Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Explanation request answered

I got asked from a reader to explain this: "°". I mean degrees as in angle degrees.
As far as I can tell Loeb's corners follow this logic:


He also has slower corners like hairpins, etc. but I omitted all that to keep it simple.

In practical terms this is how it applies:



From top to bottom: left 130 short onto right 130 half-long
left 144 tightens 130 short. green color is racing line.
If you assume this is a blind corner, the "left 144 tightens 130 short" example shows a very basic example of how handy his notes are. He knows the severity of the entry corner, how much space he has to brake, the severity of the tighter corner and its exact racing line.



8 comments:

  1. Very good and clear example! More pacenote info, please! :)

    That "left 144 tightens 130 short" could also be like "easy left minus tightens medium short" ?

    I don't know no one here in Finland who would use angles in pacenotes, mostly they use same kind of pn like Burns did. Angles are mostly French way to do it, right? :)

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    1. perhaps, yes. You still need that 40m (length of corner) somewhere.

      I'd say mostly french and maybe even latin in general.

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  2. "perhaps, yes. You still need that 40m (length of corner) somewhere." Aaah, no I get the idea, thanks! Very clever pacenotes indeed.

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  3. If i understand right the 144 is two things.140 (the angle of the corner )and 40 (the interval of the corner)and for simplicity he says 144 instead of saying 140 and 40 right???

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    1. correct, the interval (as in the duration) of the corner, not to be confused with the distance (of a small straight) between two corners. he has another way of noting straight distances between combination corners.

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  4. Please given is more details about Loebs notes. Have always wondered how they are. Thanks. :-)

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  5. Interesting... how about hairpins and slower corners? More info and drawings please :)

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  6. Great topic here. Always thought this was one of the reasons for his great success, along with other things, like his fantastic memory, that Dominique Heinz, one of his close friend singled out as the most important attribute for his unprecedented run of wins. I also did some research and translated a few stages, if someone still follows this topic I could post something up. I have two observations to make, though:
    1. The angle of a turn, as described by Anthony here, cannot be translated to steering input, only the radius of a corner, or of the arc (path) the car is travelling on. I tend to believe Loeb wasn't so technical on this side, just divided the steering into equal parts for reference. The system is brilliant anyway and can be adapted to the numeric pacenotes as well, look at hayden paddon for example, he has a lot of signs on the recce car steering wheel. The big difference is that system is progressive, with much more detail on faster corners, as the steering angle system would be fixed.

    2. I heard + and - are something altogether different on Loeb's notes than most people use these for. I can't remember precisely where I heard it, but someone said it's an indication of where he should accelerate in a turn, ++ is gas from corner entry, -- should wait until the wheels are straight. Could mean somewhat the same thing, but it's a very clear separation between steering and accelerating when you put it this way.

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