Sports Car and Competition Driving

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Text originally published in 1963 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2016, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SPORTS CAR AND COMPETITION DRIVING

BY

PAUL FRÈRE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

PREFACE 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7

CHAPTER I—CONTROLS 10

Driving Position 10

Changing Gear 16

When to Change Gear 17

Automatic Transmissions 19

Braking 20

Heel-and-Toeing 22

CHAPTER II—RACING ON ROAD AND TRACK 24

CHAPTER III—CORNERING 28

Driving Into and Out of a Corner 33

Transitory Turn 38

Succession of Bends 39

Taking Advantage of the Road Camber (see Appendix) 39

CHAPTER IV—FROM SLIPPING TO SLIDING 44

Slipping 44

Sliding 46

Oversteer and Understeer 48

Turning Understeer into Oversteer 51

Drifting the Car Through the Bend 53

CHAPTER V—FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE 58

Emergency Line 58

Overtaking 59

The Importance of Proper Gearing 60

Less Braking—More Speed 61

CHAPTER VI—PRACTICE 63

Practising for a Circuit Race 63

Factors Affecting the Handling of the Car 67

CHAPTER VII—SPEED AND SAFETY 73

Seat Belts 77

CHAPTER VIII—TWO HOURS TO GO 79

Choice of Race Wear 79

Choice of Tyres 81

Time-keeping and Signals 83

Race Tactics 93

CHAPTER IX—THE RACE 98

The Le Mans Start 98

The Grand Prix Start 99

In the Race 100

Flag Marshals 101

CHAPTER X—DRIVING IN RAIN, WINTER AND AT NIGHT 105

In the Wet 105

Winter Driving 107

Racing at Night 108

CHAPTER XI—BECOMING A RACING DRIVER 110

CHAPTER XII—DO’S AND DON’T’S 113

Do’s 113

Don’t’s 115

APPENDIX—BANKING ANGLE AND TYRE LOAD 117

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 122

PREFACE

I DO not believe that any book, or any amount of training of the kind given in competition driving courses, will make a good driver of anyone who does not possess a fundamental, inborn aptitude. Above a certain level, driving becomes a sport, demanding of its adepts instant and accurate reflexes combined with perfect judgement. In this sphere, only those who enjoy an outstanding natural gift, and who take a profound interest in the subject, will ever reach the top.

For this reason, I had some hesitation before writing this book—I thought, for instance, of Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn, Tony Brooks or Jim Clark, who all started winning races in their very first season of serious racing, at an age when they could have had comparatively little driving experience at all. But surely, they are exceptions, and between the two extremes of the born champion and the hopeless incompetent, there must be hundreds of good drivers who, even if they cannot hope to emulate potential world champions, might gain immense satisfaction from taking part in all sorts of motoring events.

These are the non-professionals who, as a rule, cannot devote much time to their motoring activities and who will surely greatly benefit from all the experience that can be passed on to them, thereby reducing the time necessary for satisfying results to be achieved, in whatever sort of competition they intend to enter. If they have analytical minds, they will probably also like to have a better knowledge of the basic physics governing the behaviour and the attitude of their car on the road, which, in turn, will help them drive it to better purpose.

The greater part of this book deals with racing, rather than rallying or any other sort of competition in which a time element is involved. This is not only because I consider circuit racing to be motor sport in its purest form (where few factors other than achieving the highest possible speed over a given distance are involved) but also because all the general rules of racing apply, basically, to any other sort of driving—after incidentals such as lack of previous knowledge of the road and the presence on it of other traffic and so on, have been taken into account.

I therefore think that a better knowledge and understanding of the factors involved in competition driving should be of benefit to any driver, even if he does not take part in any sort of competition, and thereby contributes to greater safety on the road.

P. F.

Brussels,

January 1963

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

THE Author and the Publishers are indebted to the following for supplying the illustrations in this book:

Aston Martin Lagonda Ltd., for fig. 50; André Van Bever, Brussels, for figs. 1-9, 11-14, 19-21, 39-42, 47, 48, 51-5, 57 and 58; Geoffrey Goddard, for fig. 56; Halda Ltd., for fig. 46; Ed. Heuer and Co. S.A., Bienne, for fig. 44; Louis Klemantaski, for fig. 10; Les Leston Ltd., for figs. 45 and 49; Max Pichler, Zurich, for fig. 22.

The remainder of the illustrations were specially prepared for the book by P. Weller.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The numerals in parentheses in the text refer to the figure numbers of illustrations

Figure

1, 2—Correct and incorrect positions at the wheel

3, 4—Correct and incorrect adjustment of the distance between seat and wheel

5, 6—Correct positions of the hands on the wheel when cornering

7—From theory to practice: the author driving a Formula II Cooper-Climax

8—A perfect driving position illustrated by Gendebien

9—The ‘heel-and-toe’ position on a modern car

10—Moss taking the Station hairpin at Monaco

11—Ginther, G. Hill and Clark take three different lines into a 180-degree bend

12—Cutting a hairpin well beyond its apex

13—Curve of constant radius inscribed into a right-angle corner

14—Carve of variable radius

15—Lines for cutting a bend at, and after, its apex

16—The advantage of taking the line of variable radius in a curve

17, 18—The forces exerted to start a vehicle turning round its vertical axis, and during the turn

19—An Austin-Healey spins through taking the wrong line

20—In close company, it is not always desirable to take the academic line

21—Gendebien’s Ferrari on the banking at Montlhéry

22—Putting the inside front wheel in the. gutter to create a banking effect

23—The transitory turn taken before a main curve

24—Road with domed profile

25—Correctly engineered bend

26—The deflection of a rolling wheel and tyre under a lateral force

27—Plan view of a rolling wheel submitted to a force applied at a right angle to its plane

28—Diagram representing the adhesion forces of a tyre with the road

29—Slip angles for an oversteering car

30—Slip angles for an understeering car

31, 32—Diagrams of the forces acting on a car when its direction is changed

33—An advantage of cornering in a drift

34—Forces acting on a car in a four-wheel drift

35—Normal and emergency lines in a right-hand corner

36—Curve of decreasing radius

37—Curve formed by tracks of unequal width

38—Irregular, or succession of, curves taken as one

39—Understeering Ferraris and neutral steering Cooper-Climax

40—Very strong oversteer demonstrated by Jack Brabham

41—Brabham performing a perfect piece of cornering

42—Big sports cars assume a greater drift angle than modern O.P. cars

43—Correct and incorrect methods of overtaking with oncoming traffic

44—Two-finger chronograph

45—Timing board

46—Halda ‘Speed Pilot’

47—Warming up a Formula I Cooper-Climax

48—The cockpit of a 1960—Lotus

49—Lap chart

50—Timing chart

51—The author’s last pit stop before winning the 1960—Le Mans race

52—Using a syringe to force oil into a DB3S Aston Martin

53—A few seconds after a massed start

54—Ron Flockhart jumping Jack Lewis’ Cooper

55—Drivers running to their cars for a Le Mans start

56—Phil Hill signals Trevor Taylor to overtake

57—Graham Hill’s B.R.M. in the rain

58—The author manages to see under his vizor and over the windscreen

59, 60—Banking angle and tyre load diagrams

CHAPTER I—CONTROLS

LEARN to be a good driver first!

Who is a good driver and who is not is a matter for discussion. Obviously, your family would not like you to drive them to the holiday resort of their choice in the same way you would drive in a big rally or in a race. One day, while I was away racing somewhere in Europe, my wife and my children were driven home from friends living out in the provinces by a quiet gentleman using a big American car. Arriving home, the children said to their mother, ‘How nice it is to be driven in such a smooth and quiet way; what a pity father doesn’t drive as well as this gentleman!’ But even if the sort of driving that is best suited to a Sunday outing is not exactly what is required of a racing driver, there are general rules that must be applied by both types—the observance of which, distinguish the better from the not-so-good driver.

Driving Position

One of the basic requirements of good driving is a comfortable and purposeful driving position. Not many drivers are fully aware of its extreme importance, for it not only makes long journeys more comfortable but also improves the precision and the rapidity of their control of the car.

The body must be well supported, yet at the same time the position must afford complete freedom to perform those movements which are normally required in driving. The driver must be able to push all the pedals down firmly, without moving the body, and his right foot must be able to move quickly from the accelerator pedal to the brake pedal without the steering wheel fouling his knees. Ideally it should be possible for this movement to be carried out without moving the leg at all. The arms must be perfectly free to allow for movements of large amplitude.

In my opinion, the most important point about the driving position is that the distance between the driver and the steering wheel should be adequate. Most drivers sit too near the wheel because, when they were novices, they thought that by sitting near to the windscreen, they could better judge the width of their car and see the road better, and they have never thought of changing this position since. In actual fact, it does not matter a bit if you can see the road a few inches nearer the car or not, and very soon a driver learns to know where the nearside of his car is without actually seeing it. The latter point, moreover, does not apply to most modern cars where the nearside is plainly visible however far back the driver sits.

If you make a driver sit farther back, he will most probably protest that he does not feel as safe as he did before. But that feeling will soon disappear and he will quickly become a better driver just because he is sitting in a better position. One of the reasons for this is that by sitting farther back he will not be able to brace himself by the steering wheel on corners. This will improve the precision of his control and will give him a finer feel of the road.

However, the main reason why a driver should sit well away from the wheel is that this position gives him a much better freedom of movement. From the normal position where his hands are poised at about ‘a quarter to three’ on the steering wheel, he can turn it for roughly half a turn either way without the lower hand or arm fouling either the back of the seat or his body, and still keep complete control over the steering. For better sensitivity and precision, the hands should be lightly poised on the wheel, perhaps with one thumb holding a spoke for a safer grip, but never should the wheel be gripped tightly.

There is a strong tendency among drivers to use the steering wheel as a brace against the centrifugal force on bends and corners—a habit which prohibits any sensitivity of feeling for the steering. Instead, the driver should sit well back, and if necessary actually dig himself into the seat-back by pushing his body into it with his left foot,