Help with racing lines

[djones]

Hi,

I recently attended a track day at Blyton Park and found two areas to be very tricky. No matter how many laps I did, I was left wondering what the best thing to do was. Any help on the following would be really appreciated:

1. This is a tricky corner (corners?) and I never knew what line to take.

Should it be a single apex at B or treated as a double apex at A and C? (or none of these)




2. On the next picture, in a fast car the point at which to brake was right before a kink which upsets the car quite badly. The kink does not look big on this overhead, but it is in real life



I was was either having to do two sets of braking (before and after the kink) or not going down the straight as fast (which is clearly wrong).

Any tips on how to deal with that kink at full speed?

Thanks in advance.

[El Scorchio]

Hi,

I recently attended a track day at Blyton Park and found two areas to be very tricky. No matter how many laps I did, I was left wondering what the best thing to do was. Any help on the following would be really appreciated:

1. This is a tricky corner (corners?) and I never knew what line to take.

Should it be a single apex at B or treated as a double apex at A and C? (or none of these)

https://i.imgur.com/59yV6Ae.jpeg


2. On the next picture, in a fast car the point at which to brake was right before a kink which upsets the car quite badly. The kink does not look big on this overhead, but it is in real life

https://i.imgur.com/AWtg5Gu.jpg

I was was either having to do two sets of braking (before and after the kink) or not going down the straight as fast (which is clearly wrong).

Any tips on how to deal with that kink at full speed?

Thanks in advance.

I'm really no expert at all (so will be interesting to see if I'm way off the mark here when someone who really knows what they are talking about answers) but I'd have thought for the first one, treat as almost one long corner. Apex of A, then run to the outside of the track through B while picking up as much speed (or holding on to as much speed) as possible to open up C to the smallest angle and kiss the apex there while accelerating away

[CMSMJ1]

I've driven my Celica GT4 at Blyton some years back - not sure that I had the same issues, as I was probably going much slower!

The lines do depend on your car though - so what's the machine?

my main experience is 15 years of Motorbike trackdays and a few years racing them - mainly on older, lower powered machines and so needing to know the lines for keeping corner speed, vs the trackday bike being a ZX10 where you need to V the corners and just abuse the power.

[djones]

Thanks for the replies.

The car is a GT3 RS. It's my bosses car... I could never afford it.

It's very stable despite being rear-engined, but that kink under full braking certainly gets your attention with the weight transfer.


EDIT - I tried to brake after the kink, but ended up looking a complete fool as I went into the tarmac run-off area

[CMSMJ1]

oh well... someone else's car and a GT3 RS..hmm

I have no idea! I do bet 50p that it will probably stop in the time needed after that kink if you hit the brakes harder

are you fairly handy then? i doubt I have nothing to add, but would certainly love to see some footage...as surely you got some

[Jolle]

I don’t know the track, but the advise I can give you is to focus on the last apex and work your way back from there. This can mean that the first corner will be a bit slower and slightly wide to have the car flat and setup for the turn in to that last corner.

[djones]

JOL - work on the last apex. That makes a lot of sense actually, especially as the straight out of this section is longer than the one going into it, so a good exit is going to give more back. Thanks for that.

CMS - oh id happily bet a race driver or even experienced track day driver could brake later as well. One fear of mine is going into the main right-hand corner too much under braking and the back spinning round. I have never driven a car where trail braking is so powerful, its incredible how much extra entry grip you gain in this car. To the point where if you don't trail brake it's going to understeer. But of course, I'm sure beyond a point its spin time and that's the worry. A more competent/experienced driver would undoubtedly be able to extract more performance than I could.


EDIT - No footage, but I will get some next time. We had a GoPro but only a suction bracket and the course officials said we were not allowed to use it unless it was a clamping style one.