Opinions on Trac Control off for Autocross
 

I'm doing my first AC next week and am wondering what you guys do as far as Trac Control. On the tracks I use the VSC mode as the tracks I drive are fast (Big Willow, Laguna). I was thinking pedal dance mode for AC? Maybe best to start in VSC first and review?
Thoughts?

I will only speak for myself so take it all with a grain of salt. If you leave traction on you will notice that it will kick in constantly. I usually press my traction off button for 10 seconds.
Locally I do fine with that set up. My car is STX. Prepped. I have run using the pedal dance, but every now and then depending on how bumpy the course is I will activate ice mode.
I read somewhere that ice mode, a maintenance mode, takes you down to one channel for ABS. Pressing the traction control off for 10 seconds you still have four channels. So if one wheel spins ice mode is not activated.
When I bought my first BRZ, the tech rep said to hold it for 10 seconds and not three seconds as per the manual. I have no corroboration that that this is true. But it all works for me.


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Three second press on the left button, two yellow lights on the dash and go. Championships are won with the regular TC off mode.

Experiment once you get some experience under your belt, autox is hard, focus on driving the course well.

I understood that at 25 mph it automatically comes back on if needed?

I’ll experience the slip light coming on but not activating traction control.


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That's the short press. The 3sec press that lights up both yellow lights does not come back on.

1.5G I think does that.


I use 3sec press. No issues left-foot braking, so it's the place to start. Any TC on is obnoxious as heck on an autocross course.


I've experimented with pedal dance and have horrible results with ice mode... though running no ABS was also causing single wheel lock in the same spots - course, surface, technique probably all responsible in part. I spent last year really focused on braking technique, so will experiment again with PD mostly because its a curiosity.

When I do AC I use the 5 sec. press and go. Never had TCS intrude, never needed the ABS to behave differently.

If on a short course, TCS OFF works perfectly well.


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Long press is preferred over pedal dance for auto-x in our experience (and many others).

- Andrew

I haven't autocrossed one of these in.. oh 5 years? but I just did the long press as well.

Same at the track at a minimum. The car sucks in VSC sport at the track.

3s is longer than you think it is.

Long press is probably a better way to describe it. Two lights good, one light that says Trac off is the 25mph get out of snow mode that you don't want. Hold the button until you see the second yellow light.

Pedal Dance is neat if you're good on the brakes and great at judging a corners speed perfectly without ever driving it, bad at either and you'll blow a corner and lose a ton of time. VSC in the first series of cars is crap, there's some posts about it being much improved in the newer cars, but whats the point of autocrossing if you're not going to send it into a corner at 12/10ths without a safety net?

IMO what is the point of "off road" driving if not to learn? How much can you learn with systems on?

My 2013 had severe intervention, even with the long press. When I finally did pedal dance it was like magic. That's not to say you will be faster, but you might learn more.

To each their own, but i will never go to a track event with traction control on again, if i can help it.

Great info thank you all. Looks like 3-5 sec TC off button. Will start there. Was at my private skid pad a few days ago with the rain and used pedal dance and had a blast. Will try the other method though as suggested.

Ok, this makes sense of everyone’s opinions a little better...

I had an early 2013, and Pedal Dance was required for that car otherwise any form of traction control would lead to a loss of power and/or understeer.

I’ll have to try again with the new 2018

Thanks everyone

Another long press until the double lights.

I've gotten some interference, but I don't think it is bad interference.


Our primary site is really bumpy with lots of camber changes. We'll sometimes do a turnaround in a bumpy section with a very short straight to the finish lights. You can drive wide on entry and make a smooth arc or you can cut distance and drive a super tight line in the bumpy off camber stuff and deal with traction control, which I think is a result of picking up the inside tire. The tighter line is faster for me.

I'm not the most experienced autocrosser here, but I have won my class two years in a row. Never used the pedal dance. The 3 second hold until both lights appeared has always been sufficient for me, and I've yet to ever have it intervene, or kick back on, no matter how sideways or spiny I get.

People need to realize that they might still see the stability light flashing, but I've never felt it actually affect throttle or vehicle direction. I'm led to believe when that happens, it's the e-diff acting to prevent uncontrolled wheelspin from the Torsen diff, without actually trying to affect how the vehicle moves. People just see the blinking light and freak out about how the car is "still intervening" when it really isn't doing anything to hurt you.

TC off, (long press, two yellow lights, no pedal dance), in the '12-'16 cars has only three forms of aids happening to my knowledge. (There's only 4 modes that matter for the early cars, regular, 'vsc off' (green+yellow lights, this mode is barely an improvement on regular driving), long press off (yellow 2x lights, most aids off), pedal dance).

Multi-channel ABS
Not a bad thing at all, prevents locking up an unloaded wheel and allows for effective braking when the car is loaded in a turn, this is one of the awesome things of traction control advancements and is great if you can realize you've blown a corner and you're way off line and there's still lots of corner to go and you can brush the brakes with your left foot to tuck back into the proper line and do damage control on your mistake. This feature has no downside imo but you lose it when pedal dancing, this goes back to my earlier statement, if you're great at judging corners and nailing it at 99% 100% of the time pedal dancing doesn't lose you much here (which is why track guys advocate it, they've practiced the same handful of corners hundreds of times, autoxers don't have that luxury). I believe this is also what leads to ice mode where the car reduces brake pressure because it thinks you're on a low grip surface so this is the biggest drawback of pedal dance and why most autoxers don't recommend it because the advantages aren't that great for us. Again if you're good on the brakes losing this is of minimal impact to your driving. Most people aren't good on the brakes, only the greats are.

Electronic Brake Distribution
This is probably the one odd thing imho the car does that I understand why the pedal dance is attractive to the average driver and autoxer, the car actively feeds pressure to the rear brakes to slow the weight transfer of the car and getting rid of it via the pedal dance you can really blend your inputs and get some amazing corner entry rotation. I want to try a stock car again and see how pedal dancing affects it because I had a real problem over-driving corner entry with it, I think the weight transfer may have helped with that. From what I understand this is one of the things that lead to CSG's testing and that thread about it.

Auto-LSD
So this car has a torsen differential, when one wheel is off the ground or begins slipping excessively the torsen goes open and becomes useless. To combat this Toyobaru put a function in to brake the drive wheel that's slipping excessively to push power to the wheel that still has traction. When it happens it feels bad because the car is slowing down, the brake is being activated. I didn't really think it ever showed up on autox but a few weeks back on my shit Firestones messing around for once I could feel it happening, what should have been a nice big sustained slide felt like the car was dropping anchor. I think with higher grip tires it's a lot harder to get to the point where the inside wheel is spinning to the point that the car feels like it needs to intervene which is why most autoxers shrug at this point and say they've never felt it since they're on very grippy tires. This can be a big deal on track when you hit a curb and lift a wheel, the brake kicks in and the power delivery does something funky that I haven't experienced that scares the shit out of people that have. In an autox scenario, I'd rather have the car drop anchor than have my dumb lead foot ruin a run.

tl;dr pedal dance makes sense for the track, less sense for autox, don't listen to my bullshit test for yourself.

2013-2016 model years have no traction control setting that allows the car to get anywhere near the limit without stepping in and slowing you down a lot.

The long-press method that turns off both stability and traction control (two yellow lights on the dash) works great for autocross.

The 2017+ cars get a "track mode" that is what our "sport mode" should have been. IMO

The only "sport" mode that impressed me is a transmission setting for the AT models. We have autocrossed my wife's AT some and that transmission setting has kept me from bothering with the paddle shifters.

So for the 17-18's would Track mode be the best option? What is that equivalent to for the 13-16's out of curiosity? My first BRZ autocross this weekend and I was planning on staying in Track mode. Haven't given it much thought until now.

Just do the long press method. As long as your venue doesn't have any close curbs spinning out won't have any major consequences (if there are close curbs you might want to stick to the track mode).

You're there to learn, so anything the computer does is less you'll learn.

Thanks!

If you've never tracked before and there is a slight risk to do damage to the car, you can stay in track mode. I've autocrossed a lot and for me track mode is around 0.5 sec slower on a 60sec course. So not a huge impact for a beginner, but once you're more confident you should try long press (all off).

Thanks. It's been about 15 years since I last autocrossed. Experienced, but basically starting over. So at this point I doubt it will make any significant difference. I'll be more focused on just getting clean runs than pushing it to the absolute limit. With that being said, I think I'll opt for the long push. I think I'd like to feel when I'm approaching those limits if I do. I was initially under the impression that the track mode had everything off. But I think I just misread or misremembered what I had seen about it. I've gone back and looked at it again and realized that the long push is what I'm looking for. Thanks for the input!

What everyone else said... I also am a "long press" and done. Never interfered, even in wet.

Just a nitpick/common usage thing...

No one refers to autocross as "AC" as much as no one refers to moto(r)cross as MC. AX or autox, with the latter being more popular.

I know you're new, just giving you a heads up, if you were on other forums, they'd not have a clue what you're taliking about. ;)

One of the last events this year was in the rain/wet. I tried the various versions of VSC (*not* long press) and would fling the car into the turn and the system would come on. It's fun when you can start predicting the timing (hint: turn in earler, but enter at a a faster speed). It takes a sec to figure out and you should have the car straight bu the time it releases - and your foot can stay planted on the gas the whole time. :lol:

--kC

Interesting, do you think you were faster with the aids on or do you think you'd be able to get more time babying it through with the aids off?

I totally understand just playing with them for kicks though, I just never found them to feel sophisticated enough to actually help me go faster.
:burnrubber:

I remain an occasional pedal-dancer, owing more to site conditions.

On the long press, If I get a rear up in the air it'll intrude...intrusively. Easier to trigger when Hoosiers were still a thing, but bumps in the middle of a sweeper and some elements that go over a crown in the surface will get the diff intrusion too. It will also trigger if I really get a lot of wheelspin, usually in the snow and going sideways. At which point by the time it's intervened, any hope of being on the fast line was already sort of gone.

I will say that all my instances of ice mode got pretty well resolved with the ferodo's, though.

Still intrusive in my experience. I played with it out of curiosity at a test-n-tune. Nothing wrong with starting out in track mode and shifting to long-press later as comfort and practice come into play. The car is forgiving, but also can inspire (over)confidence in a new driver I have found. Take your time.

I've wondered if it would help my stupid in the rain, but figure that's a bad plan of action long term.

During one of the last autox events this year, My (long time pro) co driver and I experimented with the different traction settings in the cold and wet. I use a pedal dance eliminator ( http://www.ft86speedfactory.com/mig-...l#.XEr1VGl7naQ) in STX. Our fastest times came with all the nannies disabled. We agreed that all the traction and stability controls kicking in and out (often mid-turn) really hurt the predictability of the handling. Our opinion ended up being that if you are at all serious about autox, you should learn to drive and get comfortable with the"86" with the nannies off.

I'll be running nannies off. Any opinions on a starting point for tire pressures? I'm running PS4S's at 225/45/17. Temps will be in the 50's. It's been about 15 years since I last ran an autocross. Just trying to ease my way back into it. Thanks.

I don't like the car imparting input onto itself that I didn't initiate. I find with the long press the E-diff kicks on when you take on a bit of curb which is really unsettling. There are also a few corners where I used to get a bad mid corner push while trail braking which I believe is the EBD.

Did well yesterday in the event. Hands down much faster in the trac off hold. Tried 2 runs in VSC and it just killed rotation.

This is a Puretrack event. they use curbing and a well laid out course so no "sea of cones" type of event. This is a vid from someone else but good for seeing what the event is about. Awesome day. 8 runs.

https://www.facebook.com/ezecena/vid...943353000/?t=0

The trail braking comments are interesting and something I hadn't considered.

I may play with the pedal dance.

It'd be faster with the aids off (long press, not pedal dance). Definitely. It was pouring rain with standing water, knowing it was going to be better in the afternoon runs, so it was a "let's see what happens" for the morning. :lol: (1st person listed: http://www.ner.org/wp-content/upload...llenge_fin.htm )

Also, this event was probably the most comfortable I'd been in the car all year.

--kC

Are you two at the same site(s)? Just curious. Both of you are NY, and talk about a bad surface.... same place? Where?

I've never experienced anything that would have me want to do anything more than long press to disable, but Devens and Lincoln are fairly decent surfaces.

I'm also curious how just changing pads in combination with the pedal dance would eliminate ice mode, since ice mode is ABS controls "freaking out" pulsating the pedal... doesn't matter what pad you have I would think, and grippier pads would make it worse because the ABS wants the car to keep moving and not locking up? Just seems odd to me.

--kC

We are not. Not sure who bdt is, but Duchess county is NYC/Hudson Valley area, I'm out in the CNY region., So I don't think we're talking about similar places.

Crossing the crown on a runway site is the most reliable way to trigger the diff for me. Sorry if that wasn't clear, the intrusion for me is the brake diff biasing.

The pads and ice mode is has more to do with initial bite and release characteristics (with a pinch of adjusting technique) Factory pads bite kind of ramps up for me as pedal down, nothing-nothing-nothing-lock up. Because not enough is happening while I'm trying to brake, my brain says to push on the brakes harder, and once they start really generating friction, I'm asking for way more than I should, and undesirable behavior ensues.

The ferodos start grabbing (pretty well) while my foot is still going down, so I'm less likely to overdo it on braking before the brakes start meaningfully slowing the car down. They also seem much easier to modulate for me.

I also don't very frequently push the brake pedal all the way down to the floor anymore now that braking starts when I want it to, as opposed to when the pads get around to (finally start generating real friction) it.

I'm running lots at Met Life stadium. Sealed blacktop. STX.

We have a test & tune (pending weather) at our super bumpy site (Bristol), so I'm going to try the pedal dance.

I guess I need to look up how to actually do it.

@TrqlessWonder
What model of Ferrodo are you using?