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Finally got around to creating some video of some of my day described in post #119. One of my fastest laps is shown and it starts just after the GT3 passed me on the inside of Turn 1!
Here is the description of the funny diagram on the left - "Qview™ is an innovative way to visualize the performance of a car as it drives around the track. It combines lateral acceleration, longitudinal acceleration, and speed differences into a single graphic that is easy to grasp.
Notice that we have switched to a view directly over the car, as if you are a helicopter flying and turning with it. As you scroll forward in time, the track will pass underneath you. The top of the display is the forward direction of the car. The width of each block is proportional to lateral acceleration. The length (in the direction of travel) of each block is proportional to longitudinal acceleration
The inside color is red for braking, blue for accelerating. Intense red is hard braking, intense blue hard acceleration. White means you are neither braking nor accelerating. Blocks are 0.2 seconds apart"
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White 08 GT Roush S/C 445 HP/KDW2 285/40/18 tires/18 x 9.5 Steeda Ultralite wheels/ Steeda Competition springs/D Specs/FAYS2 Watt's Link/LCA/Adj UCA & Mnt/Upper strut mnts/GT500 Brake Kit/GT500 Front LCA/X5 Ball Jnt/Bmp Str + more
Hmmm, you're only about 14 hours drive from me...
One day I'll have a truck and trailer, then the gloves are coming off! I would love to make it up there some day.
Looking at your the video of your brothers run against the GT-R is interesting, especially to do a quick comparison of the data. I'd really like to hand the keys over to a more seasoned driver like this; you're lucky.
"We accelerate from corners, not christmas trees, and the length of our drag strip is dictated by the distance to the next braking area." -Carroll Smith
Hi Colin - I spent a little time playing your videos and learning what the "QView" is telling me. I went back to your post #73 where you have a video of yourself at Mosport, on a clean lap and right below it a post of your brother. I did a brief visual analysis of your QView vs his at each corner around the track. A few differences really jump out. I'm sure you have done this also and hope you don't in any way take offense to my analysis. Its a good comparison of of an intermediate level driver (correct me if I'm wrong but I think thats how you would describe yourself) vs an advanced driver (your brother) in the same car. Some observations:
- His corner speeds are much higher and thus the width of his QView is bigger at each corner, indicating the higher lateral accelerations
- As your brother enters and exits a corner the width of his QView gets wider and then thinner in a very smooth fashion, its not choppy at all. In some corners yours are a bit choppy, i.e. the QView gets wide, then narrower then wider again, all in the same corner. I think what this means is your bro is setting his steering angle as he enters the corner and then not adjusting it, just smoothly accelerating out of the corner and slowly unwinding the wheel. While you look to be turning in too little or too much and then having to adjust, thus affecting the lateral acceleration that is measured.
- Your braking points are very similar and often times your QView is more red (higher rate of deceleration) than your bro's. Thats sort of interesting because we tend to think advanced drivers brake harder and later. It looks like in many cases you are braking harder but its because you are also scrubbing off more speed before turn in.
- I can also see some differences in trailbraking in the QViews - red with wide lateral acceleration. On serveral corners you have a very dark red approach with little width (hard brake, no turn) while your bro has less red with more width (less brake but turn in while still braking, i.e. trailbraking).
All in all thats very informative and a great learning tool. One thing I might suggest is you point the camera in such a way so that you can see your hands. For analysis, watching your hands is far more important than seeing the upcoming track in the video. A little tip I recently learned is to put a piece of white tape on the top of your steering wheel, right at the 12 oclock position and a piece at 10 oclock and one at 2 oclock. Then video your hands and note a couple things. Your hands should stay below the 10 and 2 marks. Do you shuffle or cross-over. One key to going fast is turning the wheel less. Less turning = more speed. So compare how much you turn to how much your brother turns (if you get another chance to do videos like that). Concentrate on turning as little as possible, i.e. use ALL the track.
I recently sat thru a class on the TraqMate system. It allows you to plot on a chart things like velocity on the Y-axis vs Distance on the X-axis. You can overlay multiple laps or even different sessions (i.e. different drivers). When you do this, say for a full lap, it shows you a series of peaks and valleys, kind of looks like waves. The line heads up for acceleration, the steeper the line the harder the acceleration (very much like the darker blue in the QView) and it heads down for braking, the steeper the negative slope the harder the brake (like the red in QView). There is a lot to be learned by examining the transition from acceleration to brake (the peaks) and the from brake to acceleration (valleys). This would equate to the transition from Blue to Red and then from Red to Blue in the QView. A key to driving fast it to strive to make the peaks and the valleys as sharp as possible, i.e. minimize the coasting where you are neither braking or accelerating. So in the QView, this would mean your goal is to get the white parts smaller, you want to increase the amount of blue, decrease the amount of white and minimize the white in the transitions (brake hard, get off the brake and apply throttle). These are just general tips I picked up. Every corner is different and lots of corners require maintenance throttle (you aren't braking and you aren't accelerating and thus the corner looks white on the QView) but if you work on the above, your laps times will improve (or so I'm told...I unfortunately do not yet have a tool like that).
Hope this info is useful! Brad
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07 GT 5spd: stock > road racing > stock.
I was going to suggest similar comparisons as Brad sent, but the same fear of offense prevented it. I hope his and mine (now) are taken in good spirits. I'm certainly no expert driver, but I'm kind of excited about talking about driving, offering observations, and just generally sharing.
So I'll first just +1 all of what Argonaut said, then add one little observation. Keep an eye on both the speed and g's your brother holds through the corners. Both are obviously higher, but you'll also note that he is regularly in the .90s through the most corners. Assuming he is doing a good job of sampling traction and finding the car's limit, this gives you a ballpark idea of what your car is capable of doing (at least on those corners). Looking at your video/data shows you regularly holding .70s through the corners (and pulling down more speed). That's quite a difference, but the good news is that it is the exact same car being driven. So you know you have a lot more in her...and in yourself.
Brad,
Colin and I both have the Quantum data logger (he just has the slicker video package). With it comes a software analyzer called Chart, and it provides the sorts of graphs you mentioned. I find it very interesting, and it makes back to back comparisons of different drivers (or yourself from lap to lap) very easy. You can't beat it for the price. It would even be possible (and nice) to email the data files to other users to get their feedback. If anyone also uses the MaxQData systems and wants to check out my runs at Road America, I'm happy to send them.
"We accelerate from corners, not christmas trees, and the length of our drag strip is dictated by the distance to the next braking area." -Carroll Smith
I really appreciate your input and a lot of what you say is what my brother was telling me on May 22. Executing everything at the same time is what I find challenging.
The package includes a second camera to aim at the driver but I'm having trouble with the second USB port and so far it only works intermittently.
I have done is as suggested and put my brother's best lap and my best lap, prior to this weekend, both in MaxQdata Chart at the same time and I can see at each point on the track and thus compare speed, lateral and longitudinal gs at each point. What I learned from it was that my biggest problem was I was braking too much for the corners, thus the low latera lgs.
Since then I have set myself targets for minimum corner entry speeds for the key corners and am trying to enter at those speeds. Right now I know I'm not getting into 8 (at the end of the main straight) fast enough and losing a lot of ground there. I'm feeling pretty good about 2, the blind left hand double apex negative camber corner and catch a few guys there.
As you both observed my bro's corner speeds are higher and his lateral g's are higher. I guess this partly comes from over 10,000 laps at Mosport and a lot of them in a "momentum car, a non turbo 944. His backside is way more sensitive than mine and he is more consistent than I.
Last night I compared the total of my bro's best segment times to the total of my best segment times from this past weekend. Unless I've done the math wrong his was 1:40.79and mine was a 1:37.835! Working on validating this right now by building a video of my 7 best segments to see how long it runs. - edit I found that even though the same beacon file was used for each session the program chooses a different beacon as #1 so therefore the segments are not the same for different sessions so I was not as fast as I thought.
I really appreciate and value the input guys. I'm here here to learn.
I would really be interested in some data from Road America. Thanks.
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White 08 GT Roush S/C 445 HP/KDW2 285/40/18 tires/18 x 9.5 Steeda Ultralite wheels/ Steeda Competition springs/D Specs/FAYS2 Watt's Link/LCA/Adj UCA & Mnt/Upper strut mnts/GT500 Brake Kit/GT500 Front LCA/X5 Ball Jnt/Bmp Str + more
Last edited by Sleeper_08; 08-19-2009 at 08:33 PM.
Reason: found bug in process
Last night I compared the total of my bro's best segment times to the total of my best segment times from this past weekend. Unless I've done the math wrong his was 1:40.79and mine was a 1:37.835! Working on validating this right now by building a video of my 7 best segments to see how long it runs.
Thats sweet - you theoretically can drive a faster lap than your Bro if you could put it all together. And that is the key point - consistency is the biggest difference between a good intermediate level driver (me, you and probably Philo) and an advanced level driver with a lot more experience. Like everyone always says: seat time, seat time, seat time...there is no substitute.
I didn't know the MaxQ system had that Chart capability. Any chance you (or Philo) can post a image of the chart of Velocity vs Distance for the same lap as in the video? Or any example for that matter.
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07 GT 5spd: stock > road racing > stock.
Thats sweet - you theoretically can drive a faster lap than your Bro if you could put it all together. And that is the key point - consistency is the biggest difference between a good intermediate level driver (me, you and probably Philo) and an advanced level driver with a lot more experience. Like everyone always says: seat time, seat time, seat time...there is no substitute.
I didn't know the MaxQ system had that Chart capability. Any chance you (or Philo) can post a image of the chart of Velocity vs Distance for the same lap as in the video? Or any example for that matter.
Here is a link to the MaxQdata manual and it describes in 156 pages what the system can do.
Right now my system is building the data version of one of my sessions and it takes a while to run. Once it is finished I see if I can get some screen images of my lap.
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White 08 GT Roush S/C 445 HP/KDW2 285/40/18 tires/18 x 9.5 Steeda Ultralite wheels/ Steeda Competition springs/D Specs/FAYS2 Watt's Link/LCA/Adj UCA & Mnt/Upper strut mnts/GT500 Brake Kit/GT500 Front LCA/X5 Ball Jnt/Bmp Str + more
Colin, I'll send the RA file to you shortly...I'm currently at work and am supposed to be prepping classes for next week.
Brad, here's a screenshot taken straight from MaxQData's website (I hope it comes through). There's more line graphs in this image than I care to decipher, but you have full control over what you see by checking the relevant boxes. Also, you can select the parameters you want graphed as well (Distance is one of them, but there is a wide host of others). Lastly, you'll note in the screen shot that there is an "A) Portland Qualifiying" and a "B) Portland Qualifying." You can set A and B as any two loaded files, and thus directly compare two sets of data. On the whole you have a very wide range of control over how you select and view the data. You can even run the file sets and watch the two cars "race" each other virtually (in .5x, 1x, 2x, or 5x normal speed). I have to say it's pretty darn cool.
"We accelerate from corners, not christmas trees, and the length of our drag strip is dictated by the distance to the next braking area." -Carroll Smith
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- edit I found that even though the same beacon file was used for each session the program chooses a different beacon as #1 so therefore the segments are not the same for different sessions so I was not as fast as I thought. 
