Extreme and defensive driving
The book is devoted to extreme and defensive car driving. The content is divided into two parts: “defensive driving” and “extreme driving”. The first part is independent and is mainly aimed at mastering of defensive techniques. The second part is devoted exclusively to extreme driving and is aimed at developing driving skills, which will allow you to get the best lap time.
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© Dmitry Aleksandrovich Liskin, 2024
ISBN 978-5-0053-7232-1
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
Introduction
Extreme and defensive driving – are strongly coupled driving styles, covering body of knowledge about cars, its components and parts and how it works, driving experience and skills. Extreme driving means driving a car at its limit of potential and learning basics sports elements (high-speed cornering, drifting, braking methods, study of special terminology and so on) to achieve a minimum lap time. Defensive driving is focused on preventing crashes related to a partial loss of control over car (for example, when the front wheels lose grip with the road in a corner).
Control a racing car is a mastery that takes years to master. Handling a sport car by a professional racer is comparable to virtuoso playing of a musician on the guitar or piano. You ask: “Why do we need extreme and defensive driving skills, when we are either driving calmly in a straight line or standing in a city traffic jam?” The answer is simple: no one is immune to accidents on the road that can occur no matter what your driving style is. If a driver does not have the necessary skills, defensive driving techniques are not worked out and are not brought to automatism – the driver can count on luck only.
Content of the book is divided into two parts: “defensive driving” and “extreme driving”. The material is built by an education course and is not difficult to master by a person, who has basic skills of driving car and is familiar with how it works. The content includes:
• tests results, their analysis and generalization;
• descriptions of operation of car components, that affect behavior of car and control techniques;
• the techniques and methods of extreme and defensive driving;
• requirements for successful completion of the driving techniques;
• description of the driving techniques in circuit racing;
• a set of exercises for self-training of drivers and racers.
The book is not a collection of postulates and canons, but is a help in mastering driving skills. The author is not responsible for road traffic accidents, related to a lack of understanding of operation of car components, the driving techniques and their incorrect doing, with inappropriate technical characteristics of cars and accidents caused by non-compliance with precautions when performing the exercises. All techniques should be performed after preliminary tests on the car and careful training of the driver. The responsibility for driving lies entirely with the driver.
DEFENSIVE DRIVING
First part of the book is independent and is mainly aimed at mastering of defensive techniques. To bring the techniques to automatism, at the ends of the chapters exercises and tests are offered that simulate situations that may arise on the road. In the text of the first part of the book there are practical parts “test” for testing car and the defensive techniques and “requirements” for successful completion of the defensive techniques. Driving techniques are shown in the form of flowcharts and marked with the letter M.
Front wheels sliding
The phenomenon when car not answers steering wheel turns, moves along straight trajectory (or trajectory begins to straighten) due to loss of grip of the front wheels on the road, is called understeer. Car shows understeer (low steerability), when the front wheels slide on the road.
The figure shows, how we entered a corner at a fairly high speed and pressed the brake pedal to the stop, which caused the front wheels to lock and, as a result, front wheels sliding.
Consider what happens with a contact patch of the front tyres to the road when understeer due to heavy braking.
The figure schematically shows deformation of a tyre during front wheels sliding, when the front wheels are turned by the steering wheel at a large angle. Contact patch is marked gray. When braking, load on the front axle increases, so contact patch also increases. When understeer, the tyre deforming, contact patch rotates to direction of movement, and so-called tyre slip occurs. Tyre slip is angle of twisting of contact patch relative to direction of movement of the wheel. Steerability factor is defined as ratio of rear wheels contact patch to front wheels contact patch. If front tyres deformation exceeds rear tyres deformation, steerability factor is less than one. In this case, they say understeer or low steerability.
Sliding of the front axle is reflected in feedback of the steering wheel. If at entry to a corner, the steering wheel turned with some effort, and after car stopped obeying the steering wheel and the steering wheel began to rotate more easily, then sliding of the front wheels began. After the front wheels regain traction, feedback of the steering wheel is also restored.
Sliding of the front wheels is a cause of accidents. Let us list causes of understeer, which are related to driver errors:
• too high speed or large angle of turn of the front wheels on entry to corner;
• excessive braking during cornering (including wheels lock).
