Quote:
Originally Posted by CSG Mike
It's tempting, when competing, to do what get you the best result NOW, but learning to threshold brake may end up with you becoming faster in the long run, especially if you left foot brake.
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I don't left foot brake, but interesting academic discussion here at the risk of hijacking the thread.
For starters, philosophically I agree with
this guy. The short of it is it's just as important, if not more important, to make sure you don't go too long on the brakes as it is to make sure you're threshold braking.
Now let's look at autocross. These are the top things that determine your lap times:
- car placement
- distance traveled
- apex speed before longest straight
...roughly in that order. Threshold braking is certainly important, but generally only at large National events - smaller local events might have one or two heavy braking zones max. Some of the really small lots are 100% momentum maintenance.
At a local last weekend I used third gear twice. Using it even once is pretty rare unless you're at a national event.
We're forgetting one thing though, average speeds. In general, the amount of speed I need to scrub to make a turn at an autocross is much smaller. For some features, if I only need to scrub 10-15mph I actually don't want to threshold brake, because by the time I've reached the threshold I've scrubbed most or all of that speed; at this point my choices are to overslow or to upset the car by treating the brakes like an on/off switch. Stock springs are required in my class, so keep in mind every input to the car takes some time for the suspension to react, and it needs to finish reacting before you put another input in or you're asking for trouble (like a nose that's porpoising while trying to turn in).
Last but not least, I in particular have a big front sway bar, and this is where I lean the most on the EBD. Even a small amount of steering wheel lock at corner entry is enough to lighten the inside front such that in pedal dance mode, the ABS will lose its shirt (remember, you are reverting to single channel ABS). With EBD, it'll release brake pressure on just that wheel; without it, ABS reduces pressure for the whole system.
On a road course, would the pedal dance help me? Yeah.
If I switched to using real springs and smaller bars, would the pedal dance help me? Yeah.
As it stands now? I'm not convinced, and the lap times from one-off use of the dance back that up. That said I'll take your challenge on and do a whole event with the dance to see if I can adapt my driving.