Luck...

The season starts this weekend, with an eleven car field at Willow Springs. I'll be leaving Friday morning to do a test day, so no more posts until the first two races are done.

I feel like a ten year old on Christmas eve.

Starts; avoid being the prostrate duck.

There is nothing as exciting on earth as a race start, and few things more intimidating. It is a form of absolute chaos, the one time in the race where all the cars are together in one great big clump and everybody has to judge, plan and execute against everybody else at the same time. If the rest of a road race is a dance, the first corner is a mosh-pit where everybody seems to have been born with extra elbows. Just to add a bit of sweetness to it, Mazda GT’s will often reverse the grid (it’s up to the drivers), so if you are brand new to the series and struggling to figure out the car, welcome to the pole.

With a rolling start, that pole position is not as much of an advantage as you might think, either.

First off, being on the pole you have the responsibility to set the groups speed. Usually we’ll be at six thousand RPM in second gear. The pole sitter takes the position to the same side as the first turn (left be on left, right be on the right) and yes I did screw that one up once, trying to start Thunderhill on the “Pole” on the right hand side.

The major disadvantage is that while you are holding six thousand and waiting for the green flag, some of those awfully good drivers behind you might just try to time the start. Even with half the straight gone, a seemingly small advantage, like a couple hundred RPM just before the green flag, translates into a monster of an advantage by the first corner. I actually got swallowed up by the fourth row, from pole, once. That same race, Jon, who was fastest and started at the very end, got everybody by the third corner of the first lap.

Now strictly speaking this is almost cheating. And if done too obviously it will bring down unpleasant consequences on the offender, but the reality is that our starter is starting two or three separate races at roughly the same time; he has little opportunity to wave off any but the most blatant jumped start. A more common punishment is for the offender to get a black flag. As a rule of thumb, however, the officials won’t interfere as long as you don’t get such a jump that you pass before the start finish line. I’ve also known starters to deliberately hold off the green, in an effort to screw up the timing, if he sees someone lollygagging around to get a jump. And of course you can’t start to fan out before the flag since that will really give the officials heartburn and guarantee you your very own black flag.

As the pole sitter, you also have the responsibly to set the distance between ourselves and any groups that get a separate green. Too close and it’ll become a real mess in turn one as we swallow them up, too far back and if they are a lot quicker, their leaders will get into us as traffic right near the end of the race. No one will thank you for either of those results. If you find yourself on the pole the stuff to ask is first, “what RPM and gear?” Second, “Are we getting our own green?” And third, “How far back?” Get those three things right and your contribution to the start can’t be questioned.

Finally, let’s take a moment to think about the fun part. What tactics can work or fail from the get-go.

Starts are the most outstanding version on earth of what, in game theory, is referred to as the prisoner’s dilemma. Drivers have the opportunity to “cooperate” (which gives the best chance to improve both their positions), or to gain more advantage using the “defect” option (taking advantage of the racing room the “cooperating” driver leaves.) A driver who takes advantage of the “defect” option gains over the other driver, but only if the other driver chooses “cooperate.” If you and the other guy try the “defect” option at the same time you’ll both wind up hung out to dry. All this happens really fast, in a way you can’t think about at the time, any more than you can think about catching a baseball. It just sort of happens, but your mind is plotting while your senses are reeling. It is one brief moment of pure, ecstatic madness.

This level of madness only exists for a turn or two. Somewhere between the apex of the first turn and the exit of, at the very latest, the second turn, everybody will have fallen into single file. When they go single file is somewhat predictable, since it depends a lot on the corner combination. One reason it’s important to think about this before hand is the sad fact that you can hook yourself up to the wrong train doing a lead/follow while two wide. You need to think about the latest place to get in line, and which side of the track you’ll be on, to avoid being shuffled to oblivion.

At Willow Springs you’ll see everybody get in line around the entrance to turn two, while a #13 CW at Buttonwillow it might not be decided until as late as the end of the I-5 straight. Tighter and closer together tends to extract a lesser price, so the cars will stay side by side a bit longer the narrower the starting combination. A fast wide turn one, like at Thunderhill, tends to force everyone into line early while a sharp, but wide, combination corner like the off-ramp leaves us two wide the longest.

While we are two wide, my favorite starting tactic is one I think of as the ‘bumper strategy’. If you’ve got somebody good in front of you, glue your front bumper to his rear. After the cars fan out and everybody starts dicing, well… two cars leave less room than one for anyone on the other side to fall in line, and if you’re following somebody fast, after he shuffles them out you’ll probably pick off the same people he does. It’s simple, clean, easy and effective, and will rarely get you in trouble. But it only works when you’ve got somebody good to follow.

A related tactic I think of as ‘Moses parting the waters’. Sometimes one of the guys gets such a jump that he tends to scatter some of the cars in front of you. Or even become the third car contesting a corner. Rather than a futile gesture trying to stop him, if conditions are right you can take advantage of it. Once the fast car gets by you, and starts contesting the corner ahead, you might have a chance to use the whole track and catch them right back up (assuming you don’t have anybody contesting your entry) and then some. Even if you are side by side, sometimes if you back down just a bit, and make it clear you are going to follow someone with an equal start rather than contest the corner, the both of you will slaughter the guys in front as they go two or even three wide. Remember the prisoner’s dilemma; if you can get in line while the guys ahead are fighting each other you and the guy you gave room to will both gain a huge advantage over cars that are still slugging it out.

A tactic I like less and don’t use, but will often see (it’s perfectly legitimate, I just don’t enjoy it), I think of as ‘parking on the apex’. An early turn-in from the inside will allow later braking and pretty much sew up being first to the apex, but it comes at a price. You just can’t carry the speed or get on the throttle like that. Worse, you have to decide early if you are going to use all the available real estate on track out or leave racing room for two wide. Leave room, and your opponent might just switch to a late apex and leave you very lonely as a trail of cars passes you on the inside (after the apex). Don’t leave room and you might find yourself forced to stay off the throttle too long (or worse, run into someone) since a car is sitting on your outside, where you need to go.

All in all the biggest difference between passing in the first corner and passing later in the race is that you affect more cars at once. It’s not only possible, but common, for a driver up front to make a decision that suddenly closes a gap seen by a car all the way in the back. So you have to think about how much track you have available to you as well as how much you are going to leave for everybody else. Slow at the wrong time and the concertina effect will leave a huge pile of cars behind. Use too much track and you’ll just cause the kind of accident that, all too often, ends a bunch of races before they begin. Mazda GT drivers take a bit of pride in that we rarely hit each other during the mad scramble at the start, and you’ll not make any friends by changing that fact.

Finally there is what I think of as the ‘outside in’ attempt. If the first two corners are in opposite directions then you can plan the apex for your first corner one car width out. You have a very good chance at staying comfortably side by side through the first turn, while getting on the throttle a bit sooner since you have the outside. The extra speed along with the inside position for the next turn gives you a good shot at taking turn two far enough ahead that you don’t have to leave room for the other guy. The ‘outside in’ also works really well if the driver ahead uses the ‘park on the apex’ since it allows you to get on the throttle before the other guy.

Bottom line, for me the first goal is to get in trail, as far forward as I can, so I can get on my regular line and start using more track. Be patient, but be certain that if you stay side by side for very long, the front runners will get away and you’ll be a prostrate duck almost before you get started.

Testing the steering?

Now I’m not one to complain… much… but when a generic sports guy is hired to do racing commentary my hide gets a bit chapped. Most famous case in point was when Jim McKay did the Indy 500, years back, and started prattling on about how the drivers were “testing their steering” by weaving back and forth. Uh… no Jim, not really, go back to ski jumping please...

As readers of this blog know what’s really happening is they are just trying to get, or keep, some heat in their tires. Their soft compounds work best hot. But that still leaves the question for a driver new to the Mazda GT, warm the tires, or not.

The answer is emphatically, no. The Toyo RA-1 is a hard compound tire with excellent character that is nearly as sticky cold as it is warm. But when racing on a dry surface you do tend to overheat it. Usually, starting out cold, your best lap will be on lap two or three. They will stay pretty grippy for a while, and then depending on how hard you’ve used them, you will start to get a bit of a spongy feel about twenty minutes in. My very first race I didn’t pay attention to the spongy feel and did a half loop in the cotton corners. Anyway, if you slide around trying to warm up the tires, all you are accomplishing is using up grip before the race starts.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have stuff to get warm. Namely the brakes. First time out I didn’t touch the brakes until I went for some deep braking in the first corner. Trust me when I say this is not a pleasant experience. After that I tried, during the formation lap, to zip ahead a bit and brake. Speeding up and slowing down got enough temperature into the brake pads to make the car happy without putting much heat in the tires. So you can imagine that I felt like a bit of a moron when, after suggesting to someone that ‘all you need to do is brake a couple times to get the brakes a bit warm’ another driver pointed out that he just dragged the brakes for bit and accomplished the same thing.

Paul's Willow Springs track notes

Nine is huge.

If you’re either going too fast on entry or worse, apex too early; yet manage to correct, the resulting late throttle is going to be felt for a very… very… long time. If you apex too early or enter too fast and don’t manage to correct in time, you’re going for a nasty ride though some very dusty weeds at a very high rate of speed. If you use more than tiny corrections you will spin and God help you if someone right behind is committed to the same real estate. If you apex late and easily make it, then you aren’t carrying enough speed and will just have to sit there while it seems a moped could blow your doors off (if we had doors) all the way down the main straight.

Turn nine itself is a very… very… fast ninety degree swooping right hander, wide, with good track out despite tightening a bit after the apex. The pit in is on the left (outside) of the corner so one element to beware of is new drivers slowing for ‘pit in’ staying on line and then turning suddenly out to make the pits. Be very careful during practice if you decide to pass a slower car on the outside. Better part of valor is to push your own turn in a bit later, with a bit less speed, so you can swoop down to the apex on their inside while getting on the throttle even earlier.

To get a good lap time you need to be in danger of drifting off the left hand side, without actually doing so and without turning in sharper or lifting after the apex. That’s when you know you got it right. If you have to turn in more and/or lift after the apex then the turn-in is probably too early, or the entry is too fast, or both (more likely the former than the latter). Nine is a finesse corner, where the line is obvious but it’s extremely difficult to get it just right; and it will make or break lap times. It’s too fast and plain for a good sight picture, so there is a premium on finding a very good mark on the way in to judge your position. If it still has all the bumps on the way into eight, I like finding a skid mark from some poor soul who has gone before. Tom, I happen to know, looks farther out and uses a water tower. What mark you use doesn’t matter so much, as long as you have one. A sight picture will never work.

Next is the longish straight. A lot of guys will try to make sure you don’t get a draft by moving to the opposite (pit) side of the track. Coming up on one; a fast ninety degree left hander with a bit of help from an uphill elevation change, good width and fair bit of camber help. The need is to find a brake-point somewhere toward track right that is not going to move. If they bother to set up cones, don’t use them because they probably won’t be there next time by. Don’t crab in, get to the right edge, just shy of dropping a tire is good. It’s a passing corner, but beware. If you get in a fight in turn one you and your opponent are likely to both lose out to a third party. Using anything less than all the real estate costs a lot of time.

The curbing at Willow Springs, by the way, is very sharp, tall and narrow. Do not touch. The braking for turn one is very quick, sharp but smooth (squeeze don’t stomp), and not all that much. Turn one is fast, so the car has to carry speed. As soon as you’re back at track out; fight back to the left to get set up for turn two.

Two is long, constant radius sweeper, but starts heading uphill toward the end. You get more grip coming out than going in. You can scrub a fair bit of speed during the initial turn in a Mazda GT even without braking, although with my new rear springs perhaps less than before. Right after the turn in you need to have throttle to set the car and carry speed through the turn. If you carry too much speed into the turn you’ll be in danger since a throttle lift might just put the car into a high speed tank slapper. If you’re too fast, do nothing rash; let the front end scrub off as much excess speed as it can as the guys pull by you on the inside (if you’re one of them please remember to wave as you motor on by.) A lot of times the inside gets fairly sticky and rewards your staying right down against the inside, but keep your head up since it’s not a perfect radius and you can drop a tire on the inside pretty easy. Otherwise you can try two-thirds of the way out with an apex two-thirds of the way around. You spend a lot of time here, so it rewards keeping up a nice quick pace. As soon as you see daylight, get on the throttle and make sure you use the entire exit. Then start fighting to get back to the right in time for the beginning of the Omega; turns three, four and five.

Three is a very good passing zone under braking turning up the hill, toward the left, but if you are going to pass there make sure you can get all the way by. It works well with a late turn in, so somebody on the line will likely move their car back across your nose, right to left, to get to their apex. If dive bombing to steal their apex is a bit rude, dive bombing, smacking their left rear quarter panel, and knocking both of you out of the race is downright embarrassing. Besides if you keep the pressure up they will either overcook a corner by themselves or ultimately leave the door open either there or somewhere else that will let you by. If you’re still stuck, try leaving just the right amount of room to get a really good launch on them coming out of nine. A good exit from nine might be worth six car lengths. Be patient and remember it only hurts if somebody else is getting away and even then it hurts a lot less than not having a car for the next race.

The Omega (its nick name is based on the Greek letter, because of its shape) starts at turn three, which as stated is a sharp, dramatically uphill left. Hit the apex and you’ve got a huge amount of grip. Fight for balance because the surface, if it’s the same as it was, gets really rough at the top of the hill, right about the same time as the car starts to get light and stays that way all the way past the second apex. Late turn in while remembering that no throttle gets tons of understeer while any throttle risks missing the exit apex.

After the uphill left is the right hander, turn four, 200+ degrees, that flattens at the top of the Omega shape and then drops off (loosing grip) toward the end with a b%$-buster of a rough surface. The double apex is, come in, clip the first apex going uphill, use a sight picture of the top of the hill as a turn in point, get to the very top of the hill, then a very sharp turn in to a second, late apex to enable you to get a little throttle on the downhill but watch out. It’s short and at the bottom of the hill is a left (turn five) that has poor grip from entry to apex (still sharply downhill) and then gains a bunch of grip going to track out (turn’s sharply uphill) while bending back to the right at the top of the hill which is turn six. The curbing on the right side is a good mark. Or you can forget all that and just follow someone around the top of the hill. Really you can only gain or lose a couple car lengths at worst from the top of the hill to the bottom. The important part is at the bottom of the Omega, this is turn five, and it’s the second most important turn for a good lap.

In a Mazda GT you are at full throttle from the entry of turn five all the way through six, seven and eight. So the sooner you can get on the throttle the better. Throw away the poor downhill braking zone and the top of the hill and such and just concentrate on early throttle coming into five.

The car will get very light at the top of turn six, but not enough to have any real trouble keeping the foot down. The car is going to go light over the elevation change and buck like mad on the clunky surface of seven and eight, so it might not feel like you can keep your foot down. But you can and must. The road stays really rough for a long time (unless they’ve repaved since…) and the car is really moving, I mean scary fast, and the road is busy knocking your fillings out but again keep the throttle glued to the floor since seven is just a kink and eight is really more like a brake zone for nine than a corner of its own. The temptation is to lift, because the first time through at speed you’re thinking ‘no way the car stays on track’, but not only will it, frankly it’s really not even all that close. It just feels like it is.

So at some point during eight, pick up a really good mark for a brake-point adjustment before turning in to nine. I recall trying a bit of a diamond, braking from the right edge inside of the ‘apex’ of eight to the left edge before turning into nine, where the road straightens for a split second. But that may not be either right or necessary. What is necessary is to get the entry speed and apex of nine just right, with very few good marks to orient yourself with… So start to find the right spot by throwing away anything about eight that could get in the way of getting the entry speed right for nine first. Once you have the entry speed and apex for nine right; then look to go to more braking as late as you can (between eight and nine), as long and as late and as hard as you can so long as you don’t upset the entry to nine and keep hitting nine at the right entry speed. If you upset the car at all before turning into nine, back off because…

Nine is huge.

Comments from T.W.
As for the Willow Springs track notes, there's a couple things I could add. If you do use the whole track (and maybe a little more) coming out of turn nine, where the track meets the pit entrance the edge is off camber and can suck you off the track. During one of the SCCA races I ran there last year a bunch of guys were having problems with their rear ends stepping out right at the pit entrance because of that. I had a couple wiggles there but managed to keep it on track. If you over correct, it can shoot you straight across the track into the wall on the other side, as happened to one of the open wheel guys that day.

Update from Paul:
It's a bit different with the Jerico Transmission. I found myself using a lot more first gear as the weekend went on, including first all the way up the hill from the entry to turn three all the way past the second apex of turn four. Also, the car was getting a much better jump off of turn five, I had to slow the car more and use less track out or I'd hit turn six at an angle that would cause the back end to step out and cost a lot of time.

Miata with a retractable hardtop

From the truth about cars:

Combine the Miata’s legendary handling with the relative convenience and
security (and coolness) of a hardtop drop top, and it’s clear that little Mazda has succeeded where no other automaker has bothered to go. Yet. The introduction of the first generation Miata back in 1989 was an automotive high water mark.
The MX-5 Hardtop is déjà vu all over again.

Missing a chicken or two?

heh.

Friday lunchtime links...

F1 testing in Spain, from f1blog

If you've got a thing for cars that swim, from 4 drivers only.

And what week would be complete without some supercar stuff. Viper's ACR, video and commentary, from autoblog.