Motorsports is About Cornering

Learning to Approach the Limit Safely

It's totally possible to learn high-level motorsports without making bad mistakes that take you on a spin or a crash. It can still happen, but we can minimize the chance of making bad mistakes by 99% if we learn how to approach the limit properly. One of the most useful things to do to understand complex concepts or techniques is to go back a few steps until it's simple enough so that we can comprehend its own building blocks.

The True Objective of Motorsports

The objective of motorsports is to drive as fast as possible around the racetrack. If you're a beginner you easily associate this with top speed or straight line speed, but only after a while you realize that what really matters is breaking and cornering. The competition of pressing the throttle as hard as possible quickly loses value. Also, thinking of top speeds is just dangerous. Any mistake done at high speed like carrying too much speed into a corner can become unsavable very quickly. Actually, reaching high top speeds should be the last thing to be achieved after we have completed and mastered many previous steps.

Focus on Minimum Speeds First

Instead of thinking of top speed, true racing drivers will focus on minimum speeds first. Minimum speeds are the best place to build up your driving from, and as you find the limit there, you can then expand the grip usage from there towards the exit and the entry, branching out the limit from mid-corner towards the extremes of the corner. Always find the limit on this lowest speeds first, and then move towards the highest speeds.

Understanding Grip Limit Through Safe Practice

By reaching cornering grip limit over steer, under steer, or even both at the same time, which is neutral steer, at the minimum speeds first you understand the grip limit of the car in a safe environment, and that allows you to expand those states progressively to higher speeds areas of the same corner as well as faster corners on that track.

Building Braking References

After you find the grip limit on these safe zones, you will also naturally start building up your braking references. Just like cornering, there is a safe way to find the braking limit without putting yourself at risk, and this is done by braking hard to understand and feel the deceleration capability of the car way before the actual braking zone, to know the rate at which the car can slow down. And only then connecting this limit with the cornering limit, mid-corner.

Top Speed as a Natural Consequence

And the cool thing about all this is that by moving the braking references further and further, we finally reach the peak top speeds in the safest way possible, not the objective, just a natural consequence of mastering cornering.

Key Principles Summary

• Minimize mistakes by approaching the limit properly

• Focus on cornering and braking rather than top speed

• Start with minimum speeds in mid-corner

• Find the grip limit through over steer, under steer, or neutral steer at low speeds

• Expand the limit progressively from mid-corner to corner entry and exit

• Build braking references by understanding deceleration capability before the actual braking zone

• Achieve top speeds as a natural consequence of mastering cornering