FF Driving

[Azuremen]

Duke has the right idea. I auto cross, and have a great deal of experiance with left foot braking on snow and ice. It helps in allowing for a slightly smoother transition between deceleration and acceleration. On snow and ice, where smoothness is a neccesity, this is importent.

When I am on the autocross track, I don't use it. I don't touch the e-brake either. I rotate the car with trail braking. Works best, and leads to quick lap times.

right foot braking: accelerate straight, decellerate, turn, accelerate out
left foot braking: accelerate straight, slower acceleration through turn, accellerate out

Umm... if you are still accerating before and in the turn, with no deceleration zone, then you are going hella slow on the straight. Or you like understeer.

If you are not accelerating or decelerating, you weight shift is zero, and your car is what ever its stationary weight balance is (Mine would be like... 45/55 in the MR2). If you are losing ANY speed AT ALL, you are decelerating. That means weight will be transferred forward (So, I might have 70/30 under heavy braking). There is NO way around this; the laws of physics deign this so. If you are gaining ANY speed, you are accelerating. This means weight moves to the rear of the car (I would get something like 30/70).

On use of left foot braking in MID corner, not entry, and in an FF car, is to slow the rear wheels. An EXTREMELY skilled driver can maintain the rotation of the front wheels with the gas while the brakes are applied, and if the tires are close to the limits, than the rears will lose some traction, and the car will rotate a bit more. This is more of a corrective measure when entry is NOT perfect.

And Duke has good reading suggestions. It seems He, S31Ender, and myself all have some experiance and background knowledge here. And I know the physics... or do we need Famine here as well

 

[Small_Fryz]

I agree with Azureman, Duke and S13Ender, the laws of physics back up you guys 👍

 

[fasternfaster]

Neon_duke: you sold me..i do agree with you on most points but i still think that left foot braking allows you to help the car rotate.. let me explain how this works..

when you go into the turn and you do your initial braking you shift the weight forward so that you can have a nice sharp turn in. the speed at which you can turn in depends entirely on ho much grip you can give your front tires by weight transfer abd how much rotational momentum your car has. (this is true at ANY speed 20mph or 200mph)

anyway so when you turn in all that really happens is your car gets a slight bit of lateral acceleration and a whole bunch of rotational (yaw) momentum. The goal is to keep this rate of turning through the entire corner and not make your front tires fight to keep turning the car. because your rear wheels are applying force in the same direction as your front tires( towards the center point of the turn) they are effectively applying torque to your car slowing down your rate of turn (yaw). by pressing the brakes and the gas at the same time you allow your front tires to turn at the same speed( steady state cornering no acceleration or deceleration untill u hit the apex)

anyways.. the same way that a car can do a burn out by holding the gas and the brakes, your intent is to overpower the brakes with the front wheels while overloading the rear tires so that they go outside of their traction circle and thus provide less lateral acceleration than the front tires.

although.. this would only help those cars that are VERY prone to understeer and they would still be slower than the SAME car set up to be more neutral. a proper swaybar setup would be much more helpful here, where you can have the car lift the weight of the rear inside wheel and transfer that weight to the front. Thats how i usually set up my cars.

in gt3 for the vitz race. i put the front sway bar setting to 1 and rear to 7 this will allow my car to dogleg through a corner while effectively putting down all 299 turbo hp i got in there. an LSD is very important as well.. its a shame that the game doesnt have torque sensing LSD (torsen) if it had those the car would turn even faster as the outside wheel would apply more torque and it would work like and active yaw control in some 4wd cars ( AYC ) .
btw i drive my vitz the same way i drive my FR and MR cars, i dive into corners to get a sharp turn in and then get on the gas to power out because the rear has little grip it just swings around and keeps the yaw rate up. while the front wheels accelerate out of the turn.

I own an FF car ( SVT focus) and i never use left foot braking and when ever me and my friend drive somewhere i always manage to take turns faster than him. on long on ramps where steady state cornering is important, my SVT focus goes a hell of alot faster than his acura integra type R. he has to left foot brake to keep his car from understeering.

now that he got a bigger rear sway bar he no longer needs to left foot brake.


sorry i may have gotten off topic slightly, but we are prolly both right. and just talking about different things.

EDIT: i didnt read some of the later posts untill after i posted this ( i didnt update this page since yesterday) you guys are all right

 

[Stinky Chicken]

i also disagree with duke. if you're going fast, you brake into a corner no matter what. with right foot braking you lose alot of momentum, and decellerate through the rest of the corner. when you left foot brake you can keep the revs up in the engine, then you can accelerate away, with your foot still on the brake to finish off a tight corner if required, as you said - to the best of your ability. better than you could if you lifted off the accelerator completely

if you have access to an FF car and a stopwatch, try it out with a friend spotting you, i think you will have higher exit speed and complete a given turn quicker with left foot braking

Actually, I find I understeer whenever I use left-foot braking into corners that require you to brake hard. Left-foot braking only works for me in short, jab-the-brake-then-lift-off corners.

Can someone shed some light on this for me?

(and yes, I keep the same line and speed into the corner no matter what style of braking I use - maybe I'm simply a bad driver)

 

[CrackHoor]

go pick those books up and then we can all talk about this again.

I assume you've got those books too? Are there any others you'd personally recommend?

I've got Going Faster: Mastering the Art of Race Driving by Carl Lopez and How To Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn, can you guys tell me how those compare to the books n_d has mentioned? I'm always looking to learn... 👍

 

[sideslider]

ok I use (in real life) left foot braking, which allows you to change your momentum gradually rather than throwing you wieght foward and then back again to accelerate undoing the wieght shift....and as for e-braking .......oh i hope it rains soon..(nice article by the way duke)

 

[S31Ender]

I assume you've got those books too? Are there any others you'd personally recommend?

I've got Going Faster: Mastering the Art of Race Driving by Carl Lopez and How To Make Your Car Handle by Fred Puhn, can you guys tell me how those compare to the books n_d has mentioned? I'm always looking to learn... 👍

I don't have those books, no. However, I suggested to pick them up because despite our best efforts to explain, the concepts weren't getting out. Maybe reading those books would help because the concepts would be explained a little better and in more detail, with diagrams and ect.

 

[///M-Spec]

less weight back. that would mean some shift forward, right? the weight doesn't just transfer to nowhere? anyway, if you don't believe me, there's nothing i can do about it. adios

You can try believing neon_duke and S31Ender, because they're right.


M