"At Speed" Physics & The Car

[bryanearll]

Comparing cornering at 25mph at the Q and 100mph at Willow or your favorite road of choice (hwy 2) is really not the same thing.

Reflecting on cornering this weekend, everything "felt" the same, from the butt. (I was rather pleased with myself, though I would point out that while the Q has a high tolerance for stupidity, Hwy 2 has zero tolerance so I was operating within a much higher safety margin)

My thought is that driver error failure at slow speeds is easier to recover from that "at speed" failure; not because of reaction times but because of physics and the components producing the contact patch.

1) A skid induced at 100mph is going to melt the tires and turn the contact patch into rubber ball bearings pretty quick.
2) A comfortably wide road at 25mph or 100mph will be exited in a significantly shorter time period.
3) Throttle steering can be less effective at speed because there is less torque to transfer for feet of pavement crossed.

The video from Willow Springs showed a significant amount of "float" around the track. It seemed to me that this float was most evident in the chicane. Oh, and how about a little tape from a Porsche instead of a Corvette next time please!!! The noise "just wasn't right".
Bryan