Originally Posted by
cockerpunk
mmmmmmm ... lots to unpack there. let start here, trailbraking.
trail braking is a big term that everyone thinks they know what it means, but really don't understand what it is. to truly do it well, it is a amazing to feel, to do it poorly, it fucks everything up. its not just a technique or skill, its a whole methodology for building and driving a car fast.
standard car setup:
you set the car up to be pretty neutral, and when you enter a corner, you brake, lift off the petal at the same time as your turning in. then once the nose is in, you add power as the rear wheels load up, and power out. pretty typical thing.
trailbrake setup:
you set up the car to under-steer. pretty significantly. then when you enter a corner, you brake, and then lift off the brake much slower, and replace that with your turn in steering. because the nose of the car is loaded, you get a lot more turn in power, and the nose goes into the apex. then, you go for the power, and since the car is rear traction biased (steady state understeer), you have more grip with the drive wheels, and thus can add more power sooner. you can tell this is happening when you get an understeer drift. the wheel feels vague, and thats is because you are sliding the front wheels in basically a 4 wheel drift. so, you gain compared to the standard more neutral setup both in that your braking slightly later, but your also on the power sooner, and with more through out the corner.
its an amazing feeling when you get it right. and its a rhythm of the car thing. because the dampers, the springs and your inputs all have to be synchronized. stiffer springs will make the nose of the car unload faster etc etc.
to get it right, esp on a aftermarket stiff suspension in a light car ... its tough.
basically what you are trying to do is get turn-in grip for free, and then you apply that extra grip to the rear wheels to use them to put more power down sooner.
when it goes wrong through, you have big problems. if you hold the brake too long, you will push. and if you let off too fast you will push. there is also a theory problem, as in this is on an ideal corner. and even in autocross that itsn't found that commonly, and in road racing, with folks flying around all around you, and so much happening, and the unplanned responses you have to have, its tricky to pull off.
now, to put a bound on my skill, in autocross or time trial with a stock suspension car, i can maybe pull this off ~50% of the time. one of the reasons i love the ND is the rhythm of that car, stock, is just fantastic and natural for this kind of thing.
in a road racing situation 0% of the time (too much other shit to manage). and on stiffer aftermarket suspensions like my MR2 or hot lapping my spec car, maybe 25-30% of the time.
so it becomes a balancing act, if there is a good chance or even fair money or worse chance that you are not going to be able to trail brake it properly, you will want to sit it up more neutral. but then when you trail brake it properly, you will likely have too much turn-in and not that much more rear grip.
so, in practice what you do is you make it up as you go along. anyway ... thats trail braking theory. lots of folks think they know what a trail brake means, but thats what its actually for. its also why braking is actually, the most difficult and hardest part about driving a car fast.
as for being fast in the wet? and my toss it in and see what happens on the way out style .... i think that just has more to do with willingness to go past the limit, and skill at pulling it back in. and i think this comes from ice racing. because you are always past the limit when you are on ice, no matter what. and ice is slow, so you actually can feel and understand and correct for everything that is happening, and you can learn how to recover and what the right things to do are in a safe way, so that way when you are on pavement and things are happening way faster, you still understand what is happening and what to do about it to recover it. there is a point at which newton is in the driver seat, not you, but that point is farther away than almost anyone who sticks to dry pavement performance driving thinks it is.
rain is, somewhere in between dry pavement and ice. so im pretty used to what will happen and thus have confidence in my ability to recover the car, and thus can throw it in faster than lots of folks. i dont think its a specific technique, so much as a skill set learned.