I’m an eternal student of cars, and take every opportunity to learn something new about them, particularly about the nuts and bolts of driving them fast and/or sideways, any chance I can get. I’ve done schools, track days, amateur races, and more, for as long as I could drive. I’ve also—through said schools and my access to pros—gotten lots of advice. Most, but not all, has been good. Stop me if you’ve heard either of these two lines of what turns out to be absolute b******* from a racing instructor or a pro: “When you’re racing, you’re either accelerating as hard as possible or braking as hard as possible. Never coasting.” BMW 235iR Race Car “There’s no such thing as maintenance throttle in a race.” Now, don’t get me wrong, there are specific situations where one or both of these statements could be true. When racing a specific type of car, at a specific type of track, the conditions might align; maybe you’re a Formula 1 driver at Imola or racing Spec Miatas at Daytona. I once raced a sickly Fox Body at Road America, and it was broadly true there. But by taking these rules both literally and universally, I have been leaving time on the table for years. Maybe you can learn from me and save some time yourself. Matt Farah World Racing League is an endurance series that positions itself between super-budget endurance series like 24 Hours of LeMons and American Endurance Racing and IMSA. WRL at COTA featured over 80 cars on the grid: GTU class prototypes, GTO class proper race cars, including full-on GT4 race cars and lightly detuned 911 Cup Cars, and then GP1 and GP2 production-based race cars. Some lower-class cars also run in ChampCar or AER, and some higher-class cars also run in IMSA. Notably, as a superb equalizer and cost-reduction tool, WRL is a street tire series, which means all GP1 and GTO cars have more power than grip. It's always a privilege to be asked to race on a team, particularly one like this. My friend Jonny Lieberman would round out the journalist contingent, but then it gets interesting: leading off was hot shoe Mateo (Tato) Siderman, a Fanta-drinking 21-year-old making a name for himself in Lamborghini’s Super Trofeo series (and recently setting a Spec Boxster track record at Willow Springs), and road course legend Tommy Kendall. At 59 years old, Kendall hasn’t competed in a non-exhibition race in 11 years, but he's still got an endless wealth of racing knowledge. Our team fielded a six-year-old BMW M235iR factory race car in the GP1 class—the field of 27 was the largest in the race. Requiring a 10:1 power-to-weight ratio, the N55 engine is detuned lightly to make about 280 horsepower at the rear wheels. The car and full race support—provided by Jacksonville, Florida-based Open Throttle Racing—is a real peach, with predictable dynamics, unflappable reliability, decent fuel economy, and excellent comfort and visibility. It also featured a very cool Sentinel live streaming video platform with three cameras and MoTec data telemetry overlay, so our crew chief Zack could coach from the pits during the races. There would be practice and qualifying on Friday, then an 8-hour race on Saturday and a 7-hour race on Sunday. Matt Farah Endurance racing means keeping the car lapping for hours on end, not making every single corner seem like it’s deciding the IMSA championship. Fuel economy and reliability matter. But it’s still racing. You’re still lapping the car as fast as you can without overdriving the brakes or the tires. You’re still making passes and being passed. You’re still out there comparing yourself to every single other car on the track, particularly those in your class, in the binary, “Are they getting by me? Or am I getting by them?” Even if that has nothing to do with your team’s actual position in the race. I make a good teammate. I’m quick for an amateur or slow for a pro. I run consistent laps, and I don’t bend metal. And I’m a pretty good trackside cook. Those things are enough to keep getting asked back. But I still want to go fast. I still want to put on a good show for the folks. Racing is ego, times are posted, and I’m not exempt from wanting to be fast like everyone else. By the standards of the stuff I review for this magazine, the little 235iR is not that fast. In the current issue, I’m driving not only the 1,250-hp Czinger 21C, but also Ford’s Mustang GT3 LeMans car. Both are incredible high-performance experiences. But I drove neither at the absolute limit, wheel-to-wheel with other cars doing the same. Matt Farah Conversely, the 235iR is the fastest car I have ever raced. I have a decent amount of endurance racing under my belt, in E30s, Miatas, the occasional Civic or Fox Body Mustang. You know, slow cars. Interestingly, my past experience has, in many ways, reinforced the advice given by instructors. When you’re racing hundred-horsepower hatchbacks, you really are using full throttle or full braking most of the time. And why wouldn’t you? On the same “200-treadwear” tires shod on the 235iR, you have maybe half the horsepower. Oversteer is not an issue. Same goes for the rare treats when I get to drive very fast race cars like the Mustang GT3, with downforce and slicks—cars don’t beat physics, but Multimatic and Pirelli certainly can bend them a bit. The 235 has enough power to get oversteer coming out of every single hairpin at COTA. That's significant, as turns 1, 11, 12, and 20, four of the tightest corners on the course, lead to the longest straights. A bad exit from these corners can turn into many seconds of lost cumulative time. Siderman! Not Siederman. Not even race cars are immune to typos. Tato Siderman is an unbelievable driver. This kid started his stint on Saturday at P13 and handed off the car to me for the second stint in P2. (He would go on to repeat the feat in the second race, going from P7 to P3 by the first corner). But it was after the first race, watching Tato’s data over dinner, that broke me. He was coasting all over the damn place. This kid did not drive “always either accelerating or braking as hard as possible” at all. In fact, he put three seconds a lap on me by not only coasting, with zero pedal pressure, for a second at a time at and just after the apex of turns 11, 12, and 20, but also taking the entire first two-thirds of the esses, from the apex of Turn 3 until after the apex of Turn 5, approximately 1.5 seconds, riding 10 percent brake pressure. He does the brake-brush for another second entering turn 8. Going into turn 17, Tato does another big lift and coasts, setting the front end for over half a second. This is a huge number of seconds to be distinctly not at full throttle or full braking, and the fact that it resulted in a lap time three seconds quicker than mine was a real mind-bender. BMW 235iR Race Car “It’s not who gets back on the throttle quicker,” Tommy tells me as I vent my frustrations about the bad advice. “It’s who gets to full throttle quicker. That may mean tipping into the throttle later. And if you’re getting oversteer coming out of the hairpins, you have to lift to bring the car back straight, and you’re losing momentum there. Whereas if Tato coasts, and waits to get back on the throttle for a half a second longer, but is pointed in the right direction when he does, you’re gathering up a slide and he’s pulling away.” He’s right. I’ve been braking harder and later into every corner than Tato. I also get back on the throttle earlier, but nearly every time have to do a small lift to manage wheelspin. Tato brakes with less pressure but for longer, waits to get on the throttle later, and then never has to do any adjusting on the straight, progressive line from “off” to “flat.” Have I mentioned he’s also more fuel efficient? I feel like Cole Trickle in Days of Thunder looking at Harry’s clean tire next to my melted one after the “your way / my way” test. BMW 235iR Race Car The next race, I vow to do exactly as Tato did. On feel, and on the stopwatch, Tato’s way was right: slow is fast all over COTA, with light braking, coasting, and even some previously forbidden maintenance throttle. Though I didn’t close the best-lap-gap on him, my 2:35.5 was nothing compared to his 2:32.6, I “narrowed my misses,” to borrow a golf term, and became much more consistent. A “bad lap,” which before might have been a 2:39 or 2:40, was now a 2:36 or 2:37—good enough that I was handed the car in P2, drove it for 2 hours and 40 minutes straight, and handed it off to Tommy Freakin Kendall still in P2 (a moment I will creatively frame as something heroic to people who don’t know better probably forever). Tommy passed for P1 when the leader, an LS-powered E46 M3, had to pit for fuel, and held the lead for an exciting win, getting the checker just 9.8 seconds ahead of that M3 after 7 hours of racing. “Those Trans-Am guys back in the Seventies with the huge engines and horrible tires and brakes...” Tommy tells me over a post-victory beer. “Don’t let them lie to you. They were coasting, and feathering brakes all the time. How could you not be in a car like that? It just makes them sound heroic to say it the other way.” group celebration with awards and trophies Being a driving instructor is a hard job, and you have to have both talent and communication skills to be a great one. I have been taught by many, though racers are prone to exaggeration and generalization through anecdote. Which is a problem when idiots like me are prone to taking advice from experts literally and unilaterally. But every car is different, every track is different, and sometimes you coast. Sometimes you feather. Sometimes you just brush the brakes for over a second rather than hard for a quarter second. The only way to know is to get yourself a proper telemetry setup, a 21-year-old savant of a ghost car to chase, and a guy who’s raced everything and everywhere to put it all into perspective. Now that’s a winning strategy.
Liked by Charlotte Hall, Caleb CampbellLiked by Charlotte Hall, Caleb Campbell
Liked by Charlotte Hall, Caleb Campbell
