der Bayerische July/August 2020 - 26

T H E

H A B I T S

O F

H I G H L Y

E F F E C T I V E

A U T O C R O S S E R S

(Above) Here's Pat on his way to another victory in his beautiful E92 M3. Photo by ZMAX.
does the same things but with the
added benefit of being able to overlay
different users' data running on the
same course. It's very informative
when you can see how others are
attacking the course.
Continue practicing looking
ahead. You can never practice this
enough.
dB: And how about advanced
autocrossers who are seeking to
squeeze out those last few tenths of a
second?
Pat: Learn to drive the car at the limit
of grip all the time.
Easier
said than done, that's for sure.
The fastest drivers can make the car
dance over the entire course.
They are right at the limit of grip, not
over it, where they would lose

26

control, or under it where they'll be
slower. It is an extremely difficult
skill to master but essential if you
want to become one of the fastest
drivers.
Practice, Practice, Practice.
Speaking of practice, one of the
best ways to practice nowadays is
with a driving simulator. They can
vary in sophistication from a simple
racing game on a home PC with a
basic controller up to a custom-built
rig with a high-fidelity Virtual Reality
headset and life-like steering wheel
and pedals. Some even have minimotion systems. I actually work in
the training-and-simulation field, so
I'm a great believer in using
simulators to improve one's
performance. Also if you noticed,
some young individuals have gone
straight from running sims right into

race cars and done amazingly well.
So, it must make a difference. I must
confess that I built a system for
myself a couple of years ago and it's
allowed me to practice many of the
necessary skills which I never could
have done on the street (well, at least
not legally). Currently I use iRacing,
a subscription-based online racing
simulator. It's one of the best racing
simulators out there with highfidelity physics modeling. It will
make you sweat.
I also use an online tool called
"Virtual Racing School" that ties into
iRacing and will show you all the
data (brake pressure, throttle
position, speed, steering wheel
position, etc.) from your runs and
even compare them with good
drivers so you can see how you're
doing and where you can improve.

Very cool for the data geeks like
myself. This is also an onlinesubscription, fee-based service.
Again, continue practicing
looking ahead. It takes a lot of
practice to make this second nature. I
don't actually know how long it takes
since I haven't made it there yet.
As an example, I know one of the very
top drivers in the D.C. area will tell
me that his biggest weakness is not
looking ahead enough.
Practice is so important
because you don't get a lot of seat
time to work on autocrossing. If you
think about it, let's say you manage to
autocross every weekend and get in
six 60-second runs at each event
over six months. That means you'll
have done a little over 2.5 hours of
autocross driving that year.
According to Gladwell, it takes about
10,000 hours of practice to master a
given task. So that means you only
need around 4,000 years to master
autocross.
dB: Any other advice you'd like to
share with dB's readers?
Pat: Have fun, enjoy the cars, enjoy
the people, enjoy the competition,
and don't take it too seriously. After
all, we're just racing around in
parking lots. ;-)
dB: Thanks for your time!
Pat: You're welcome.

derBayerische
http://www.dandvautobody.com/ https://www.londonautoservices.com/
der Bayerische July/August 2020

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