Neutral steer is the state where both the front and the rear tires will reach their maximum grip at the same time while cornering. In other words, all four tires slide equally through a turn. In neutral steer, both the front and the rear tires have the same slip angle. And for us, what matters is actually getting to the good neutral steer where this slip angle is within the optimal range of that specific tire. So if it's a slick tire, that optimal range is going to be a little bit lower. If it's a radio tire, that optimal range is going to be a little bit higher. And you can visually see a car with the radio tires sliding a lot more on a very good lap while a car with slick tires is more difficult to see the slide because the slide is such a small angle.

Too much lateral slide is still neutral steer. If you have the whole car sliding at 40 degrees with no steering, that is technically still neutral steer, but a bad one. It is impossible to be in neutral steer 100% of the time because we have to turn the steering to initiate a corner, to change directions and to make adjustments. But your goal as a driver is to stay as close as possible to that theoretical limit at all times. Meaning you're constantly adjusting the steering and the brakes and the engine braking and the throttle to make sure that the car is as close as possible to neutral steer from corner entry all the way to late exit.

Why Oversteer Setups Are Generally Faster

Oversteer setups are generally faster just because it's way easier to reach neutral steer, which is that point right in between too much oversteer and too much understeer without having to use too much of the brakes. Remember that the brakes cause rotation and you can use them to get the car to point a little bit more, but they also cause deceleration. So if mid corner, you're still having to trail brake a little bit too hard to keep the car turning, that is bad because you're actually consuming your speed. You're actually decreasing your minimum speed a little bit too much in order to get the rotation. If a car has already a lot of rotation available, then you don't have to keep forcing that rotation with the brakes. And as a bonus, you gain cornering speed.

Neutral Steer Angle Versus Slip Angle

The only thing you have to know here that gives you a clear goal to chase while driving a new car, for example, is to understand what is the optimal slip angle of that specific tire. Now, you know that neutral steer is when all four tires are at that angle, meaning you can pretty much treat the whole car like one big tire. And if the slip angle of one tire is five degrees, then the optimal neutral steer angle of that car that will give you the most cornering forces is precisely that same degree. So if this lip angle of the tire is five degrees, the neutral steer angle of the whole car should also be five degrees. And you should do your best to maintain those five degrees throughout the whole corner.

How to Achieve Neutral Steer

First of all, you just need to chase for micro oversteer, with not too many steering corrections. You're trying to dance with the car, and the car at that point of neutral steer becomes extremely responsive to anything you do. So the driver has to be super proactive with maintaining the neutral steer. It's never going to stay there without a lot of effort. It's not like you're going to reach the neutral steer and then benefit from it for the rest of the corner. No, no, no, you have to stay in it because it's going to slip away from you all the time. You're trying to get into it, and then if you stay with the same braking pressure and the same steering, you can't even achieve it for like a fraction of a second, then it runs away from you. So you should be constantly chasing that and maintaining and keeping it as the car gets less speed, you need a little bit more steering, and you're constantly forcing that extra rotation.

It's way easier to get neutral steer on an initial turn-in, but then the speed goes down. The car tends to want to understeer more and more and more. So it's a moving target all the way from initial turn-in until exit, and you have to constantly chase it and try to stay in that state where you're doing micro corrections all the time. If you're not having to do any micro correction, you are not a neutral steer.

Key Factors for Maintaining Neutral Steer

To maintain a perfect neutral steer, we are going to teach you spirals, the maximum rotation point and elevation changes on the track. You have to know a little bit of everything, because in order to reach that neutral steer in different corners, you have to understand all the different characteristics of each specific corner. The corner has a lot of grip, and in order to get that neutral steer, you actually have to force the car more. But if the corner is a crest or downhill, then it's way easier to get the car to slide already, so you need to be a lot more subtle with your inputs, because a little bit too much inputs in these kinds of corners already make you get into too much neutral steer, or sliding too much and destroying your tires.