22 replies to this topic

[Smooth]

From http://www.itv-f1.com


Some typical cheesy praise (do you expect anything less from Peter Windsor?), but a little look at driving styles, which, while not ground breaking, are interesting to discuss. Or are they?;)


Off limits
The secret of Schuey's speed

Michael Schumacher’s driving style has taken him above and beyond mere mortals. What makes him so good?

Peter Windsor travels to the edge and back with the world champion

Nothing has changed. He clasps his hands behind his back, arms straight, before executing a couple of forward bends, almost down to the ground, just to loosen the shoulders.

Then he stamps his feet, ensuring yet again that his socks aren’t twisted inside the Nike boots. The balaclava ­loose rather than tight ­is followed by a fresh Bell helmet, complete with digital radio nodule on the front right.

He pushes the gloves smooth between his fingers before it is time, finally, to step into his Ferrari, one leg at a time.

Then the old familiar feeling settles around Michael Schumacher. The legs, the arms, the back ­ just so. Exactly where he needs them to feel every micro-millimetre of the car he is about to drive.

It has always been so, for as long as he can remember ­even when he raced karts. Even when he was a kid, thinking of fuel mixtures and tyre wear, he could always feel every corner of the car.

So, yes, he won his third world title this year and a lot of them out there are saying that this is the new Michael Schumacher, the one who finally learned how to win in something other than a Benetton.

This is a new, mature Michael, they say, implying 1) that he was perhaps less than that before and 2) a different man this year.

I think not. There were subtle changes in 2000 ­the inevitable result of spending yet more miles and hours in a racing car and driving it absolutely to the limit.

But this Michael Schumacher ­by definition almost ­is exactly the man who won in 1994 and ’95, and who so nearly became world champion in the four years after that.

Looking back from this season past, the wonder is that Michael didn’t win the title in that four-year period. In ’96 and ’97, the Ferrari was markedly inferior to the Williams Renault.

In ’98, the Ferrari was an altogether- better car but then Ron Dennis switched the McLaren team to Bridgestones and the championship was over virtually before it had started.

And then in ’99, of course, with victory in sight, he broke his leg due to a brake failure.

Give Michael a year when there was parity in the tyres, and something approaching that in the cars, and no limb-breaking force majeure, who was going to stop him? If he’d been driving for McLaren-Mercedes, he might even have clinched the title before Suzuka.

They say Michael’s temperament has changed, probably because he twice allowed himself to be passed spectacularly by Mika Hakkinen in 2000 ­once going into Turn 1 in Hungary and then again at the top of the hill at Spa.

Equally, though, he lost none of his aggression off the line, often making up for a slowish start by snatching pieces of road that other drivers (notably Jacques Villeneuve) considered to be way outside the unwritten agreement of what is acceptable.

And Michael, in response, was unabashed,
pointing out that the Sennas and Mansells and Prosts a few years back raced just as hard, if not harder, and that he wasn’t about to change now because some guys out there today seemed to think that racing was part tea party, part grand prix.

On balance, then, I would say Michael lost none of his aggression in 2000. He made life pretty damned difficult for Mika at Spa, even though his Ferrari at that stage was much slower in a straight line, and he didn’t exactly play ‘After you, Claude’ with David Coulthard at Magny-Cours.

And in Austria and Hockenheim, where he didn’t even make it past the first corner, he was commanding his piece of road, up there on his own plateau, but at the same time expecting too much from drivers like Ricardo Zonta and Giancarlo Fisichella.

A new, less aggressive Michael Schumacher
would instead have driven the way Niki Lauda and Alain Prost drove in their championship years, which is to say with their cars surrounded by cotton wool.

There have been few drivers ­ever in the history of the sport ­better than Michael Schumacher in terms of race aggression, so the concept of him ‘softening’, as he supposedly ‘softened’ in 2000, makes about as much sense as Hakkinen suddenly switching to Minardi.

Michael’s concentration, though, was less than perfect in 2000. He nearly threw away the US GP in the closing stages, when he was winning by a mile ­just as he nearly trashed the ’94 Belgian GP in similar circumstances.

So you could perhaps accuse him of being overconfident on occasions. I would prefer merely to say that he suffered a lapse in concentration at Indy, pure and simple. Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna and Stirling Moss know all about that.

It is part of the job because nothing, for long, is ever perfect. In terms of technique, this, too, was the same Michael. (Press fast-forward here if you believe all racing drivers basically do the same thing in the cockpit ­brake, turn in, balance the slide, hit the apex and then power on through to the exit.)

To my eye, as I’ve said before, there appear to be two major divisions ­those who brake in a straight line and naturally find the geometrical apex, and those who brake as they turn in to an earlier apex.

The former maximise the parameters of the road; the latter, through proven use of something called the ‘traction ellipse’, or the ‘friction circle’, maximise the parameters of the tyres.

Of course, it is not that simple, because the variables are almost infinite and very few drivers are aware of how they brake relative to their peers, let alone actually think about something as esoteric as maximising the performance of their tyres in two dimensions (laterally and longitudinally).

On top of that, modern telemetry and data acquisition do not pinpoint the position of the car on the road. It will tell you when a driver brakes, and for how long, and it will tell you how much loading he has put through the pedal.

What it won’t tell you is where a driver has braked in relation to his turn-in point, steering input, subsequent throttle application and, of course, his apex.

What you see out there, then, is Michael spearing his Ferrari in on the brakes, turning in earlier than a Villeneuve or a Hakkinen. Coulthard and Ralf Schumacher do a similar thing, as does Eddie Irvine when he has the right car, but Michael is more consistent because he is more able to compensate (through his natural feel and car control) for a sudden loss of grip, front or rear.

Jean Alesi is at the other extreme of turn-in drivers. His feel for the front of the car is probably right up there with Michael’s, but he is lost totally out of it­ when he has chronic understeer. That’s
why Alesi says he likes oversteer: oversteer minimises the possibility of the front end washing away.

The other division, in the present day, belongs to Hakkinen and Villeneuve. That doesn’t necessarily make it inferior; on the contrary, there are occasions when drivers like Hakkinen and Villeneuve (and before that Senna) have been ­and will be ­ impossible to beat.

They have a wider view of the corner, have more room in which to spin a car and are thus more able to react to sudden changes in condition. On top of that (Michael aside), they are generally more able to live with changes in car balance because they are not so dependent on a specific feel or trajectory.

There’s no doubt, though, that early turn-in drivers use less road and have more scope for gaining speed at the entry to the corner. They are constantly balancing braking against cornering load.

Classic drivers, by contrast, concentrate first on braking as late as possible and then on getting the power on as soon as possible. Their options are more limited, in other words. (It also explains why Villeneuve is prone to outbraking himself in a straight line, whereas DC, when he gets it wrong, runs wide in the middle of the corner.)

What’s interesting, however, is how turn- in drivers tend to excel when the variables are suddenly thrown skywards.

Because Michael has so much innate
feel for the front of the car, he and Alesi and Jenson Button and Ralf thrive when it starts to drizzle and they’re all still out there on dry tyres.

Mika, who needs to feel on top of the car to wring the ultimate from it, is suddenly lost when he has no grip, front or rear. So Mika’s pass at Spa may well be the TV moment of the year; for me, though, it was Michael’s pass over Mika at the Nürburgring, because there was Mika, a double world champion in a pole-winning car­ there he was being zapped almost as if he was going backwards.

And it wasn’t as if the McLaren was a bad car that day in the wet: Mika flew at the Nürburgring once he had stopped for wet Bridgestones. When they were on ice, though, when it finally did come down to fingertips and toes, to bending and stretching the furthermost limits, it was Michael who showed them how.

Gladiators!

Classic confrontations between evenly- matched rivals is what sport ­at its best ­ is all about. Michael Schumacher versus Mika Hakkinen is just such a contest

“That’s one of the things I find most fascinating about Formula 1 ­this gladiatorial bit. You know, there always seem to be two guys fighting it out, head to head, a real rivalry. At the moment, it’s Michael [Schumacher] and Mika [Hakkinen].”

The words belong to Damon Hill, co-star
in more than a few gladiatorial bouts with Mr Schumacher, and therefore someone who has been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

He’s right, of course. If, as you will have grown tired of reading over the past few seasons, Michael Schumacher is The World’s Best Driver, then unequivocally Mika is the next-best.

Truth is, over one lap, Mika is quicker even than Michael. But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of the world’s best TV pundit. “Michael may be the better of the two,” says ITV’s Martin Brundle, “but Mika is ultimately faster.”

Which means, in white-knuckle, ten-tenths extremis, he’s one of the fastest drivers of all time ­as anyone who has seen a Hakkinen pole lap from a trackside vantage
point can confirm.

Standing on the outside of the Mobilkom corner at the A1-Ring in 2000, I thought Mika was frighteningly quick. As he passed, I turned to the handful of marshals and photographers who were also witnessing the spectacle at first hand and smiled.

It was a nervous smile, and their faces showed the same uneasiness. And Schumacher is every bit as good.

Michael versus Mika. Today’s gladiators ­
à la Clark-Stewart, Hunt-Lauda, Senna-Prost. Enjoy their battle while you can.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Peter Windsor has demonstrated nothing but totally idiocy in the past when talking about driving technique. Ill get back to you when i finish this one

[Manson]

I was hoping for more sustance and less sunshine. Nothing new here on technique that hasn't already been discussed here.

I think Michael's feel for the car, especially in changing conditions, that is his ultimate advantage. Having the kind of feel for the car on a drying track, knowing exactly where the limit is a how much harder to push next lap sets the Senna's and Schumacher's apart. Turn-in style is all well and good but not what makes the big difference. The early turn in would be useless on most ovals (yes I know, no ovals in F1), too much speed scrubbed off.

[DangerMouse]

What a total load of old tosh! I remember an article where Peter was explaing the different driving styles of the (then) current F1 drivers - got most of em wrong - [p][Edited by Andy on 02-09-2001]

[AyePirate]

I wonder how long it took windsor to type that
piece with one hand

[Ricardo F1]

He has no objectivity whatsoever, it's almost embarassing in a journalist. [p][Edited by Andy on 02-09-2001]

[Ross Stonefeld]

He had a valid point about early turn in helping in changing conditions. It helps ensure you make it into the corner, where you can then do whatever it takes to keep the trajectory. However, the best way to use the tires is to drive in a way that involes the least amount of steering input, which means the line that involves the least amount of lateral load. Ie, radius is speed.

[RedFever]

Ross -

"He had a valid point about early turn in helping in changing conditions. It helps ensure you make it into the corner, where you can then do whatever it takes to keep the trajectory. However, the best way to use the tires is to drive in a way that involes the least amount of steering input, which means the line that involves the least amount of lateral load. Ie, radius is speed."

I noticed that too, which of course is right. By turning early you give the car the general direction you desire, then once in the turn, its total instinctive reaction to
what is happeneing and usually there's a lot of left-right-left corrections needed, but at that point it comes very natural and instinctive.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Of course the very nature of 'driving technique' is almost obsolete now. There's so many combinations of corners and straights, and its so dicated by road surface conditions and the type of car you have and the way it is optimised. The friction circle for an F1 car is very very wide, has a good 'body' for the braking section, but is very weak on forward motion. Whereas something like a Formula Junior Whatever is more a true circle. So the ideal driver would be a guy who has no set 'style' and merely adapts to what is given to him.

Id be interesting to see some computer simulation using one of the 7 post rigs and the setup programs to determine what the ideal line and brake/acceleration points for an F1 car would be at a track and see how that compares to what the drivers do.

I recall several years ago watching a program where they did this (i think with Merc road cars) and Emmerson Fittipaldi. Mr Fittipaldi went several tenths quicker than the computer

[130R]

Typical Windsor propaganda. I've read this stuff before and its the same sensationalism.

Go to the races, see for yourself.

[RedFever]

Ross -

"Id be interesting to see some computer simulation using one of the 7 post rigs and the setup programs to determine what the ideal line and brake/acceleration points for an F1 car would be at a track and see how that compares to what the drivers do."

Even cooler would be to have the top 10 drivers or so all use the same car and record what they do in it and compare the data.......

[JayWay]

Ah S*it, I stopped reading after the first line. God I hate that guy. Does anyone take him seriously?

[Indian Chief]

Ah S*it, I stopped reading after the first line. God I hate that guy. Does anyone take him seriously?

He has no objectivity whatsoever, it's almost embarassing in a journalist.

I say the same things about Nigel Roebuck - did you read Roebuck's insulting article on Pironi?. How these guys become respected journalists is beyond me.

[Williams]

There was an interesting article in RaceTech magazine ealry last year called "How to Engineer your Driver". Ontrack studies done by the author on top drivers found that the main determing factor in the speed of a car through the corner is not throttle, braking and cornering technique, but the trajectory of the vehicle through the corner. Braking, steering and throttle usage follow from the trajectory, not vice-versa. It is the learning of the correct trajectory through each corner which is the key to the quickest lap. Better drivers find this optimum trajectory fasters than others. Other drivers never find it all, because what is in fact a slower solution to corner "feels" faster, due to the imperfections in each driver's perception of car motion. These imperfections of perception are integral to human nervous structure and are present to some degree or another in even the best drivers.

Among the key factors to fast and accurate solutions to corners are: experience (using past solutions stored in the brain's cerebellum in order to short-circuit the perceive,solve,react cycle), memory of the details of good and bad laps, in order to provide corrections to the trajectory, the ability to actually "predict" what the car is going to do under certain conditions, in order to make up for deficencies in in mere human reaction time, a good internal vocabulary for expressing and memorizing car movements, and so on.

Another key factor in finding "fast solutions" is the race engineer. Because of inperfections in the driver's perception of which solution is the fastest, a race engineer with methods of simulating cornering trajectories can be a enormous aid in helping a driver find the correct path. A path determined by the driver to be correct may in fact be a less than optimal solution, and it is the job of the race engineer to aid the driver to attain this ideal trajectory. The driving techniques then follow naturally.

Without the this sort of trajectory solving ability, a team can only be as fast as it's best driver. The #2 driver can be improved by having him attempt to mimic the trajectories used by the faster driver, but the faster driver can be improved only by a massive amount of trajectory testing ("practice"), which may or may not yield the ideal trajectory, or by the use of computer trajectory simulations.

[100cc]

And then in ’99, of course, with victory in sight, he broke his leg due to a brake failure.

Why do so many people seem so sure that Schumi would've won in 99, and this guy says "with victory in sight", geez, micheal was 8 points behind hakkinen in the championship before silverstone.

[100cc]

They have a wider view of the corner, have more room in which to spin a car and are thus more able to react to sudden changes in condition. On top of that (Michael aside), they are generally more able to live with changes in car balance because they are not so dependent on a specific feel or trajectory.

How does taking a wider line give you more room to spin the car?? Someone care to clarify this for me?

[AyePirate]

Why do so many people seem so sure that Schumi would've won in 99, and this guy says "with victory in sight", geez, micheal was 8 points behind hakkinen in the championship before silverstone. [/B]

Wellll let's see, Eddie Irvine,
(the very definition of a journeyman #2 driver)
comes within a whisker of become WDC.
It doesn't require a giant leap of faith
to infer that a double WDC like Michael might
have done a little better.[p][Edited by AyePirate on 02-10-2001]

[HSJ]

AyePirate, the problem is that the game changes when the players change. Mika and McLaren, consciously or unconsciously, were probably not as focused after MS's crash as they had been before. If MS had been around they would have pushed and not made so many mistakes. For example at Monza, if there had been anybody close to Mika, Mika would have driven at his normal fast pace instead of holding back (which he was told to do by the team). That caused Mika's DNF. I think MS would have been there to push Mika at Monza. Similarly MS probably wouldn't have spun at Indy 00 if Mika had been there to push him and force him to concentrate. Personally I think Mika would have been WDC in 99 even if MS had been around all season.

[100cc]

Sure if the season would've gone the way it did for hakkinen schumi would've had no problems, but I doubt it would've.

And besides, he's saying victory in sight, "before" any of the mac problems started occuring, and correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the macs ahead in silverstone when schumi crashed?

[The RedBaron]

That part of Windsor's statement was stupid.

[black magic]

williams point seems to havebeen missed.

when scientists look at what makes some drivers better than others they discount the "faster reactions" theory. Rather it seems the best have a more extensive memory bank of the correct solutions to any handling problem and that these solutions also take into account and anticipate the over correction tendancy.

these responses in order to be performed more quickly have to be pre programmed to reduce the time taken to react as the time taken to sense a problem occurs at the same speed in novice or expert.

[Dimo]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Indian Chief
[QUOTE]How these guys become respected journalists is beyond me.[/QUOTE]I think you may have one extra word in that sentence. Try it without "respected"...yeah, that works better.

[Sean L]

I think this quote comes closest to explaining MS's driving style:

"He adapts his style to try various things. You cannot pigeonhole his style because I've seen him do them all. Look at the way he uses a throttle. There was a marked difference between Prost and Mansell in that Prost never jumped on the throttle like Nigel, but I've seen Schumacher do it both ways, depending on the circumstances. He will, if necessary, go back to his go-kart techniques. But he won't do so if he upsets the car too much." - Frank Dernie