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Dac.
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 6
Location: Keele University
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 Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 7:05 pm Post subject: Ayrton Senna - driving flaw? |
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whats the explanation for Ayrton Senna tapping the throttle pedal on and off midway through a corner. it goes against all driving theory that i know of keeping the car smooth and balanced through a corner. some have told me its too keep the car at an oversteering slip angle for faster cornering. others have said its throttle steering to get the car round the corner more sharply.
heres a video of him doing it in the Honda NSX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8-zbfdPfRg&feature=related if you skip to 1:57 theres a good example of what i mean.
thanks, |
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stefan einz
Joined: 25 Sep 2006
Posts: 146
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| Posted: Sun Apr 20, 2008 10:15 pm Post subject: Re: Ayrton Senna - driving flaw? |
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| Dac. wrote: | whats the explanation for Ayrton Senna tapping the throttle pedal on and off midway through a corner. it goes against all driving theory that i know of keeping the car smooth and balanced through a corner. some have told me its too keep the car at an oversteering slip angle for faster cornering. others have said its throttle steering to get the car round the corner more sharply.
heres a video of him doing it in the Honda NSX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8-zbfdPfRg&feature=related if you skip to 1:57 theres a good example of what i mean.
thanks, |
Hard to say, other than he is clearly driving absolutely at the limit of grip and for the fastest lap time you want to be on the gas as early as possible. On occasion, the car won't take the gas as early as he is asking it to, hence he backs off momentarily. On other occasions, I suspect it is to balance out any understeer.
All that said, I think the subject of this thread is somewhat suspect. By any measure, Senna was one of the greatest wheelmen of all time, and somehow I don't think any of us are qualified to question his skill.
(By the way, achieving the lowest possible lap times is not always about keeping a car balanced and smooth. Some of the top end F1 coaches teach techniques that go far beyond the classic theories - 50 pence piece cornering, rotating the car on the brakes, dynamic weight management, brake / steer etc etc. Many of these approaches involve exploiting the frequently non linear characteristics of a car's dynamics, particularly near the limit. It is also fairly clear there is no one right answer, as there are clearly many different styles in evidence even in F1.)
Nice clip, by the way - here is another which I think is just fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLb46n_pITo
Kind regards
Steve |
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Dac.
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 6
Location: Keele University
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| Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 6:34 am Post subject: |
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i agree, partly. nobody drives perfectly though. i was really just trying to find out the reason behind it. im fairly sure there is one its just that it went agains t most i konw. everything written in 'speed secrets' by Ross Bentley for one.
do you know of any links where i could find these advanced techniques? i will google what youve said.
ye seen a vid a few times. its amazing to see him having to lift his hand of the wheel to change gear at those speeds and on such a tight track. completely different to modern F1 cars. |
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WhoseGeneration
Joined: 04 Dec 2007
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:42 pm Post subject: |
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'twas his style, I can remember reading aeons ago, comments to that effect from someone who had been his Race Engineer.
Also, my mind dimly remembers a driver from even longer ago who also followed this style. Name escapes me atm.
I've tended to think of it as "Manual" traction control.
Also, I can remember a comment I read from Colin McRae complaining that the WRC cars he drove didn't have enough power to enable true use of the throttle. Limited to circa 300bhp remember.
Blessed are they who can exploit their machines to this extent.
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StressedDave
Joined: 24 Sep 2005
Posts: 532
Location: Cambridgeshire
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:17 am Post subject: Re: Ayrton Senna - driving flaw? |
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| stefan einz wrote: | | Dac. wrote: | whats the explanation for Ayrton Senna tapping the throttle pedal on and off midway through a corner. it goes against all driving theory that i know of keeping the car smooth and balanced through a corner. some have told me its too keep the car at an oversteering slip angle for faster cornering. others have said its throttle steering to get the car round the corner more sharply.
heres a video of him doing it in the Honda NSX http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8-zbfdPfRg&feature=related if you skip to 1:57 theres a good example of what i mean.
thanks, |
Hard to say, other than he is clearly driving absolutely at the limit of grip and for the fastest lap time you want to be on the gas as early as possible. On occasion, the car won't take the gas as early as he is asking it to, hence he backs off momentarily. On other occasions, I suspect it is to balance out any understeer.
All that said, I think the subject of this thread is somewhat suspect. By any measure, Senna was one of the greatest wheelmen of all time, and somehow I don't think any of us are qualified to question his skill.
(By the way, achieving the lowest possible lap times is not always about keeping a car balanced and smooth. Some of the top end F1 coaches teach techniques that go far beyond the classic theories - 50 pence piece cornering, rotating the car on the brakes, dynamic weight management, brake / steer etc etc. Many of these approaches involve exploiting the frequently non linear characteristics of a car's dynamics, particularly near the limit. It is also fairly clear there is no one right answer, as there are clearly many different styles in evidence even in F1.)
Nice clip, by the way - here is another which I think is just fantastic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLb46n_pITo
Kind regards
Steve |
Just to add to that, a tyre does not produce it's absolute peak level of grip in steady state, i.e. when everything is balanced and smooth, but in a transient. Those possessed of huge talent (and Ayrton was undoubtedly one) can actually ride that peak of grip by continually unbalancing the car to maintain it.
If you think about cadence braking in reverse, i.e. using the throttle to go forwards and backwards over the peak grip point, it all makes sense. |
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hardboiled
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
Posts: 199
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 11:19 am Post subject: |
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There's reasonably good program on Freeview (and presumably satellite) at the moment about the old rally cars from Minis through Escort Mk2s to the Group B cars.
It comments that the WRC cars with 300bhp are faster than the old 650bhp Group B cars, mainly due to transmission, tyre and suspension technology moving on so far from those days. |
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WhoseGeneration
Joined: 04 Dec 2007
Posts: 12
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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| hardboiled wrote: |
It comments that the WRC cars with 300bhp are faster than the old 650bhp Group B cars, mainly due to transmission, tyre and suspension technology moving on so far from those days. |
Yes, true and I can remember a comment from Michelle Mouton to that effect.
I think Colin McRae was expressing a sort of frustration.
I mean, look at how much more capable our current road cars are, compared to those of twenty years ago.
Which, I believe, partly explains much poor driving.
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PeteG
Joined: 07 Feb 2006
Posts: 499
Location: Teesside
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| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2008 5:58 pm Post subject: |
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| WhoseGeneration wrote: | | hardboiled wrote: |
It comments that the WRC cars with 300bhp are faster than the old 650bhp Group B cars, mainly due to transmission, tyre and suspension technology moving on so far from those days. |
Yes, true and I can remember a comment from Michelle Mouton to that effect.
I think Colin McRae was expressing a sort of frustration.
I mean, look at how much more capable our current road cars are, compared to those of twenty years ago.
Which, I believe, partly explains much poor driving. |
Yep. When I've got time (tonight, I hope), I'll make a post about an example of exactly that.
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"There's always another day, and I would rather miss a few than get one badly wrong." - TripleS, on overtaking. |
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Dac.
Joined: 20 Apr 2008
Posts: 6
Location: Keele University
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| Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| WhoseGeneration wrote: | | hardboiled wrote: |
It comments that the WRC cars with 300bhp are faster than the old 650bhp Group B cars, mainly due to transmission, tyre and suspension technology moving on so far from those days. |
Yes, true and I can remember a comment from Michelle Mouton to that effect.
I think Colin McRae was expressing a sort of frustration.
I mean, look at how much more capable our current road cars are, compared to those of twenty years ago.
Which, I believe, partly explains much poor driving. |
didnt top gear compare old rally cars from the 80's and modern tuned road cars like the RS4 or something and the road cars were miles faster. |
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hardboiled
Joined: 16 Jul 2006
Posts: 199
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| Posted: Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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| I'd expect the old rally cars to be faster (Group B where onwards of 600bhp and are still used for rally cross) but there's no doubt in my mind that the newer cars would be far easier to drive at pace. |
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WS
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
Posts: 56
Location: Poland
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 9:39 am Post subject: |
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In my opinion by blipping the throttle, he is doing two things:
1. inducing oversteer/compensating for understeer
2. keeping the engine in appropriate revs for acceleration after the bend
it's hard to call this driving flawed, by any standards 
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Wojtek |
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TripleS
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 2248
Location: Whitby, North Yorkshire
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 10:15 am Post subject: |
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| WS wrote: | In my opinion by blipping the throttle, he is doing two things:
1. inducing oversteer/compensating for understeer
2. keeping the engine in appropriate revs for acceleration after the bend
it's hard to call this driving flawed, by any standards |
I don't profess to understand what his reasoning was, but I can't see the rapid throttle blipping having much to do with being at the right engine speed for acceleration out of the bend. Surely use of a suitable gear is the key factor there, unless I'm totally misunderstanding what's going on - which is very likely. This limit handling type stuff is a closed book to me.
Best wishes all,
Dave. |
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waremark
Joined: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 592
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 4:47 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="TripleSI can't see the rapid throttle blipping having much to do with being at the right engine speed for acceleration out of the bend.[/quote]
I agree with Dave on this. I reckon it is more to do with keeping the car at or slightly beyond the limit of grip (as per comments above from Dave - the stressed one this time).
But JYS never did it like this, did he? And he seemed to manage to get cars to corner quite quickly. If smoothness is not necessarily good, how come JYS did so well? |
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TripleS
Joined: 13 Oct 2005
Posts: 2248
Location: Whitby, North Yorkshire
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 6:07 pm Post subject: |
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| TripleS wrote: | | I can't see the rapid throttle blipping having much to do with being at the right engine speed for acceleration out of the bend. |
| waremark wrote: |
I agree with Dave on this. I reckon it is more to do with keeping the car at or slightly beyond the limit of grip (as per comments above from Dave - the stressed one this time).
But JYS never did it like this, did he? And he seemed to manage to get cars to corner quite quickly. If smoothness is not necessarily good, how come JYS did so well? |
In the light of more recent understanding I suppose one could imagine JYS doing even better if he had applied a different technique, rather than placing so much emphasis on smoothness, which was his preference at that time.
My attitude to this is related entirely to road driving, in which case I vote for doing the best we can in a smooth fashion, although I appreciate this may not give the best result in terms of cornering speeds.
This reminds me of something posted by GreenV8S on PH some weeks ago, which IIRC suggested that smoothness was not always the best thing to seek.
I think what Peter was saying was that in the search for optimum cornering speeds it can be an advantage to deliberately be unsmooth, which means provoking little slides and brief losses of adhesion in the interests of feeling where we are in relation to the limit of grip. Now I can believe this might yield an advantage in track driving, but I'm more hesitant about the validity of this as a public roads technique.
Anyhow, as I've said elsewhere, I'm not a track driver so I'm not into limit handling, and for my purposes I'm happy seeking the smooth technique even if it does sometimes leave me to be seen as a bit slow on the twisty bits. No matter - my normal passengers seem happy.
Best wishes all,
Dave. |
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Mr Cholmondeley-Warner
Joined: 22 Jan 2007
Posts: 507
Location: Swindon, Wilts
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| Posted: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm Post subject: |
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It's interesting. In some places you can definitely see him doing 50p steering, and/or experimenting with the grip the car has - I think we've all done this - just feathering the throttle to keep the car on the edge of grip (certainly with FWD where you can feel the wheels losing grip when pulling round a corner). In other places you can see that his tapping actually has no effect on the engine revs, so maybe there it's habit as much as anything (sacrilege, I know - I respect Ayrton's god-like powers as much as anybody).
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