High Speed Confidence

Introduction to the Exercise

This exercise focuses on building confidence on high-speed corners through a systematic approach. We will be working specifically on turn four, but the setup begins at turn two. From turn two, we proceed through turn three, and at the exit of turn three, we will set up an active reset. This corner will serve as our practice area for learning how to technically approach high-speed corners with a proper system that builds confidence.

Step 1: Starting with Understeer

The first step is to lift and do the corner while accelerating slightly. This approach helps you start building up some understeer on that corner. You will lift a little bit and then do the corner while maintaining a little bit of power. Remember: do not use full power because you might induce a spin. The car is set up to spin if you go full power, so you need to build the precision of going half throttle and inducing the understeer instead.

When you lift and apply half throttle, feel the car's laziness to turn. This sensation will give you some idea when you do reach understeer, which means you're very close to the limit speed.

Testing the Grip

For example, if you overslow too much and go half throttle, you will feel that the car can turn so much more. That means you're way under the limit, and that's just a way to test the grip. We're testing the grip because we don't want to ever guess how much speed we want to carry on a high-speed corner. We want to test it out and give ourselves factual information about how much speed we're carrying.

If you overslow, try turning in the same way. You can try turning more and realize that the car goes all the way to the inside. In real life, you're going to turn and notice that the car gives you a little bit too much grip and doesn't want to go all the way to the outside. This gives you information that you're not carrying enough speed, so you're going to lift a little bit less.

Using Gear and RPM as Reference Points

Pay attention to what gear you're using and how high the RPMs are when doing the corner. This is information you can use in real life. For example, if you use third gear at medium RPM and still didn't use all the track, that tells you something. If you lift even less and feel like you're accelerating a little bit more, you have to relax your hands and keep testing that grip by carrying more and more speed.

Always try to do the corner while the speed is going slightly up or at least being maintained. If you do the corner while decelerating, you will see that the car wants to rotate a lot more.

Understanding Weight Transfer and Rotation

If you carry a lot of speed and really try to get the apex, you get oversteer because the weight is on the front tires and you're trail braking. The car does give you a lot more rotation because of the grip that you have added to the front tires.

A big mistake in real life is to just carry a lot of speed and then try to rotate and get that oversteer while your speed is decelerating as you're forcing your way into the corner. The correct approach is:

• Brake early and do the corner with some weight on the back

• Use half throttle

• Go full throttle after you exit the corner, or at least coast a little bit

• Remember that if you're coasting or braking, you need to relax your hands more

Relaxing your hands when coasting or braking will give you that extra precision to not induce too much rotation.

The Progressive Build-Up Process

Here's the recap of the systematic approach:

1. First, overslow and do the corner while accelerating half throttle to test the grip (super safe, always the first step)

2. Next lap, slow down a little bit less

3. See a little bit higher RPM with third gear

4. Keep building like that up to the point where you're decelerating into the corner and then accelerating out of the corner

5. Decelerate even later into the corner

As you progress, you have to have relaxed hands because if you're decelerating while turning, you have a lot of grip on the front tires. You have to decelerate with very, very light hands up to the point where you're decelerating while going to the apex.

The Light-Firm-Light Pattern

When the car is a little bit more on the limit, you can feel that your light hands are going to be super necessary. You always want to get that peak rotation mid-corner to really point the car well, so the exit feels smooth. The pattern is: light hands, power, relax your hands; light hands on entry, turn a little bit more, power, relax your hands. This is the light-firm-light pattern.

You don't have to worry too much about the light-firm-light pattern when you're decelerating before the corner. As soon as you decelerate and accelerate into the corner, the steering is pretty safe. You're not going to spin because you are on half throttle.

However, as soon as you start braking while turning—which is the most dangerous part of the whole high-speed corners—you have to relax your hands on that entry phase with the speed going down.

Speed Awareness and Reference Points

What you notice with this exercise is that you have to really be aware of how much speed you are carrying. That's why using the gear and the RPM of the gear that you are in is so useful to get another information source of how much speed you're carrying. Just feel is not going to be enough.

Important reference points include:

• Where you're lifting at first

• Visual references for where you're lifting (lift a little bit early, then a little bit later, then a little bit later)

• The sound of the engine at the same gear you're using

The engine sound is going to give you a very precise measure of how much speed you're carrying all the time.

Practical Examples with Different Gears

For example, try fourth gear at medium RPM. If that feels manageable, then try third gear at higher RPM. If third gear at higher RPM feels easy and the car is not on the limit, then try fourth gear at higher RPM. Now you might find that you're having to brake.

Keep trying to maintain fourth gear at higher RPM to really be on the limit. If you want to carry even more speed than that, the car starts to feel like it's on the limit and maybe oversteering. You need to have light hands at this point, especially if you have experience.

Common Mistake: Carrying Too Much Speed

If you're inexperienced and force the car a little bit, you can easily induce some oversteer on fourth gear at higher RPM. If you're really inexperienced and don't notice that you're getting that oversteer, you can end up spinning. This is a very common mistake: just carrying too much speed and braking, not relaxing your hands, really looking at the apex and trying to get as much rotation as possible.

This should never happen if you have the approach of:

• Lifting before doing the corner while accelerating

• Lifting a little bit less and doing the corner while accelerating

• Building up to the point where you're decelerating as you brake into the corner with really relaxed hands

Because of the exercises you've done before and the whole build-up process, you already have a better idea of how much speed you're going to be carrying.

Speed Sensation Precision

This whole exercise is going to require you to really work on your speed sensation precision. In the simulator, you're going to mostly feel the speed. Triple screens will help you a little bit more. But the gear you're in and how high the RPMs are based on the sound of the engine are going to give you a very precise reference that you can use in the sim and in real life. This reference is very, very useful and safe and precise because it's always going to tell you exactly at what speed the car is.

Additional Practice Corners on This Track

On this track, we have three corners where we can try this technique:

Turn Four

Turn four is one of the primary corners for this exercise.

Hard Braking Zone

We can also try this on a hard braking zone. At the same time, we can do the exercise of testing by breaking earlier and doing the corner while accelerating to test some understeer.

High Speed Corner to the Left

There's a high-speed corner to the left where you can use the same thing: brake and then do the corner while accelerating to feel it, and do the whole process of braking deeper and deeper into the corner.

Fast Downhill Left-Hander After the Corkscrew

After the corkscrew, we have a very fast downhill left-hander where we can also try the high-speed confidence building process. Set up an active reset, lift early, and then do it while accelerating. Then reset and start carrying a little bit more speed, using a little bit less throttle because you're carrying more speed now.

Determining if a Corner is Flat

As you progress, you can ask yourself: Is this corner going to be flat or not? You try that by always doing a little bit more speed each time. If you start feeling a little bit of understeer and carry more and more speed, you can lift slightly. If you're starting to feel the car is understeering a lot, you can be pretty sure that this corner is not going to be flat.

You will always have to lift because once you've reached that understeer, even if you carry more speed and try to do it flat, the car would never be able to do the corner. The process of making that understeer so that you can judge the grip of the front tires will tell you way before whether the corner is going to be flat in this car.

Summary

In the end, this is the same inducing understeer exercise, but we're just polishing it so that it becomes more practical and more subtle. That's why it's so important to do all the previous exercises very well.

If you have any questions, you can record one of your exercises and send it for feedback. You'll receive personal feedback on what you should be doing, if you're doing it right, if you're doing it wrong, and any other advice that might help you develop those skills.