Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

F1">Advanced Driving Lessons From F1

Since I’ve been on a bit of a car & dri­ving tiff for the past few days, I thought I’d share some­thing meatier with every­one: some actual dri­ving lessons!

This first one is about the impor­tance of bal­ance in your car, under­steer and over­steer. This is why you want to get a sports car — the street-legal, consumer-level kind — with as close to 50/50 bal­ance as you can.

This next one is a unique video.  It shows onboard views of the track, the tach, and very impor­tantly, the ped­als.  This is a les­son in dri­ving by a mas­ter who is, sadly, no longer with us.  This is a video of Ayr­ton Senna tak­ing an Acura NSX around the track.  It shows you the dri­ving line and it shows you how his feet con­trol the car’s throt­tle, brake, and how he upshifts and down­shifts.  This is truly a les­son by exam­ple from the man who dom­i­nated the world of For­mula One when dri­vers still had to use a clutch pedal to change gears and how well you con­trolled all 3 ped­als meant the dif­fer­ence between win­ning & losing.

This final video is about get­ting dri­ving lessons from another mas­ter.  This is like a dri­ving les­son from your grand­fa­ther — except that this senior cit­i­zen dri­ves a sports car with more skill than you or I ever will!  Yes, this is an enter­tain­ing clip of Jackie Stew­art try­ing to get a guy to shave 20 sec­onds off his lap time, and suc­ceed­ing at it.  Per­haps it’s good rea­son for you and I to take to heart his advice about throt­tle control.