(motor running)
(upbeat jazz music)
- Dude, it was insane how slow I am compared
to like what that car can actually do.
I would venture to say
that almost everyone watching our videos here
at Donut have fantasized about being a professional driver.
Many of us wonder, "Hey, what separates me,
someone who enjoys carving the canyons,
from someone who does this for a living,
a real true professional?"
Obviously a pro has trained their whole life
and has a degree of natural aptitude.
But once they're in the car,
what is a professional doing
that an amateur like myself just can't keep up with?
Well, today we're going to take a scientific approach
to driving fast.
We're going to track eye movements,
steering and feet inputs, and compile all that data
to figure out what a pro's doing that I'm not.
And at the end of this, we'll have a nice list
of track day tips that you can take to the track
and drive faster than your buddies.
'Cause that's what this is all about.
It's all about bragging rights.
The guy gave me advice.
He was like, "Hey, it's got four wheel steering.
And it's gonna feel like the car's gonna go out
from under you."
He's like, "Don't worry about that."
I was like, "All right."
So I'm a little nervous.
(upbeat electronic music)
Thanks to Off the Record for sponsoring this episode.
It looks like someone didn't have the luck of the Irish
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(blowing) Well, the folks at Off the Record know
that money is tight right now.
They got a network of attorneys ready to help you
and even offer a full 100% refund
if they're not able to get your ticket reduced
or keep it off your driving record completely.
So save your money, pal.
- [Narrator] Register now to use code DONUT
for 10% off your first ticket at offtherecord.com/donut
- Hey, whose motorcycle is this?
- [Man] We found it.
- Oh.
In my quest to be a faster driver,
I thought, "Hey, if I could study every move a pro makes,
all I'd have to do is mimic them,
and I'd instantly get faster."
But to mimic them, I first need to record
and analyze what they're doing that I'm not.
And with this powerful knowledge in hand,
it will produce some faster lap times and a checklist
of things I can do on the track.
So instead of researching how to drive fast
by reading books, yuck,
the B2B team made a trip to Las Vegas to visit our friends
at Exotics Racing.
They have their own private 1.2 mile track and a bunch
of supercars that fit perfectly with our little experiment.
Using a bunch of cameras and these super nifty
eye-tracking glasses from Pupil Labs,
we will record my steering inputs,
my braking and accelerating inputs,
and see where my eyes were focusing
while I'm out there on the track,
then compare all of that data
to my driving instructor, Mike.
(engine running)
That's Mike.
Mike runs the drift cars out at Exotics
and also knows his way around a GT3RS,
the car we will be using for our tests.
The first session of the day, I got zero instructional help.
I did seven laps with Mike sitting beside me
in total silence.
I took all that GoPro experience from my past,
and I made a lot of mistakes.
And the first thing I noticed after we looked
at the footage was what I was doing wrong with my feet.
(upbeat jazz music)
When it comes to throttle and braking input,
the two things your feet are doing in a car,
Mike and I had, let's say, different approaches.
Let's take a look at this corner in particular.
The first thing you'll notice is
that I'm wearing Space Jams.
Yeah, your boys, a sneakerhead.
Hit me up on Insta if you want to talk kicks.
I've got strong kick game.
Second, you'll see a lot of unnecessary movement going on.
I'm on the gas.
Then I go to the brakes, but I don't brake.
I then go back on the gas.
I'm unsure about my inputs.
This might be due to the fact
that I'm still getting a feel for the car and track.
But even after a couple of laps,
I'm still doing this dance with my feet.
If we compare that to Mike's feet,
you can see that he moves his feet with purpose.
And you also notice when he transitions
from braking to accelerating and back to braking
how extremely smooth those actions are.
And that is what's really important here.
If you want to learn how to go faster, you need smooth feet.
So is there a science to being smooth in a race car?
Oh yeah.
To maximize accelerating, turning, and braking,
you have to know how to maximize your tire's grip
and not exceed it.
And there's one thing about tires
that people don't tell you.
They suck at multitasking.
If you're using 100% of a tire's grip for braking,
you can't say, "Hey, tires,
why don't we throw in some turning in here too?"
Your tire's all like, "You're asking too much of me.
I'm not your mother."
So if you're braking and you want to turn,
you have to proportionately reduce your braking to do it.
Driving fast requires balancing and braking and turning
and accelerating and turning
to make sure you have enough grip to stay out of the weeds.
Not only do you need smooth feet, you need smooth hands.
(smooth electronic music)
To help understand how we get smooth hands,
we can look at string theory.
According to driving string theory,
to balance smooth turning with smooth acceleration
or braking, just imagine a string attached to the bottom
of your steering wheel and the top right of your foot.
If you're at wide open throttle
with the steering wheel pointed straight,
the string is taut, and you can't turn the wheel.
To turn the wheel, you'll have to lay off the throttle,
and the harder you want to turn,
the less throttle input you can give.
Same thing applies to brakes.
Hard braking, no turning, and vice versa.
This is a quick and easy visualization technique
for managing your tire's limited grip.
One way that new track drivers like myself get into trouble
is by using inputs that are too aggressive.
Changing a tire's mind takes time,
and those aggressive inputs unsettle the car,
abruptly changing or exceeding the tire's grip.
So how smooth were my hands during my first session?
Not too bad.
Okay?
I didn't have a ton of erratic steering movements,
but what I did do wrong was not connect the motions
of my hands with my feet.
String theory not initiated.
You can see here I'm turning while still braking.
And here I'm still putting on a pretty aggressive turn
while I'm on the gas.
When the car is braking, turning, accelerating,
or in my case, a combo of those, the distribution
of the car's weight is therefore constantly changing.
Say a car is rolling straight with a constant velocity.
Each wheel is providing an equal amount
of load and therefore traction.
But now say I brake really hard.
The front of the car, it's gonna dive forward,
and the front wheels are now carrying more load.
The opposite occurs during heavy acceleration.
But with either case, the total grip
when the car is braking, turning, or accelerating is less
than when each wheel is equally carrying the load
and the car is balanced.
You can see here when Mike makes a turn,
it's one long smooth turn, and then he's back to center.
Me, on the other hand, I gradually get there.
I'm doing little, little adjustments.
Overall, the main thing to take away is Mike,
when he steers with his hands, it has purpose.
He's making that turn, and then he's going back.
He does it with purpose, and he does it smoothly.
Take a look at this graph.
My speed is on the Y axis,
and the distance that I'm traveling is on the X axis.
Now the more area under that curve signifies a faster time
around the track.
If we look at these two graphs side by side,
you can clearly see that Mike is faster,
but what's interesting is where he's faster
at certain points of the track and why.
Right here, for example Mike is braking way, way later.
You know that because his speed is still high
up until he turns into the corner.
But me, for example, I'm braking way too early.
I don't get up to the maximum speed that Mike does.
And his time shows that.
My fastest time in the first session was 57.65 seconds.
Mike did it in 51.48 seconds, six seconds faster a lap.
That is a lot of time, six seconds to be exact.
But just think about that for a second.
Say you're doing a 10-lap race.
Mike would already be lapping me
before the race even finished.
And that is embarrassing.
You never want to get lapped.
The next thing that differentiates a pro
from someone like me is their eyes.
So we got these really neat glasses
from a company called Pupil Labs.
These are the invisible glasses,
and they had these two little cameras right here
that are tracking the movement of your eye.
And then it correlates it to this forward facing camera.
And it can determine where my eyes are looking.
(smooth jazz music)
So let's look at what my amateur eyes were doing
during my first session.
Well, I was looking way too close to the car.
You can see right here, I'm looking just
past the fender of the car.
By not keeping my eyes up, I'm limiting my field of vision.
Not on every corner,
but the corners I felt most uncomfortable with,
I went back to staring right in front of the car.
Right here, for example, my eyes,
they're still looking at braking cones
when I should already be focused on the apex.
And then I look at the apex way too long
before darting up to the exit.
Watching Mike's eyes, though,
they are up and looking way down the track.
Once he's into the corners,
he's looking one step ahead of where the car is.
He's got pro eyes.
With his wider field of vision,
he has more time to see what's coming up
and alter his driving inputs accordingly.
Looking ahead also connects the dots on the racing line.
The track at Exotics, they have various cones around it,
braking cones, apex cones, exit cones.
So by looking ahead, you can focus on these cones
so that you hit your correct line.
One of the major mistakes I made
in my initial session is I chose an incorrect line
because I'm not looking up.
I'm not pointing the car where it needs to be pointed.
Look up Jerry, look up.
So if I had to boil down what I learned, it would be this.
One, freaking look ahead.
Maximize your field of vision.
Two, have smooth braking and handling inputs.
Brake smoothly in a straight line
without any added steering.
Same thing goes for accelerating.
Same thing goes for turning.
Three, connect all the dots on the track
that form the best racing line,
and do that while not getting the car out of balance.
So armed with these newly learned techniques,
I got back out on the track to put these principles
to practice for my final session of the day.
But not before a little bit
of motivation was added into the mix.
You see, I found out that Gordon Ramsay is a fellow car guy
and frequent customer at Exotics Racing.
That's interesting to me
because I also happen to be a fellow chef.
You may remember that I'm quite the French toast maker.
Lots of you asked about my recipe.
I've posted it on my Instagram.
If I was going to beat that donut-
- [Voice] Donut.
- Of a chef, I needed to be smooth and look ahead,
smooth hands, smooth feet, smooth eyeballs.
So lap after lap, I did my best
to implement these new techniques and beat Gordon.
But was it enough?
(crowd cheering)
I want to thank Exotics Racing for having us
and the Donut crew out there.
They were super, super cool.
If you want to go drive a freaking supercar around a track
when you're out in Las Vegas, hit them up.
Link in the description below.
Those guys are great.
They got all sorts of cars.
You can even ride along in a drift car, which we did,
which was a ton of fun.
Thanks to Pupil Labs for supplying the eye-tracking glasses.
Without these glasses, we wouldn't be able
to see all the mistakes I made.
If you're interested in learning more about Pupil Labs,
hit the link in the description below.
They got a bunch of cool products,
including those eye-tracking glasses.
Until next week.
Bye for now.
(smooth electronic music)