The big points we would want Michael to focus on in his driving through turn 12 at Road Atlanta:
- Delay turn in by 1 car length to come at the end of the curb on our left
- Slow down the rate of turn in (in terms of turning the wheel slower with our hands) so that you apex approximately 2 car lengths later
- Try and not apply the brakes in the middle of the corner - as you get closer to the limit this can cause more oversteer than we want. In fact, it looks like that small brake application causes you to feel like you over slow after that, which causes initial throttle coming too early.
- Try and delay initial throttle application by about a car length or so.
5. Most importantly we are changing his throttle so that once he gets back to full throttle he can keep at full throttle and not have that lift off of it as we see at the end of the video.
Want to know what other mistakes our coaches commonly see at Road Atlanta? Click here!
We also have a great free article where we break down why we would like to see our drivers delay their initial throttle application spot here
Video Transcript
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's Blayze Coaching Tips in Under 60 Seconds. Here we ask drivers, "What corner do you struggle with the most?" We ask you to send us your video of you driving on that corner, and in 60 seconds or less, I'll go through that video and give tangible ways on how you can improve.
So this week, we're working with Michael. Michael is struggling with Turn 12 at Road Atlanta the most. One of the most intimidating corners in the world. It is downhill, it compresses, it's almost flat. In some cars, it is flat all the way through it.
So let's go ahead here. We're going to turn his volume up. We're going to watch it full speed, and we'll come back and I'm going to go through the video and give tangible ways he can improve, in 60 seconds or less. Let's go take a look at how Michael's doing.
Great. Okay, here, so we're going to go back to this up a little bit. I'm going to put 60 seconds on the clock. Turn the volume off, and we'll go through the video. So let's get started right now.
The first thing I'm looking at here, is the turn-in point. You can see right here we're starting to turn in about a car-length before the end of the curb here on our left. I'd really like to see Michael turn in at the end of the curb here. That's going to allow him to apex later. The big issues I'm looking for is we're apexing too early, and that's causing a lot of issues on the exit.
Middle of the corner, if we go a little bit farther forward here, I'd like to see the throttle manipulation, speed manipulation, come a little bit earlier, so we're not breaking in the middle of the corner. The next thing here is, we're apexing too early. See, we're apexing here? I'd like to see that apex come here, and that later, slower turn-in will allow that to happen.
The next thing is, our throttle application's really coming too early. So you can see we're starting to feed it in here. We have a lot of turn left. The big issue is we get back to full throttle, then have to release it, release it heavily. That costs a lot of time. We want to avoid that. And it's caused by too early throttle application, and too early of an apex. So Michael's throttle looks something like this.
Oops, and that's the end of the timer, and we really want to avoid any of that. So, to review, later turn-in point, big thing is a later apex, later initial throttle application, so we have a nice, smooth progression to full throttle, and not having to release it on the exit.
We also have a great data analysis session. We can go through your data and our very in-depth but very powerful race analysis session will watch your entire race and give you feedback, not only on how to go faster, but also on racecraft. Getting better race starts, overtaking, defending positions, really taking your foundation as a driver and molding you into a race-winning driver.
