All,

It's been a while posting a new topic here but I've certainly watched and read the interesting posts.
What I particularly noticed is all the discussions about cars, controllers, weight, length, height, handicaps, electronics and the possible advantages some teams, cars or controllers have over the others. Stop wining!

But........there one thing which apparently is no discussion and that's the driver itself. To me slotracing is a package of 3 things:

The driver
The controller
and
The car

Of those 3 things the driver plays a t least a 40% factor or ole when it comes down to possible result of the package.
What in my opinion would be a major step forward if drivers could learn from eachother in the way they are driving, apporach a new track, how they "listen" to car, how the hold the controller, where do they look when they drive, what knobs to adjust to improve the driveability of the car etc.......

How many people do you see, talking a walk around the track and inspect the corners, how much banking the have from a close view and how it is perceived from the driverstand?

I challenge everybody to reply to this topic and try to share, if possible, in how the y drive? How they prepare for a race? How do they overtake a slower car? How do you let be a faster car without deslotting? etc.....Any questions about adjusting the controller, whatever controller and try and understand what they do.

To me the driver is the most important part of the package. Why? Because we're human, we sweat, have fears, we're getting emotional about things etc...... This makes this part of the package the most interesting and at the same time the most inpredictable part of the 3 earlier mentioned items.

Willem

I agree whole heartedly with you Willem. As I wrote in another tread, I have to fight the fact that I get older every day. I have to adapt my driving to the fact that my eye sight and my reflexes is not the same as they where some 10 years ago.

Just this evening we had a kid on his first visit in our club. After a race where he came in 8 out of 9 drivers, we took a long hard look at his chassis, and helped him set it up differently. He lowered his best time by more than half a second. Then I tried out his car and his controller and ACD Pro 3. And I found that the adjustment of the controller in my opinion was wrong. So I invited him to try my DiFalco controller. And then he went faster by 3 tenths.

My point here is that with a little coaching this young guy bettered his performance with almost a second a lap! His father and he allready talked about trying other controllers for his 1/24 cars. With some more laps under his belt he will be one of the future stars of Danish slotracing.

For me, I will be satisfied if I can just get back to 80% of my former strength and to do this I have to practise at as many tarcks as I can and learn to annalyse the new tracks that we come to. I did just that at Alsdorf last october, when I visited for the first time. I spent a lot of time looking at how the fast guys drove the different corners, where the braking points where etc. Then I tried to adapt this knowledge to my own driving style, my controller and my car. In the end Mark and I did all right, not great, but we will be much better prepared next time around.

So what is the key to a god result?? 1 st. The drivers, 2nd. the car, 3rd. the controller. And as I have stated umpteen times before: Our team screwed up on the setup in Oslo! Human error, that led to a very unstabel car. Not even reasonable driving could help. We have worked tirelessly since to find a way not to get into this position again. I have talked to fellow racers and even had one help us out with a test chassis. And we have race tested several new developments on our car since. Will it help, well we will have to wait untill Merlijn to know! But I hope we have made a good car that we can handle and race to a better result than in Oslo.

I fully agree to Willem's opinion about the drivers factor in the total package. To speak for myself I started slotracing quite late (40+). So to be honest, my driving skils still need to be improved to batlle with the fast guys. That is no point at all. The best win, is the win in which you improved your performance. Not the win "with two fingers in your nose". Sometimes I do not understand why the competitor is faster, while I am racing at certain point "full trigger". You cannot go faster than full trigger! It must have something to do with momentum, braking point, braking time and tempo of going back to full trigger. Sometimes it is faster to go back on the trigger, in the middel or the end of the corner. I have to train my brain for this, because it feels uncomfortable or unnatural. Part of idividual driving skills, the controller adjustments can make a huge difference! I have seen and tried (very) different controller adjustments of teammades and was astonished about the fact that they all could drive fast. For me the approach to a race is: what are the decissive parts of the track, how to handle it or get through, what is the tolerance of the car (at what point does it slide or deslot), what will hapen problably with the track in race time (building up grip), what tracks do I like or not (race strategy).

fun topic, and maybe I'll post some larger post later, but I just wanna say that the controller is much much less important in my opinion then car and driver.

We go to Almere frequently, and although Willem controllers for me are the best (I'll explain later why) we do not always have them all with us, forgot one or etc. Then mostly me or Tamar is stuck with whatever there's left on the club, and although I've never raced an ACD before, Tamar and me can make the same laptimes with a 'MUCO' controller, or even an old standard Parma controller with zero nobs on it to fiddle. May take 10 minutes to get used to the charastistics of the darn thing, but we'll get there.
I never ever change my settings on my own controller either. At the beginning of the race weekend I may adjust it a few degrees, but it's always in the same position. Then mostly Emily gets rounds with my settings good and comfortable to.

For me the only time when a controller comes into play is when you're battling with someone. Cause we all have that feeling that you only get from your OWN controller. It gives something like a never-need-to-think feeling when you're racing it. And that feeling is most important when you're trying to outbreak somebody, knowing you're gonna be in trouble by the time you enter the corner and you've got to compensate hastily. If you don't have your own controller then things may end bad and you loose the battle.

So still, A driver can get the same result with a controller he's not used to, but for the driver to achieve the same result with a car that's all of a sudden 0,1 or 0,2 sec slower, is a whole other business

Guys,

I agree with Nick on this point its not the controller that is the "solution" a good pilot and a good car-setup are the best.

I know you al saw the porsche at merlijn (not difficult as it was the only one on the track) we drove with 2 controllers the english one from Gerry (in the first day stint) and from the night stint on with my acd. Ok the car went faster with the acd but only about 3 tenths of a second because it just gave a bit more confidence in braking just that bit later. But the best is always a car that is correctly setup and is quit. ("Yes i hate loud cars") And the porsche proved as did Willems corvette that with the right person on the trigger and a good setup a car can be faster no mather what controller you are using. And Nick is right with a another controller you can run the same times to it will only take the driver some time to adapt to it .