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Happy With Your Driving Style


T-Man

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Great Thread.

I feel that the basics to good driving start with the car and its maintenance and understanding the fundementals of what everything does and their importance. Tires, Brakes being at the top of the list.

Then its education, education and education. Learning never stops. This is the main thing I feel that is mising from our young drivers journey to a driving privelage.

I started driving when I was 6 Years old, on the farm.

The best car I can remember to learn about control was a 1959 VW beetle. Driving a slow car fast(relatively speaking) has taught me so much about being 'in control' and not a passenger in the drivers seat!

Safety is at the top of my list now as the years pile on.

My first 911 has been with me for 12 mths now and I find it to be a fascinating car...........the journey of exploiting its grip is something I will never grow tired of............

The 968 CS is a giant. I will never drive another car as good as that..........sadly it seems that it may be passing on to its next keeper soon......

and. My 2.5 Yr old daughter needs a Kart.........she does, seriously.............I have a Kart track < 100 meters from my house.

So get out and do DE events and track days.............forget fast, Smooth is where it all falls into place.

"Gentle hands make for rapid progress and you must first slow down to go faster............."

A quote from a Driving God. (Definitely not me!)

Rock On

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"Gentle hands make for rapid progress and you must first slow down to go faster............."

A quote from a Driving God.

That sounds like a Frank Gardner quote to me!

It is absolutely right too.

Many times I have left people confused by saying...

"The faster you travel the slower you should drive"

I know it sounds like a contradiction but you really need to slow everthing down in your head, and be as smooth and precise as possible!

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Sounds like the Next event will have to be a KNT (Kart Night Targa) !

Will see what we can organise one evening during the holidays. Interested ?

Cheers,Mark.

Sounds good to me Mark, And must agree with all the comments above gone are the days when you could learn some basics with a paddock bomb so advanced driving courses before getting a licence should be

mandatory, and i started my daughter in the truck around the farm at 8 and it makes a big difference on the road she is a lot more aware as to what's going on. (Now 24)

With our cars the more time spent on the track the more you become one with the car.

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desismileys_1822.gif

Can we have a weight penalty clause though, for some reason I always seem to get a slower fat kart.

Or maybe even a weight for age thing......hmmmnow we're talking.

Anyways I'm up for it....

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My sons first memory is standing on my lap steering the Gemini around the paddock in Sunbury ! :)

And yes it was RED and I had checkered stripes on it !

Mark I reckon this could be a whole new post, my daughter Jody was named after my hero Jody SCHECKTER, the baby he/she was going to be a Jody no matter what .

Also the first words she ever spoke were not muma or da da it was GEE TEE. I was a huge fan of those big bangerXW and XY Falcons.

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I know most of you have 911's and i've never driven one so i don't know the difference, But with my 951.. i can feel when the car is about to let go and before it does, i can correct it.

Now because i have toyo T1Rs on the rear and fk452 on the front (soon to be changed) it wont over steer, just understeers. the only time it will let loose if i give it a boot full of power. But again i can feel the tyres on the front wanting to let go and i'll correct it.

I don't have nearly as much driving experience as most of you here, as I'm only 20 ;) But i did use to paddock bash a 924 2L (stripped out parts car running on carbs) when i was younger. Also use to go go-karting a lot and i'd always finish 1st or 2nd with the other guys who're on the track.

But in a similar topic, as a P plater, jumping straight into a "high powered vehicle" has made me more mature on the road and learning my car a whole difference experience then from slow and shit to a proper sports car. I've driven a bunch of other cars before, taken them to limits on back twisty roads.

When i can call my car "finished" i'll be entering some motokahna races and learn some more!

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I consider myself to be a reasonable driver these days but not particularly 'a natural', tentative is how I'd describe my progress since 2002 when I got into 944 Turbos. Since coming to the UK and starting to drive a 911 my driving has picked up another level without a doubt due to the abundance of quality tracks and coaching available here (and the not always brilliant weather ) PS I don't recommend track days in the snow for newbie 911 drivers ... that was expensive :blink:

I got a reasonable start in the DE program which Porsche Club of America operates as it involves mandatory instruction for the lower grade run groups and you don't get solo track time until signed off. It wasn't until I went for some pax laps with Jason Burkett that the light came on about what a Porsche can do on the track. I still benefit from getting a pro driver in the car to see how they do things, In the last year or so I was really quite surprised at how differently various pros drove my car to very good effect - (I was data logging on both occasions so I could examine the differences in detail). That brings up another good point, if your not filming what your doing with the wheel, your probably not learning the lessons as fast as you can. My recommendation is to get as much coaching as possible and from a variety of instructors at a variety of tracks/ facilities, including a skidpan or low friction surface. Then it's practice practice practice. I'd also recommend not putting sticky tyres on the car until you consider yourself quite competent as a driver.

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"Gentle hands make for rapid progress and you must first slow down to go faster............."

A quote from a Driving God.

That sounds like a Frank Gardner quote to me!

It is absolutely right too.

Many times I have left people confused by saying...

"The faster you travel the slower you should drive"

I know it sounds like a contradiction but you really need to slow everthing down in your head, and be as smooth and precise as possible!

It was Walter Rohrl.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well I guess Mr Rohrl would be a fair judge too!

He still does a decent job of driving!!!

He has plenty of experience in all sorts of things, and from what I believe a good guy as well!

Couldn't agree more.

Walter's description on how a 911SC handles caused a penny to drop for me. He spoke about how you always hear of 911's over steering, but he pointed out that they will naturally understeer under power exiting a corner.

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Good topic Theo. Thank you for starting it. My current 911 is my first and I found it a difficult machine to come to grips with initially but am growing in confidence. I have owned a string of fast motorcycles and was an OK rider but mistakenly believed that this fact would make me a good car driver. It didn't. Concur with Chris alluding to knowing your limits. Even the best drivers can come unstuck overstepping the boundaries. I like to stay within 8/10 of what I believe to be my own limits which are undoubtably pedestrian compared to most ha ha.

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