They say the stop watch doesn’t lie. But, trust me, it doesn’t always tell you the whole truth.
Over the last year or so I’ve ran into a lot of drivers who don’t look at data— their own or that of others. Some of them are really fast and some are slow. Most of the people I’ve talked with that don’t look at their data simply get overwhelmed by all the options in the software, accessing the data, and then trying to figure out which of the 1,283,781,237 channels is actually useful. After spending an afternoon at home playing with the software they give up, and say f*ck it.. let’s do it live!
I was lucky enough to start racing in a car with a full MoTeC dash which has more data/telemetry options than any sane person could wish for. Maybe it was the nerd or software engineer in me, but from the first time I had it out, I had my notebook connected and was downloading data. I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was looking for and wasn’t doing it to go faster. I was just curious and amazed that I had access to all this information: there had to be a way to use it to go faster!
A few months after driving the car for the first time I was lucky enough to spend a day at the track with Johannes van Overbeek. If you don’t follow racing much, he’s a super fast professional sports car driver and one of the fastest Porsche drivers in the world. He’s also a really nice guy and very good at working with drivers to get them faster. He’s by no means a software engineer or data analyst, but after being around race cars for so long knows exactly how to get what he needs out of the software to go faster.
After that one day with him, I’ve never looked at data acquisition the same. It went from a black hole of magic and potential to a coke laced stripper pointing the way to the Promise Land!
Regardless of which software you use, the basics are the same. Going fast (not to be confused with winning, but humor me.. to win you need to be fast) is really only about 3 things, no matter what you’re driving: accelerating, turning, and braking. Seriously. Think about it. Those are typically the 3 basic channels that all data acquisition systems are going to record. For example, in the MoTeC i2 Pro software that most teams run, I only look at the following channels:
- Ground Speed
- Throttle %
- Steering Wheel Angle (or Lat G if you don’t have this sensor, but steering angle is way better!)
- Brake Pressure (if you don’t have this sensor/channel, get it.. for serious.).
That’s all. Screw all the individual wheel speeds, yaw rate, oversteer, water pressure, rpm, lambda, oil pressures, and other fancy bullshittery. It has it’s purpose, but you don’t need that to go fast. RPM is sometimes useful, but really irrelevant unless you’re trying to figure out which gear to be in for a given section. Gear is also useful when you’re learning a new track, but once you figure out the proper gear (should be pretty quick, even if you’re slow like me!) it’s just taking up space.
Also, make sure you go into Distance Mode. In MoTeC you can be in Time or Distance Mode (bottom axis of the graphs). Time mode splits the lap into time slices where as Distance mode simply splits it up by the foot. Since you’re running laps and the distance for each lap is the same, you want Distance mode so you can see exactly what you’re doing in relation to the same spot on the track as the base-line lap.
Now that we know what’s important to look at to go faster, let me show you an example of something I’ve used recently. This is a screen shot of my MoTeC i2 Pro software comparing a lap of mine to a super fast guy. This is in the same car and the laps were done about 15 minutes apart.. so conditions were basically the same. This was the best of my first 10 laps in this car and first time at this track (Daytona), so getting out of the car early and being able to look at this objectively helps tremendously. I can quickly identify where I’m slowest and get back out there and fix it. Well that’s the idea, it doesn’t always work out that way. ;)
At first glance, it’s just a bunch of lines that looks like a financial report from a mortgage company circa 2008. The very top green line is the “Time Variance” channel in MoTeC speak. All data acquisition software is going to have something similar, so make sure you enable that when comparing 2 different laps. This is the channel that will show you WHERE you’re slow, but not WHY you’re slow.
To figure out WHY you’re slow, you need to look at the other data channels. First thing I look for is trends in the Time Variance graph. Is it a gradual increase everywhere, or does it look more like stair-steps? Most of the time, at least in my experience, it looks like stair-steps. Take a look at the same screen shot, only difference is I’ve highlighted the major increases in Time Variance so we can quickly identify the throttle/braking/steering inputs which are leading to the slowness.
In this particular case, I can see that a large chunk of the time increases in the Time Variance graph is coming when my Ground Speed is dropping below the base-line/Pro lap. That’s not to surprising, but we need to find where exactly I’m slower. Looking down at the next channel “Throttle %”, it’s obvious that he’s driving much deeper into the high speed corners. If you take a look at the apexes in the Ground Speed graph dips (mid-corner), I can see that our minimum corner speed and exits are close enough not to worry about (for now!), but the braking zones are killing me! My braking zones are not only early, but I’m also over-slowing the car! The brake pressures look reasonable, so I just have to get comfortable enough to drive deeper into the corners and keep everything else the same— easier said than done! Now I know exactly what needs to be done.
Looking at this screen for 2 or 3 minutes, without even drilling down into each individual corner has just shown me what I need to know to be within 1 second of a top professional driver— on the same day, in the same car. Granted, executing on that is very difficult. But, had I not looked into the data or known what to look for, I could have spent all day spinning off track like Rain Man (and not in the cool card counting way) trying to go faster in the wrong places!
For me, this is the reason for having data acquisition. I can’t believe drivers pass on the chance to look at this stuff to help them go faster!
Hope this was interesting and helpful… see you at the track!
Note: to get the most out of your data you need to compare data against someone who’s faster than you in your own car. beg, borrow, or steal a Pro and have them jump in and do a few laps. hire them if you have to or supply midget strippers, whatever it takes. the data will be priceless if you want to get faster. you can always compare the data in the future, even as conditions change (assuming the car stays basically the same). even w/ different setups and tires, etc you can spot trends in Time Variance and figure out what to work on.
