Colton Herta: I think it's hard when you have
a 20 turn track like this.
We're talking about normal road courses
that maybe have 10 to 13 corners,
and then we come here that has 20.
So that's another seven to 10 corners
that you're able to have a mistake on.
Hi I'm Colton Herta, I'm 20 years old,
and I'm a professional race car driver
in the IndyCar Series.
I'm the winner of the IndyCar Classic
at Circuit of the Americas,
and I'm here to take you turn by turn.
Starting on the start/finish line here,
this is where a lot of the overtaking is gonna be done.
You have a really good brake zone going up into Turn 1,
which is about 140 feet in elevation change.
So, you're going up very high
so it's gonna make the brake zone a lot deeper.
Another key thing coming into Turn 1
is there's a very big bump on the entry.
So it really disrupts the braking,
and to really set yourself up you can maybe move
a little to the left of the track there.
Going actually into the turn
it's gonna be down from sixth gear to first gear.
Very standard hairpin,
and then try and square it off the best you can
and get the power down as soon as possible.
Turn 2 is very self-explanatory,
it's flat out for us.
So this is when you're all the way down on the throttle.
That's what we call holding it flat.
There's a very big bump that can upset you on cold tires.
The car will bottom.
When the car slaps the ground,
the bottom of the floor,
it basically lifts the tires almost for a second.
So then the car is out of your control.
How you can counteract that is by going a little bit slower
so the suspension doesn't fully compress
going over that bump.
Personally my favorite part of the track
is this next section, this Turn 3 through Turn 7.
And as you'll see you really wanna keep it tight
on the inside and really not extend out too far on the apex
or on the exits of the track
'cause you need to be ready for each next turn.
It doesn't really slow down that much
so you always kinda need to be on your toes.
This isn't a place that
you'd particularly see a lot of passing,
but you really want to stay right up
underneath somebody as best as you can
because passing zones are coming up very quickly.
I think Turns 3 through 7 is the most dangerous
just from a sheer speed standpoint,
entering in at 200 miles per hour
and then actually going through the corners
around 160 miles and hour,
it can be prone to some big accidents.
Okay, so it's very important to get a very good exit
out of that section of corners.
And this is the most important corner on the whole track.
This is gonna lead onto the very long back straight.
So, you really wanna focus on not braking too deep,
but staying within your limits in the car.
This is the most important part here on the exit,
getting the power down cleanly
so you can make the maximum amount of lap time on that lap.
And then also if you're trying to overtake
staying right up underneath that guy
so going down the back straight you can get a slipstream.
Going down the back straight you can see
probably going up to about 200 to 210 miles per hour.
This is gonna be the number one place to pass.
And that's gonna lead you into
best braking zone there is on the track.
This is a very tough braking zone
because you're coming from such a high rate of speed,
going all the way down from 210
to probably around 70 or 80 miles per hour.
Once you get the braking down, it's a very simple corner.
Very self-explanatory, it's just like any other hairpin.
So Circuit of the Americas
is one of the more difficult tracks that we go to.
You have very low speed corners and very high speed corners,
so you have to be able to set the car up for both.
These next few corners are probably the most technical
and difficult ones that we go to all year.
You really want to get the balance good through here
'cause you can gain a lot of time.
This is really, I think, one of the best tracks
for the engineers to shine at.
He kind of is the brain of the whole team.
The mechanics are the guys
that are actually making the changes on the car,
but the engineer is telling them what to do to the car.
He will be doing things such as changing wing angle.
When you tilt the wing up,
that's gonna give more of what we call down force.
And so the air is gonna push the car down harder.
So it's a compromise, you want more grip in the corners,
you have more wing, but then again
you'll be slower down the straights.
Another huge thing
is spring and damper stiffness and softness.
Everybody knows what the spring of a car is,
and then the damper is actually the shock inside of it
that kinda holds it from compressing too much.
When it is stiff, typically that's better for high speed.
When it is soft, typically it's better low speed
'cause when it's stiff it doesn't flex the car as much
so you're able to stay a lot more stable
and go through those high speed corners a lot better.
But when it's soft it really kind of digs in,
and that's where you want it to be in the slow speed.
And so coming into this double left-hander,
this is a very tough one.
You're braking at angle. So, whenever you brake straight,
that's when you're gonna have the most braking performance.
When you start turning, that's when the car gets loaded up,
and wheels get light, and you'll see
what we call locking up,
which is when the wheels will actually stop.
And you'll skid and that's where you see
kinda like smoke coming off the tires.
So coming up, the triple right-hander, 16, 17, 18.
This is a corner where in qualifying
you're all the way down on the throttle.
You can do this in qualifying because we'll have new tires
and it'll make the car a lot more drivable.
When you get into the race and you have older tires,
less grip overall, this turns into a much harder corner.
Coming through Turn 19,
this is another very difficult corner.
It's a very fast corner, and then it's very off camber.
So that's when the track slants away.
So it's a really big corner for the drivers
because this is typically
where you see a lot of mistakes happen.
And you usually see guys that can't
control the rear, and the car will just spin out.
You finally finish the lap with Turn 20.
It's gonna be down from fourth gear to first gear.
It's gonna be a very simple hair pin.
That's a lap of COTA.
Probably one of the, if not the toughest
permanent road course we go to
just because of the sheer size of it.
I think as a driver it's so difficult
because you have a bit of everything.
Like I said previously, you have the slow speed,
you have the high speed,
so you really need to be good at all aspects
and it's very possible to go off there and have an accident.
So, keeping 100% focused the whole time
is the most important thing.
AJ Caldwell: Hey, I'm AJ, thanks for watching.
If you enjoyed that episode of Turn by Turn,
don't forget to hit the subscribe button
so you don't miss the next installment of Turn by Turn.
And let us know what race track you want us to cover next
in the comments below.