Let's talk about advanced steering concepts. This lesson discusses steering angles, steering grips, steering force and steering feedback. The objective here is to break down some features in steering to help with understanding more advanced techniques.

Steering Angle

Steering angle is simply the angle at which the steering is right now. It's a static number that changes. You can turn 45 degrees, you can turn 50 degrees, you can turn 90 degrees. It's just the actual present angle. It's like the speed. If you're on space drifting at 80 kilometers per hour, you're going to stay at 80 kilometers per hour. It's a static number.

Steering Grip

Steering grip is literally how much we squeeze the steering. If you just grip very very hard but you don't apply any force, then the steering is going to stay the same. You're just going to be wasting your own energy and hurting your hands.

Steering Force

Steering force is the force needed to change the angle. You have to apply a little bit of force to change the angle but if you have no grip, then your hands will slide on the steering. It's kind of useless. You have to have at least some sort of grip to be able to apply force. Grip plus force changes the angle. That's very important to separate those things. We're just breaking down the physics behind steering inputs.

Steering Feedback

Steering feedback is the force that you feel as a result of you trying to turn the steering. If you have a car with no power steering, you try to force the steering to turn but the steering will force it back. There are two reasons the steering forces itself back when you try to turn it.

Self-Centering Force

If you just turn to 45 degrees and the car is moving and you leave your hands out of the steering, then it's going to go back to straight. Why is that? Because of something called self-centering force. When the car is turning, the front tires are trying to get back to going straight. The self-centering force is always going to be there. It's designed in pretty much all cars with the caster. It's a suspension feature that makes it so that when the car is moving, it wants to go straight. That means you force the steering to one side and then as soon as you drop your hands, it forces itself back. It will always do that as long as the car is moving.

Counter-Steering Forces

We can have something else that is not only the self-centering force. The self-centering force will always be there as long as the car is going straight or not sliding. But as soon as the car slides a little bit too much, let's say in a very aggressive example where the car is sliding at 30, 40 degrees, when you drop the steering, the front tires will always try to go back to the direction of the car, not necessarily zero degrees. So if the car is at a 45 degree angle, then when you drop your hands, the front tires will automatically turn themselves to that specific 45 degrees of angle and then they are going to correct the car for you. This is called counter-steering forces. It's a self-centering force that goes past zero because the car is trying to fix its own slide on its own.

Quick Recap

• Steering angle is the actual number, just a static number

• Steering grip is how much you grab the steering. You just need to grab enough. You don't have to grab super, super tight. Never fight the steering too much because we will use the force that we apply

• Steering force should be very precise

• Steering feedback will also be very precise. Sometimes the car is whispering to you, especially when you're turning into a corner

You have to be precise with the combination of these things. The grip and the force should be just enough so that you can communicate, so that you can talk to the feedback of the steering. Then you and the feedback will come to an agreement and make the car turn. This is how you gain the precision necessary to drive a car on the limit. In the next lesson, we are going to talk about the light hands technique, which is how we apply these concepts to a pro level.