- We're here in Texas with Dave from the Rally Ready driving school, we're going to move
onto our second lesson of our rally driving fundamentals.
Now if you haven't checked out our existing lesson in the series, make sure you do that
before you watch this one.
So Dave, lesson two, what have you got in store for me?
- Well we're going from the 4WD caged Subaru rally car to the 2WD front
wheel drive Honda Civic here.
So the idea now is you've gotten comfortable using your left foot on the brakes, now we're
going to left foot brake through a corner on our skid pads.
So the skid pad is essentially a never ending corner, we're going to go out three laps
at a time and get your comfortable using your left foot on the brakes and understand
how to apply that left foot braking technique to get the car to rotate in a corner.
So what we're going to do is we're essentially going to isolate the braking only, we're going
to eliminate the steering and the throttle as variables by having a set throttle position
and setting the steering wheel about a half turn.
So your hands will be back at that sort of nine and three position and you're going to
be using the brakes to bring the car in and out.
So the idea with this exercise is not that when we drive rally cars, we don't use the
throttle or the steering, we just use the brakes and hope for the best,
it's that when we really want to just get your comfortable understanding how
powerful left foot braking is as a standalone tool.
So as we isolate that input, you'll see you can get the car to move in and out on the
course just by using your left foot on the brakes.
Alright so for those watching at home, how much pressure are we applying and when
we apply that pressure, what happens, is this where we find that the nose of the
car will tuck into the corner?
- Yeah so there's a whole lot of things happening with left foot braking.
In an open diff car like this, you're sort of using it as a false limited slip since you're
dragging brakes on all four corners, you're preventing some of that wheel
spin, you're also sort of dragging the rear brakes which allows the back to slide
and you're moving weight forward which also helps that turn in.
So most of what we're doing here though is just managing that speed.
When you're in a front wheel drive car, if you're flat on the gas pedal,
and you have no brakes and you turn into a corner on a loose surface,
the front is going to push, right, you're Just going to understeer off the course.
So what we do is we start to add that throttle until we find that understeer point and then
you add throttle and brake together, the brake sort of countering some of
that throttle which brings the car back in.
So the idea here is understanding when you come into a corner in a rally car, you turn,
you add the brake and then you can be dynamic with that brake pressure as much
as you need to.
So just like in straight line braking, we're going to press with our leg and then
we're going to modulate by sort of modulating just that big toe.
So you'll press the big toe down and you'll lift it back up just a little bit.
So it's a very fine amount of pressure, rarely are you coming all the way on and
off the pedal.
We like to talk about it as you are the ABS pump now right so you're responsible
for that modulation and it's again, small small inputs, small adjustments and make
the magic work.
- Alright can we talk about the line we're going to be taking, obviously this is a continuous
corner so it's not like we're entering a corner and exiting it.
But are we trying to stick right on the apex of the corner as we go through it?
- Yeah so what we'll start by doing is have you sort of mid corner, a little bit towards
the inside and we want to get you consistent and steady in that spot with the car.
Once you get to where you can keep the car there the whole time with a little bit
of modulating on the brakes, then we'll start to work on pushing the car out,
bringing the car in and I'll sort of give you pointers and cues and let you know
when and where to push the car..
What you should be able to do is put the car anywhere you want it on the course
at any time.
- Alright sounds like fun, little bit to learn, let's go and have a crack at it.
- Let's go for it.
OK skid pad time.
- Alright.
- So we're going to go counter clockwise on this one.
Like I was saying earlier you basically can just look completely out the driver's
side so nice and easy at first, just sort of find that understeer point
without any left foot braking.
Just keep the car right there about a half turn.
And try keep your hands at nine and three steady about a half turn of steering.
Good and then add throttle there.
Don't move the steering, just keep adding throttle and then add brake on top of that.
Good, eyes up over that mirror all the way out and then you should be flat in second
gear with a tonne of brake, consistent brake, ooh that's right on that GoPro.
So all the way flat in second gear and a tonne of brakes, tonnes of brakes so hold
it steady, don't come all the way off just keep it steady, all the way down,
all the way, all the way.
There you go, good, lots of brake.
Good nice and steady and then when you want to bring the car in, add a little
bit more brake, when you want the car to push out, off the brake a little bit.
Good and then add that brake back again.
Good nice and steady, nice and steady, no steering.
There you go, so I like to keep the hands at nine and three no matter where the
wheel is, there you go just move 'em back to nine and three.
There you go.
And steady on that brake.
So a little bit less steering, you have a full wheel in which is too much, you're in
the scrub zone there.
So you're not going to get the understeer, there you go so right about there,
half to three quarters, perfect, again eyes way up that way, you should be looking all
the way over.
Nothing exists here, we can just block this screen out.
Good so as you come off the brakes, let the car push out a little bit and just
come up off the brakes, eyes up over there, eyes up over there, over the mirror,
off the brakes, let the car push out, looking over there, back on the brakes bring the car in.
You want to modulate here as much as you need to to keep it steady.
Good, nice, good consistent work with the steering.
Eyes up there, we're going to go straight here, straight here, straight here, good and then
you'll cool it down.
It's a little bit of a reprogram there.
- Definitely, it's a lot different to the 4WD.
- Yeah.
- But yeah I think you get a lot more perspective of the amount of control
that the brake gives you than you do with maybe the 4WD.
- Yeah and that's kind of the issue is like in the rear wheel drive car, you're always,
even if you use the brakes to sort of induce the slide and to run the car through the
corner, you're still going to be throttle steering that little bit right.
You're always going to have to modulate the throttle to keep the car where you
want it.
And in AWD it's sort of a hybrid of the two.
With too much grip frankly for that exercise.
Open diff, front wheel drive is great 'cause it teaches you, wow that front wheel drive
with some left foot braking, it'll really modulate just that front end.
So again neutralising the understeering again so most people who are looking at rallying
are probably looking at a 4WD or a front wheel drive car, this is a great place to start
because the corner dynamics for an entry are going to be really similar in a front wheel
drive versus a four wheel drive.
The big different obviously is going to be that power on the exit.
So getting the car into a corner you're going to use the same technique, whether it's
front wheel drive or 4WD, and even in a rear wheel drive, the turn in brake is still
how we're going to get the car into a corner, you're just going to be balancing it with a
combination of brake and throttle in a rear wheel drive car.
Again one of the things we haven't talked a whole lot about is sort of the latency.
Just the time it takes to transition from throttle to brake.
That's one of the big advantages with left foot braking.
- You don't actually have to get off the throttle and then that's that period
where you're doing nothing and then get on the brake.
- That's it and that latency period or that delay between coming off the throttle
and then transitioning to the brake, that's a lot of time.
If you just sit in your car and you go, gas, brake, gas, brake, gas, brake
and then you go gas, brake, gas, brake, gas brake, gas, brake with two feet
you could see how much quicker obviously using two feet is.
So even if you're in a rear wheel drive car and you're mid corner and you're
on throttle and you're balancing it with that throttle, the ability to move that weight
around really quickly with left foot brake, still always going to be an advantage.
- So the aim is sort of like towards the end of those laps there, it was more a
case of let the car run wide with a little less braking and then good decent braking
pressure and get it to tuck in and the back come around.
- Yeah and really get comfortable modulating that.
- Yeah sure and initially I was using too much steering lock so what did you say,
half to three quarters of the turn?
- Yeah a half turn is kind of the sweet spot in most of these cars.
- Yeah OK and any more than that you're sort of going backwards?
- Yeah you're, again it's where you start to rely too much on the steering and not
enough on the brakes.
So even a little past a half turn is probably really the sweet spot as far as steering angle
goes, if we keep it a little bit less and we rely more on the brakes, it's better for the
sake of the exercise.
- Alright let's do this.
- Good so same thing, steady with the steering, nice tidy hands, try to keep
them at nine and three.
So the reason we want the hands at nine and three is just because visually
it's easier to tell when you're moving them and it's easier to keep from doing what
you're currently doing which is moving your hands.
So move 'em at nine and three, less steering, see what's happening is you're
just keep slowly adding steering as that's the instint.
So you're like this on the brake, steady, I should never see your foot moving.
You should just be moving that big toe.
So not on off on off, just steady steady, just tiny tiny adjustments with that
big toe, little adjustments, still too much, still coming all the way off there.
You should always have the brakes a little bit pre loaded, even when you come off them.
There you go, just let it run out a bit.
OK we're going to squeeze a lot of brake, bring it in here.
Nice and steady, nice and steady, nice and steady, nice and steady, oh off brake,
let it push out.
Oh not steady with that gas, there you go.
So let it run a little bit wide just slowly kind of taper the brake off, eyes up
that way.
Eyes up that way, let it start to run a little bit wider, graze the camera out
here on the outside, off the brake, let it run wide, off the brake let it run wide.
Eyes up, eyes up.
Good let it run way out to the edge so off the brakes a lot more, let it run wider,
eyes up, eyes up, eyes up, eyes up, keep your eyes up, over the mirror,
over the mirror, don't worry about anything over here, eyes up that way.
Good and then start to slowly feed brake back in.
Slowly feed the brake back in and start to tighten the car back up, bring it towards
the inside.
So feed brake in, eyes up, more brake, more brake, more brake, start to run it in.
Good so what we're trying to do is really just neutral the steering out.
You don't want to have understeer, you don't want to have oversteer, you want to
just be able to neutral and trace the corner.
So exactly what you're doing right now.
So on this one, come off the brake here, and just second, accelerate that way.
There you go, unwind the wheel and over the crest, good.
I spent a lot of time in New Zealand as you see based off my massively cambered corners.
- Yeah yeah it's nice.
Yeah OK so yeah way too aggressive on the on and off the brake.
- Yeah and just gentle modulation on the pedal there.
- Yeah I think I was sort of coming, trying to come off completely and then get back on
rather than yeah as you've mentioned, try to sort of hold a moderate amount
of braking pressure and then just modulate on and off from there.
Yeah definitely it works better and you can also see how you could sort of run
from basically the outside of the skid pad to the inside just by what you're doing
with the braking.
- Yeah absolutely and it's like I did in the demo for you, once you're comfortable
with this, you can get to where you could use big inputs and tonnes of braking but
you just have to really be able to feel very delicately exactly where that sweet
spot is and how much pressure you can apply and what we started to do in straight
line braking was getting really comfortable with that right.
Our goal is always to find that traction limit as quickly as we can and as aggressively
as we can without lock up.
So we want to make sure that we're transitioning weight instead of just
squeezing the pedal 'cause if you don't transition the weight forward, you'll just
lock up the hydraulic system and the car will just slide.
So yeah that was much better obviously on that pass as you started to get comfortable
modulating the brakes more gently.
It's, especially as you get into the figure eight and the slalom the smoother the better
and just gentle application of brakes.
Again when you're, especially in the slalom and the future eight, you're mostly using the
brakes to rotate the car, more so than scrubbing speed.
So instead of you know on a road course where you're on the gas, on the gas,
on the gas and then hard heavy braking, you're using that brake pedal just as a
tool to assist with rotating the car.
So same thing.
- Alright one more go.
- Let's do one more go at it.
Alright three laps, first lap midline, we're going to sit right in the middle of the track,
nice and tidy, eyes up over the mirror.
Steady wheel, steady foot, nice and steady.
OK one lap down, next lap we're going to squeeze the brakes in, we're going to hold
the inside line so squeeze more brakes, steady throttle, steady throttle, good,
nice and tidy on the inside.
Good just hold that inside, eyes up over that mirror all the way ahead.
As we come up here, feet off the brakes, push it towards the outside, keep that
steering steady, off the brakes, let it run outside, good nice work.
Hands are steady, and then just modulate that brake and hold on the outside line.
Perfect, nice turn to the outside, keep it nice and far outside.
That's it, three laps, you got it.
Alright whenever you're ready off the brakes, accelerate that way again.
And over the crest, flat out like a proper rally drive now.
Look at the speed.
- Alright that felt like I had actual control there, when you wanted the mid line
I could hold the mid line, inside line I could get to the inside line and then that
outside so yeah I think it wall sort of clicked there.
- That's what we want.
- Perfect, well let's head back and have a debrief ay?
- Cheers to that.
- I saw a real progression there, that first lap was definitely not great.
I had a real struggle getting my head around modulating that brake pedal, I was coming
off the brake and getting back on it which you picked up on and gave me some instruction.
Also not looking in the right place and then hands weren't in the right spot.
But over the second session it started to click, the third session, which is only three laps
per session, you were telling me where to put the car and by modulating that brake
pedal we could be right on the inside line, the middle or the outside.
So it all started to sort of fall into place.
So in terms of using that technique in the next session, how do we play out with the
left foot braking and the steering as we progress?
- Yeah so again in the skid pad, the goal is to be able to just move the car with
the brakes.
Like you said, first session was tough, second was better and by the third one
you really had that dialled.
So now we're going to split that skid pad in half and we're going to add a weight
transition in that figure eight.
The big things to look for moving forward, the takeaway from this is again,
not that you're going to drive a rally car with no steering and no throttle
modulation, it's just to rely on the braking first.
Using the steering wheel to suggest where you'd like to go and then really focusing on
moving the weight around with the brake pedal.
So as we move from there, again same thing, we're going to try and be really consistent
in the corners moving forward, just like you were in the skid pad.
So that's why this is really the most important fundamental is really understanding that
modulating the brakes is what's going to move the car always in a rally car.
- Now I think the other thing that's important for our viewers to just bring in here,
you said this to us off camera, this visually looks like a really boring exercise if
you're watching from outside the car.
But really important.
- Yeah these guys hopefully are going to make it look cool but usually when we have
classes, we just sort of, mmm hide your cellphone for this people are like,
they get out of the car and they're like I'm a golden god, I'm a warrior of driving and
then they watch and they're like he's just going in circles in a Honda Civic.
- I think it's important to mention, you don't get the perspective of when the
car, like the car has to just about be facing backwards before it visually looks like
it's really sideways so I felt in that third session basically Sebastien Ojier
right up in here.
- Yeah it was good, I think your French accent needs some work but as always
the feeling was good for me in the passenger side, I could read for you, pace note,
it's left three forever, is really only note you need.
- Very easy for this co driver.
- Yeah not a lot of work, no I mean it really, in the car, you can feel what's
happening and what you're doing essentially, you're neutralising that
understeer so the front of the car pushing forward, that's that understeer that we're
trying to eliminate by using left foot to sort of bring it back in and then we
can scrub that even further by adding a tonne of brake and bringing it in.
So instead of getting into an oversteer which is what you're going to get in the next
exercise, you'll feel by adding brake it'll get the back to rotate and instead of having
that understeer where the front pushes, we're able to put the car in that neutral
state so anybody who knows anything about racecar dynamics knows that having a
front wheel drive car on street tyres on a dirt track going in a circle, it's not
exactly a condition that you would expect the car to handle neutral, and so for you
to be able to get it there, not only keep the car in that space but also move it around on
the track on demand, that's that sweet spot that we're looking for.
- Alright well I think I've got my head around that lesson, we're ready to move on.
And for you watching at home, if you're interested in learning more about
rally driving, continue watching these lessons, we've got another two coming up.
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