Well, SoliRossi, I feel I have to add this, and I'm not against all what you say (although I'm not so sure as you are about the relative merits and styles):
I don't know about the best drivers, it is hard to deduce what they're doing when you don't feel the car, cannot see their feet and have no idea of what they are doing with brake bias, etc. The cars are different and they are balanced in different ways. Let me try to explain, a bit incoherently, as usual.
Frankly, I have no idea of what's to drive a truly powerful car. I'm a chicken, specially at 51 and with three kids. So, take all this with a grain of salt, will ya?
I think that the last natural drivers were Gilles and Keke, or better yet, some people I've talked to say so. Why do I think they're right?
The kids I teach learn a lot when I say them: "
where is the car limiting you?"
If you go faster and faster (and that's VERY hard to do, the limit is usually the person behind the wheel) the car will show its weaknesses. For that, you have to be brave. Are you freaking and giving too much steering at entrance? Then, try again, because it's not the car limiting you, it's you limiting the car.
Most kids, when given a better car (and that's something you have to do: give them a bad camber. Then give them a good one. See what happens. It will show you who's natural and who's not: less than one in one thousand), I repeat, when given a better car they use it to get the same lap time!
They are trying to repeat what they have done before. They are trying to get the same speed, no matter what. They don't learn from the car, they learn from themselves and the clock is fvck1ng them, figuratively speaking. In simulators, even without any risk, people tend to do the same thing over and over: be conservative.
Do you keep the steering
constant after the apex? Do you
add steering after the apex? Do you
countersteer after the apex (DON'T!). Do you have to
wait to throttle afer the apex or are you saying to yourself "will I go off track?"
All this counts as the car limiting you.
Once you find the confidence in your car and you start to think that you can actually put 105%, then the car will show you where exactly is failing.
A good driver has excellent memory and works incrementally.
You have to split the curve: entrance, steering, rotation, apex, exit. You have to remember how you did it
for every curve. Now, you give it 105% and you'll see where the darn car is limiting you. Then,
you tell the engineer where are the limits. He will try his best. Do it again. If you can put 105%, that will be your new floor.
How do you do that?
Nobody knows, let's be sincere. How do you run? How do you breath?
It is also very important to understand this (well, I think, perhaps it's just too much yoga when young): YOU DO NOT MOVE YOUR BODY DIRECTLY (except some areas of face and neck). You move your body through your cerebellum (you know, the thing with funny slots under your brain).
That is why sports take at least two years to learn. It's not your brain which is learning, it is your cerebellum and
you do not control it. It learns by itself.
Cerebellum is a very old piece of hardware, as strange to your brain as your heart. It works alone and belongs to a different time in evolution. It existed before mammals developed brains. It is reptilian, as Carl Sagan pointed out.
... whole orchestras play inside our heads...
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owefQheNqwo[/youtube]
It is learning all the time, even from things you do not realize are happening: the angle of the wind on your face, the colour of the tyres, the screeching of them, the movement of the sun against the backdrop of trees, the angle of the sideslope you feel in your butt, the centripetal force pressing against your ribs and shoulder, who knows? It's actually like if you were commanding a robot through verbal commands and then the robot tries to do what you want. That's why you need practice. So, natural cerebellums are few... or so I believe. Mine is a sloth.
Hope this helps somebody.
