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Gravel Spray
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If you are not accelerating, you should be braking. There is no coasting."
That's a pretty good way to look at it. One of the biggest things you can do to improve your rally driving is to get a motorcross bike, dosen't matter is it's a 100cc POS or 250cc POS, just beat the piss out of it. Weight transfer, finding traction, fitness, reflexes etc etc. You can learn a hell of alot.
You know it never occurred to me....
It's sorta saying:
Get a bunch of easy seat time (easy since there are so many more venues /opportunities to drive something which in every parameter you can think of is MORE (insane quick acceleration, excellent suspension even on some 20 year old thing, fantastic brakes we'd die for , 5-6 speed lightning quick dog box stock, and above all reliability so you don't spend hours and hours working on it---and taking away from car prep time )
searching for grip and having your errors strongly and vigorously reinforced ( the impact with the ground and the the bike landing on your head has a way of focusing the mind on what you did to end up there)
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Also some seat time in a shift kart, everything is so exaggerated and happens so damn fast you learn to react quicker and anticipate whats going to happen. I picked up an old 80cc shifter kart a few years ago for $250.00, it cost me another $90 for a piston and it's been screaming fun since. Lots to learn here too.
Agreed here, too.
In both cases you get soething that is MORE intense, and if you stick with it enough to learn even fairly rudimentary things when the grip is crappy and the performance of the equipment so relatively speak directly brutal, then driving a relatively milder, slower reacting thing down a relatively smoother, easier road, is by comparison, easier.
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LFBing should be the last thing you should worry about as a driver, get the fundamentals down first. I have no idea of it's effectiveness in RWD, but in FWD and AWD being proficient at LFBing will no doubt make a fast driver faster via having more control of the car.
According to some really fast guys---like decent results in SM level, LFB is since its a application of brakes and rwd car also have brakes, it works as well for them as in FWD and 4wd.
The whole point of LFB is to load the outside front wheel so it bites and it drives or carves around the turn on a tighter radius than "just driving".
For decades the idea was to use the left foot to LOCK UP the rear and swing the back out because as long as the rear is out, weight is shifted forward and outwards, and the LEFT FOOT was used because the originators, mainly a bunch of Finns like Lampinen, Aaltonen, Toivonen (daddy), Makinen (the original) were driving Saab 96s and Austin Minis with tiny motors making very low bhp and were geared VERY SHORT in axle ratio like 5.85 in the Saabs---so they were busier than hell shifting WHILE braking and no time for the clutch.
Additionally way back then the route was sent out to entrants at least a month ahead of time and in all of the South of Europe, practice was basically unlimited. I read way back when I had no idea what they were talking about "Okej, we did each stage 8 times or 10 times, notes are perfect".
THOSE GUYS
knew that they should brake THIS MUCH on this corner and just a little finesse touch at this one.
We don't have that opportunity or experience.
Dave Clark once said about this as he had become a High Priest of LFB when he got the Dodge Omni GLH and I was wrinkling my nose:
YOU don't have to LFB cause you have the brakes set up so it locks at will and you brake so late and hard...
First things first.
Oh to the boys changing the terms---nobody is really suggesting that one not carry safe speeds in corners. The point is the "turns" occupy a tiny percentage of SS time, the speeds even of Loeb or Grönholm in a T junction on gravel are right down to 40km/hr---if you find in car with rpm, speed and gear displayed. Thus I see its utter folly for newbs to worry about "carrying momentum" more than that.
Again the whole thing is like newbs with one event on moto-cross bikes yammering endlessly about "needing" to learn to do tabletops>
It's a valuable technique, whaaaaaaaa!!!!
Nice colors in the on the bike, eh?
