Everyone has a driving style. It is a description of how each person drives. Like every person is on a diet, of some sort.
I'd like to bring my own views in too. In rFactor1 me and a friend of mine used to have these epic 1vs1 championships with the great GP2 mod. We also spoke via Skype during race weekends and compared our setups and shared some tips how to setup a car. Our setups used to differ quite a lot, eg. I had - if not on every - but almost on every track quite a lot lower wing angles and other differencies. Still, it wasn't rare to see us within 0.1 seconds in qualifying. We also tried each others setups sometimes but as you can guess, we were able to do nowhere near the times we did with our own setups. And I mean, those setups of our own were very fine-tuned. We had spent hours to make them suit our driving styles.
Jim Clark would often race different cars sight unseen. When the mechanics asked him what he wanted done to it he would most likely say " Its okay as it is " That was one of his secrets while others were in garages scratching their heads he was out doing more laps.
No secret DD, skill. Some are blessed some are not. No matter how many laps an averagely talented driver does he/she will never attain the the heights of the truely gifted. what he/she can do is gain consistency, and that will stand you in good stead and even bring the occasional win. Jim Clark's name rings down from the history of racing because he was special, like James Hunt, Graham Hill, and Senna and a handful of others. Remembered not because they did more laps, but because the laps they did were magic on wheels.
Take a track with 14 corners. If changing your style can grant you .2 extra at every corner, you'll be 1.4 seconds faster a lap. You be surprised how your driving style can make all the difference it wining vs losing. Look at it the other way, if your 1.4 seconds faster than the 2nd place driver, falling back .2 at each corner will make your tires last that much longer. In my years of sim racing this was one of the hardest things to overcome and I still have this problem from time to time even after 17 years. Just remember there is always going to be someone faster than you and your not going to win every race. Especially full of drivers with the same mentality. I've beatin some of the fastest drivers instead of trying to rip out fast laps by backing off and let them get comfortable enough to make a mistake then capitalize by chaning my driving style to a more aggressive approach. I've never won any races, but never look to win when I'm on the track. I look for the closes matching driver in my skill level and if I can come across the line first, that's as good as a win to me. I may have misread your question but thats my opinion on driving style. In road racing especially its 90% driver and 10% setup. I've seen this proven with some drivers using the wrong setup yet still dominate a race.
But the point often is that a good driver can make ANY style work/ Senna, for example, broke every single piece of realistic advice on throttle control. He stabbed at the throttle in the turn, which is the LAST thing I would EVER advise someone to do. But it worked, his style worked - for him. Someone else trying that, who hasn't grown up with that style, who hasn't made it their own, would fail. A particular driving style isn't ALWAYS faster... You can compare Button to Hamilton and say Hamilton is a faster driver, but when he has to pit more times than Button or can't keep the tires working, who has the better driving style in this example race? See what I mean?
See 12mins 19 seconds into this video for an example. Sennas technique in this telemetry is what most people would classify as a BAD technique, but it worked, and he controlled it. And what this technique did, was made the car move in a way that HE could control. It would be terribly difficult for someone who had never done it, to do it.
Heh, Senna drove bit like me, just steer to balance the car floor the throttle and I thought I was just driving bad Well, I still drive bad, there is bit of gap between doing that and indeed be able to control it, usually result is fun but slow driving, which is enough good for me
Driving bad? No, it's just your style ...See, Knorrp? Inconsistent times and bad racecraft could be considered bad driving, but so long as we are having fun I thought the blipping with the throttle was quite common? Ok maybe not in F1, but in lots of the big old car stuff, I used to see it all the time. I guess after seeing those sports car drivers doing that, it has sorta become part of my style. Only for big tin tops I find though...and the skippy XD Just seems to help me get it turned and helps square off the corner, especially when dealing with something big and powerful like a Corvette or Galaxie I change that for smoothness with a quick open wheeler though.
I believe style is a positive aggregation of someone's consistent driving skills. Slow drivers tend to fail differently every lap, I can't see any style in this.
Blipping is supposed to be done when shifting, to keep the revs up, and it can be USED to help the car turn. But in most cars, being smooth would always be advised, especially if you can't control the loose car which stabbing the throttle creates. I spun out a (real) Skippy by stabbing the throttle during a school at Lime Rock, it was the only lesson I needed on it.
Very, very true observation. I can be 'alien fast' in maybe a couple of turns per lap, but not the same ones, and not every lap. And that's the difference between them and I. It's exactly the same reason why in GPL we could lap the ring under 8mins, etc, compared to real life... because someone in the sim had the time to get more turns right.
Well thats the thing, that method works for me in the big ol things. Controlling the slides is easily done, and I can then get on the throttle sooner on the exit while keeping a nice very small slide going. Much better for me than to have to deal with the front end pushing through. Usually with the skippy I am fully on the throttle before the apex with yet again a very small slide through the exit. The first turn though is where Im blipping at it until Im about to finish the second apex where it is floored again. And like all the above with driving styles and how different things work for different people, I've been able to get a 55.860 and can do low 56's consistantly. I think I'd be able to go a bit faster now though, as after a few days of driving the skippy and LRP, I now have figured the lines out a bit more properly. And yah, I suppose blipping is the phrase given to what you do on a downshift. Every downshift on my motorbike needs to be blipped...I certainly dont go stabbing at the throttle through a corner on that though....:O
Fast is a style. Slow is a style. Some drivers charge the corner entry, and others go easy on entry so they can be strong from the center through exit. I think there might be almost as many driving styles are there are different drivers.
Yeah, blipping is good for higher powered machines, with lower power one needs to keep throttle down and not allow too much slide, but also not too little so that grip of spinning rears does not increase and bog down the engine. With these tanks of us, you don't really drive the car around the corner, you drive the weight around the corner, like in rallying, it is not direction of car nose that matters, but weight, you just shift weight to desired direction of travel, car's angle is just result of direction of that weight needing to be direction where you throw it. This is kind of example, driving is just bit poor as even I know how things should work, my hands and legs seem not to know it yet. But as can be easily heard, it is blibbing and in theory one should quickly steer into slide but not too quick, while same time keeping slide on with throttle blipping so you get nice slide. 28.3:1 steering ratio is of course not helping there, but that 3 meter wheelbase and over 2 ton mass is.
Hahahaha, yeah thats a bit excessive... XD How much power is that putting down? With the skippy, it isn't exactly blipping to get a drift going, sorta just getting the balance right. I dunno, just the way it works for me until before the apex where the throttle gets pinned.
It was not very much there, now it has around 455hp according to calculation from trap speed, it is bit difficult to know for sure as new plugin would be need to be created that shows that realtime. Only around 9psi boost though. Bit excessive indeed, but same idea, more refined and better controlled would be needed to be able to drive with stab the throttle style. Advantage of that style would be that you can accelerate lot earlier out from turn and that guy behind you will have really hard time overtaking at corner exit.
Oh yep, pretty damn lumpy haha. If you can find a similar matched small car it would make for some great David/Goliath type races XD Sorry for the derail, but is there anywhere I can grab that monster?
