- If you're using your car in some form of motorsport competition, you're not going
to need me to tell you that using the throttle correctly is going to be imperative
to getting the most lap time out of your car.
However there are definitely some traps that amateurs tend to fall into with using the
throttle and today I'm going to use some data analysis to go through some of those and
have a bit of a discussion about it.
The data I'm going to be using for these examples today was gathered from one of our own cars
at a recent track event.
Now the data system I'm using in this analysis is MoTeC's i2 system but it really doesn't
matter what system you're using for yourself, all of these concepts apply regardless.
The first thing I want to talk about today is getting off the throttle at the start of a
braking zone.
So what I'm talking about is the rate at which we lift the throttle off.
One of the really common things I often see with amateur drivers is the rate at which they
roll off the accelerator before they get on the brake pedal.
So what we really want is to be able to get off the accelerator relatively abruptly and
straight onto the brake.
Any times we're slowly rolling off the accelerator pedal is wasting time we could
otherwise be using accelerating fully or getting hard on the brake pedal.
So over here on my laptop screen I've got 2 sets of data, from top to bottom I have
got the speed, I've got the throttle position, I've got the steering wheel angle and I've
got the gear as well so here in this section we've got the, both cars accelerating up to a
corner before they are getting off the accelerator, braking and entering a corner
in this section here, that's what we see in the shape of the speed trace here.
So the point I really want to get across here is the way the drivers are lifting off the throttle.
Now if we look at the white line here we can see that at 100% throttle as we're approaching the
corner before abruptly dropping off and going to 0%.
Now if we look at that in contrast to this green line here, we can see rather than
being a sharp line we can see the driver just slowly rolling off the throttle and even
at the base here they're quite slow to get off it.
Now all this area in here, this is all wasted time in that it could be the driver staying
on full throttle for longer or if they're going to get off the throttle they need to get off it
abruptly and get on with their braking.
Now this does seem like quite a minor issue but it is a relatively easy thing to
address in your technique.
The other point this brings up is it shows the importance of motorsport data analysis.
Without being able to look at this in the data, there's almost no way a driver would realise
that they're doing this without seeing it for themselves in the data.
The next point I want to discuss is the importance of getting to full throttle
early at corner exit.
This is absolutely one of the most common things you'll see comparing an amateur driver
to someone more experienced where at corner exit, the more experienced driver is able to
get to full throttle much earlier.
So here on my laptop screen I've got an example of that with my 2 data sets again.
I've got this white trace here and this green trace for the throttle trace.
Now in this section of track up here we are in a relatively long, almost constant speed
corner before getting to full throttle here and going down the next straight before
we get into the next braking zone.
It's really this area of track in here I want to concentrate on.
So you can see here, while we're got some relatively constant throttle as we head through
this long constant speed corner, the white driver is really ramping up and getting
to full throttle much much earlier than the green driver.
Now that might not seem like a massive difference looking at it but if we look at the speed trace
down here, you can see how much more speed the white driver has got compared
to the coloured driver.
Now that is a massive difference over a decent length straight, any time you've got
that speed difference you've got one driver bleeding quite a lot of time with
respect to the other.
So let's have a look at exactly how much time one driver is losing compared to the other
by getting to full throttle earlier.
So one of the functions that every data analysis system will have is the ability to
show a time variance which is something we go over in a lot of detail in both our
Data Analysis Fundamentals and our Professional Motorsport Data Analysis courses.
Your time variance channel that I've shown up here is one of your most commonly used tools
in your data analysis package.
So let's go from the point on track where we've got to full throttle for the last time for the
white driver and we'll put a reference in until they get to the braking point of the next corner.
So if we look across this whole section of straight here, we've got almost a 10th of a
second difference that's being gained just from this one part on track where one
driver is getting to full throttle earlier than the other.
So that's just over this relatively short straight section, just from getting to full throttle earlier.
The last point I want to go through today is consistency in using the throttle pedal.
Now what I mean by that is not getting on and off the throttle quickly when the car has got
some side load in it.
Any time you're getting on and off the throttle abruptly, you're changing the pitch of the car
quite a lot and this can be a really upsetting force for the car.
Now ultimately if this doesn't cause you to lose control, it's just going to limit the
amount of grip you've got and it's going to mean that you're going to be slower as
a result.
So over on my laptop screen I've got an example of that, we've got here on the speed
trace in the top, we can see the car is braking for a corner.
And at this point here we can see on the steering trace that we have got a considerable
amount of steering load, got quite a lot of turn in going on in the car through this
whole section so this feature here, this is a throttle blip for a downshift
but these sections here, this point here and this point here are sections where the
driver is abruptly coming on and off the throttle as they move through this section
of the track.
Now because we have got quite a lot of lateral force on the car, this is quite a
dangerous thing to do.
So in a section of track like this where you've got some lateral load on the car, you never want
to be going on and off the throttle abruptly like that.
At best, it's just going to slow you down, at worst, it's going to cause you to lose control
and possibly have an accident.
So these examples today have just been a brief look and are really just the tip of
the iceberg when it comes to motorsport data analysis.
Both our Data Analysis Fundamentals and our Professional Motorsport Data Analysis
courses, go into much more depth on this and many more subjects like it.
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