front-drive car, usually by running wide of an apex because you entered a corner too fast or applied too much throttle mid-corner, there ain’t much you can do about it except back off and hope to heck you don’t run out of road. After a point, even winding on more steering lock is not going to help. It could even make things worse.
So the important thing is to not reach this point in the first place, thus, placing the nose of a front-drive car is really the only thing that matters. There are a few ways of doing this.
The first is to get your braking and downshifting done nice and early before a corner, then turn in and reapply the power smoothly. All FWD cars will behave better if they are under load through a corner, especially those with any kind of limited-slip differential, so getting back on to the accelerator as early as possible is crucial.
Get this first phase right and you’ll then hit the apex cleanly, at which point you accelerate out towards the exit smoothly, making sure you don’t ask the front tyres to deal with too much torque on the way. If either front tyre starts to spin up towards the exit, back away from the throttle, gently; if they don’t, keep your toe in hard and away you go.
You can go to a whole different level in a front-drive car if you’re prepared to commit yourself harder to the cause. Let’s call it going to Level 2 and bear in mind you really should be going there only on a track; I don’t recommend experimenting with this one on the public road because if you get it wrong, the consequences are a whole lot worse than inducing a bit of wheelspin.
On a track, however, Level 2 – the ‘tactical lift’ or ‘the bung’ as it’s sometimes referred to – can be a highly effective technique to unleash more corner speed from a front-drive car, and it’s all about weight redistribution: getting the nose of the car exactly where you want well before the apex, be that corner fast or slow.
Essentially what you do is the same as the above on the way towards a corner (brake and downshift neatly, etc) but then just before you turn in, you back away from the throttle slightly and do the very thing they tell you not to do at finishing school. By removing the load from the rear axle pretty much at the point of turn-in, you transfer weight away from the tail momentarily and load the front axle much more aggressively instead. So when you do actually turn in, the unloaded rear end goes light, which accentuates your turn-in speed and angle, and makes the nose tuck in more precisely than it would using a conventional technique.
Go too far, or back away from the throttle too violently at the wrong moment and you’ll induce a classic lift-off oversteer slide. Which might look good for the cameras but is not what we’re after here because even a small tail slide in a front-drive car will kill its momentum through a corner, and therefore its speed.
Instead, you need to be a lot more subtle with your inputs, the idea being merely to unload the rear tyres – just a touch – to help rotate the nose into the apex, but without going into full blown oversteer. From the outside you shouldn’t be able to tell much difference between a driver operating at Levels 1 or 2. It should all look quietly smooth. But from the inside you’ll be well aware of the tail going light via your hands and backside as the nose pivots smoothly into the apex, almost as if by magic. The car should just go ‘neutral’ if you get this right. You won’t need to steer much as the tail rotates around the nose.
The only thing you then need to judge is how soon, and how hard, to get back on the power, although if you do it perfectly you’ll only be off power for the briefest of moments.
Next time: how to drive rear-wheel drive cars
Cierto:
https://viviendoapesardelacrisis.blogspot.com/2015/05/el-dificil-arte-de-conducir-rapido.html
