The Racing Line - The only line you need! - The racing line ep. 4

it's the fastest way around the track and also happens to be the name of the show yes you guessed it on this episode the racing line we're talking about the racing line every corner on earth has three ideal placement points targets at which to aim your car the beginning of a corner is called the turn in next we have the holy grail of the racing line the almighty Apax and finally exiting the corner we've got the track out proper racing line should look something like this start at the turn in come down to the apax and continue to the track out outside to the inside of the pavement back to outside simple enough for racing line really the fastest way around the corner well lets get in our track capable Cadillac ATS and find out first I'm gonna take the inside line the shortest route then I'm gonna take the outside line the longest route next I'll take the racing line to see which one is the fastest ready here we go the inside line now the inside route around a corner is the shortest way but is it the fastest the outside line the outside route is the longest way around the corner which allows for greater speed than the inside route racing line now for the racing line it's the best of both worlds outside inside outside using all available payment to make the corner as wide as possible as you can see from the results the racing line is much faster than the other two routes that allows you to carry more speed into the corner maintain a high speed throughout and edged higher velocity but why is that it's simple the larger the radius and more speed can be carried through the corner now I'm driving a small diameter circle right at the limit of grip and I'm able to maintain twenty miles per hour now I'm driving a wider circle again right on the limit of grip and I'm able to go thirty miles an hour now I'm drifting because it's more fun and that's what your doing when driving the racing line more radius equals more speed equals less lap time it's simple geometry speaking of simple geometry let's look at how tires relate to the racing line on today's Tire Rack minute you can get the most from your tires by isolating their functions and not overloading them and you're racing line is the key sometimes later and races tires start feeling greasy isolate your loads more to save them cornering loads distort the side walls in contact patch and cause them to easily slide too much so use a late apex to straighten breaking accelerations zones to capitalize on the better grip under vertical loads when the contact patch is less tortured what I'm trying to say is tires need love too big good to them so what we've been looking at so far are constant radius turns now let's look at some other corners around the track to see how the racing line varies help in this is a hairpin it's a slow corner and the fastest way around a slow corner believe it or not is slow cars turn better when slowing because it puts more load on the front tires be patient wait on the gas and get to the inside and apex late in the corner this will straighten your line to the track out allowing better acceleration and higher speeds going on to the straight increasing radius this is an increasing radius corner it's the most forgiving of corners it starts tight then opens up these corners allow you to get on the power early as you pour on the coals with plenty of room to slide wide there are lots of fun decreasing radius and this is a large decreasing radius corner it tightens up on you as you go through this most difficult and dangerous corner on a racetrack planning ahead pays dividends here enter with lots of speed but think ahead and inside apex very late in the corner wait for the road to start opening up before squeezing on drugs or you'll end up doing agricultural work off the road so far we've been looking at the ideal line in a perfect world but there are some times when you need to adjust it for maximum speed corner with bump take this corner for example from the apex on the track out it's very bumpy on the normal racing line so I take a later Apax a tighter exit to avoid the bumps and get the power down off-camber corner and in this corner the road is crowned on the exit going off camber so again I apex late to straighten the exit and keep from sliding off the racing line we didn't name is show after it for nothing you know it can make the difference between being a winner and being a sorry loser chump and on that note Apax responsibly driving enthusiasts I will see you next time on the racing line when I was a kid I started in all across and I drove flat out like a raving maniac is good on the very first he would tell me with more experience Randy slowdown you go faster but they're crazy arms beating that what do they know until one event I tried to go slower on purpose and I want to check the time it was faster in the region was I was using the racing line I didn't understand it before