The Stig: The new Stig does not like to keep it tiddy

[MadCat360]

I've noticed the tail happiness as well but it does seem like he isn't losing any time on this. Goes back to something I've always felt to be true despite many people disagreeing, in certain corners sliding IS faster its not done during official races due to safety (read: getting your ass disqualified) concerns and tire life. This as somewhat confirmed by one of my friends who was at Lime Rock and there was a guy who would slide on a few corners. There were also some Skip Barber instructors talking about how his sliding allowed him to scrub off speed just enough to get around the corner as fast as possible but with very little braking.

There is a difference between sliding the tires and countersteering to catch car that is sliding.

At peak grip generation part of the contact patch (the trailing end) will be sliding. The front of the contact patch will be gripping. When this happens the steering wheel will feel light due to the drop off of the self aligning torque in the carcass. This is the sensation that tells you how much you can turn the wheel for a corner (turn the wheel until it becomes ever so slightly light), and how much rear end slip angle to use when you're really hammering it (rotate the car until the steering feels ever so slightly light).

Countersteering is never ideal. Countersteer is a symptom of driving on the limit - sometimes you're under, sometimes you're over, sometimes you're on it. How much you're under-over-on determines the ultimate speed of a driver. All fast drivers countersteer sometimes.

Even the Skip Barber car, a car that uses a tremendous amount of body angle in order to get the tires to work optimally, it is not fastest to slide the car and countersteer all the time. It is fastest to "four-wheel drift" the car, without countersteering.

Here is a driver doing the Skippy quite hard, countersteering everywhere and sliding like a maniac. It looks incredible, but it is not fast. I clocked him at a high 1:42. The record on the old tarmac with the old tires is 1:38.6. He is 4 seconds off pace!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlKmUINZipk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]


And here is me, driving much more sedately, but going faster - my clean laps were between 1:42 and 1:41. I have a different surface to work with, and different tires (that behave strikingly similar, almost identical in fact, right down to the huge angle required to get them to work), but the two combined are actually slower than the old tires/surface - the current track record is 1:40.6. So I'm only 1-2 seconds off pace. And you can see my hands rarely take the wheel past the center point in my corrections.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmHaeEVWYk4&feature=related[/youtube]


Stig's clips are chosen because they are impressive looking. Those clips won't be the ones where he set the fastest lap for the car.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

Wow.. I didn't know the spelling-police was watching this board so closely ...

I don't think it's the Stig in this case but rather the cars. RWD + big engine up front is bound to result in some tail-happiness at the limit - a fact that's been confirmed for the 1M in other reviews I've read and of course by the practice-footage they showed after the hot-lap..

S.

Yeah checkout the ep with the caterham r500 that thing is sideways Sally!!!