This week: Working out the Key Corners | Podcast update

Hello Reader,

What is the most important corner on a racetrack?

In other words, if you could go just a little bit faster anywhere, where would you get the biggest laptime return?

You have hairpins, fast sweeping corners, slow chicanes, high-speed S-bends, corners over crests, corners through dips, fast corners into slow… and on (and on) it goes.

Just think “pure laptime” for now. Where would you consider the most critical corner to be:

• The corner leading onto the longest straight? – because you carry that extra speed for longest.
• The slowest corner? – because you spend more time in them.
• The fastest corner? – because you are least likely to be on the limit through them.
• The corner you’re losing out to another driver? – because its a competition, right!?
• None! – because frankly you may never have thought about this, or,
• ALL the corners!? – because there’s no-where you don’t actually want to be on the limit!?

Haha.

Ok so depending on your experience you might have heard, or believed, one or other of these perspectives.

How about I flip this and ask you:

Where will it cost you THE MOST laptime, if you mess up?

That is much harder to answer, but is essentially the same question. And that is what I really mean here about trying to define the most important corner on the race track.

In this weeks article I share some behind-the-scenes progress of the driver coaching tool I'm working on "Lap Time Finder."

What I've tried to do is mathematically determine AND rank the key parts of the racetrack.

It is a work-in-progress. Take a read of the article and if you are familiar with the track examples, then I'd be very interest in whether you think the software is about right (or not.)

Here is the Brands Hatch one for example:

The points 1 through 4 show you the key parts of the track where carrying extra speed with give you the biggest laptime gain. Or, where messing up will cost you the most.

By how much is 1 more important that 4? 👇👇

Hope you find this interesting?

For clarity, the software has no explicit knowledge of Brands Hatch. It just takes your raw data and has a go at working this out.

I'm rapidly discovering developing a driver coaching tool is quite a challenge... but... I'm excited to see if its possible (for me!) to make this data analysis stuff a bit easier for you - and for my own driver coaching to be honest!

Here is a sharable link to the full article:

​https://www.yourdatadriven.com/what-is-the-most-important-corner-on-a-racetrack/​

Good luck staying ahead of the curve,

Samir

p.s. You might have seen, I shared a bit about this on social media this week. It certainly generated some great discussion and comments. You're welcome to follow me and get involved in these discussions on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram if you're not already. More to come...

p.p.s. Thank you for all the aerodynamics questions for my recent podcast guest Willem Toet. It was great to fold in some of these to our conversation. Needless to say it was amazing to talk with him, so I can't wait to share the show with you soon.
#editingTakesAges #notEnoughWakingHours #videoPod

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