Correct posture at the wheel

I'm following some tips that I've got here on driving the old Maserati 250F. I was even able to get silver in the challenge at Magione, which is something for one whom couldn't finish a lap. I'm finally able to avoid spinning all the time and I'm having a blast. It's very fun. I have a question about how to counter steer properly. Got used to let go of the wheel and grab it at a certain point. The question is if the proper way to do this would be to counter it by myself instead of letting the wheel go. Thx again!

 

Not specific to the car, but that is done in real life in drifting. Simply letting go of the wheel after the initiation of the drift, allows the front wheels to turn into the direction of the skid through Self Alignment Torque on the front wheels.

The issue you can encounter with our controllers, is that the motors are often not powerful enough to spin the wheel as quickly as it would in reality when you let go.

Check this out. Fast forward to 29 seconds if you want to get right to the example.

 

Huge help my friend. Got it right away. Even more so after seeing the Self Alignment Torque in effect on a slide. Now it makes sense to me. Always seemed counter intuitive to me, the reason why the wheel would counter by itself while the car slides. But now I see that it's no different of when you're on a straight line and the wheels just point where you're going, alining the steering wheel in the process. You just helped with a big knowledge gap I had there. That being said, I just asked because I saw a Chris Harris video on drift and he said something in the lines of: "Don't just let go of the wheel, that's just lazy. Earn the right to do it.", suggesting that it'd be better, while learning, to do the job by yourself. Sometimes it's pretty difficult to do this, like in this race I had yesterday. It's on the 2 corners after 2:12. Did a bad breaking there and had to correct, but I did let go of the steering wheel or I don't think I'd be able to do that. But man, your answer really was enlightening to me. Thanks!

 

Watch this guy, only one time do his hands cross. Spectacular racing style.

 

Very smoth, my friend. And as we know, smoth is fast.

 

IMO taking the hands of the wheel or not is not about technique or style (OK, somewhat it is), but it's more about the situation your are in or want to either provoke or avoid.

If you really want to drift with a big angle, then yes, letting go is a fast way to let the wheels point to the direction they should and then grab on again to make the necessary adjustments.
But like @Seria17hri11er wrote, it depends on your wheel if the FFB is strong and fast enough for that or if it needs support.


Another thing is catching slides like with tailhappy cars on exits, like M3/M4, 1M, 250F, SLS, etc. these cars want to push the rears out. You could either have some fun and let the car do it, but if you want fast lap times for racing or hotlapping then it's crucial to keep the hands on the wheel and try to correct the oversteer with wheel movements.
Practice this and your corrections will get faster and more precise until you get to the point where you can predict what steering angles are necessary to catch oversteer without unsettling the car which can lead to a pendulum move by the rear. (sorry, no better words come to mind for that last part)

 

Glad to have been such a help!

On Chris Harris. He was talking about drifting though. You are racing and unexpectedly got in a oversteer/drift condition. Letting go to allow the front wheels to align to direction of slide was subconscious of you and an immediate reaction. Nothing wrong with it.

What he was probably trying to convey is to not just sloppily perform a Scandinavian Flick, and let go of the wheel to drift, but to have accuracy. Kind of, have flow with it, follow through with the flick. Something like that I reckon.

Not quite sure how that is relevant Horus. That car has a low lock to lock, of like 360 degrees. So you probably never need to let go of the wheel to counteract drift/oversteer. It's with cars with higher lock to lock; 600 and above I reckon.

 

Yea, Schnipp is definitely right about this. Ideally, you don't need to let go of the wheel; you should strive to recognize an oversteer instantaneously, and make a extremely quick yet small correction to stop it, instead of having to let go of the wheel to make a large correction.

 

It's a bit trickier on our toy wheels, but shuffle steering is a very helpful technique, one you can see Chris Harris using often. I've been to two SCCA AutoX training days and the instructors there heavily advocate shuffle steering, but the one thing they say never to do is take your hands off the wheel and let it spin on it's own. You want to use your hands to bring it back to where it needs to be, that way the car is always under your control. It felt a bit foreign at first but eventually I got the hang of it and now I do it every time I drive (in a real car or a sim car) and I can attest that it does have many benefits. It keeps your arms from getting crossed up and it keeps your torso stable so you're not getting tossed around as much, and it generally keeps your hands at 9 & 3. This technique is also used by law enforcement.

Here's a short video showing how it's done. He does the no-no of taking his hands off the wheel and letting it spin back to him, but other than that it should give you an idea of how it works. Watch this and then go watch any Chris Harris hoonage video and watch how he steers. It will take some practice, but it's worth it.

 

Yet again more good info. My understanding on the matter got much better thanks to your tips, my friend.

 

That's a big problem of mine, my friend! Still have to get the hang of it. When driving these cars, I always tend to be too careful with the gas, to the point where I'm probably loosing a lot of time. I got to experiment more with this. With your tips in mind, I'll practice more with them. Thx!

 

Nothing wrong with it, practice and you'll see/feel the progress over time.

I recommend to take the 1M or M3 (E30, E92) for it. It steps out a bit, but relatively easy to control.
250F is just very loose and therefore it's hard to see if what you're doing helps or not. SLS might be a bit too loose on the rear and gets to big angles fast, M4 can be a bit snappy when the oversteer happens.

458 and 488 are also cars that are realatively easy to correct with good feedback.

Maybe even try with Street tyres first, at least for drifting they have a softer transition from grip to slide. Haven't tried it for oversteer correction, but maybe same principle applies there, too!?

 

For drift cars (or just roadcars in F/R layout) you can let go of the wheel when countersteering ... but for racecars or mid engine roadcars, steering must be faster, so you want to keep holding the wheel. Important bit here is that the faster you are the less you will need to rotate the wheel (unless you want to drift) so getting better actually makes it easier.

Increasing the speed of steering response is a lot about understanding the car, and reacting (or preparing for reaction) before stuff happens.
250F is an extreme case here, where the car's response to throttle is faster than to steering, so you literally want to start countersteering before the car starts reacting to throttle. Ideally the movement from 90° steering into the turn should smoothly go to -20° countersteer (which is a nominal value for corner exit steering position) at the same time as throttle pedal goes from 0% to ~100%. And because feet are faster than hands in this case, you want to start with steering and then add throttle.
If you wait for the slide to happen no amount of reflexes will fix the struggle that happens after. This car needs proactive driving.

 

Countersteer before?! I got to definitely try that. Very interesting. More info for me to get better practice. Thanks, friend!

 

Anticipate that once you start giving it throttle on corner exit, the rear is going to step out. So just before you begin to apply throttle for corner exit, straighten up the wheel and be ready to immediately countersteer once you start getting on the throttle.

Sound right Nao?

 

Guys, where I can find my saved fov and seat position (everything u can set in game). Tbh, right now I got almost perfect camera, maybe there is somewhere a file with saved settings (in case of deleting the game or pc burn).

Thank you.

 

Should have made a new thread for that question, but i can answer: The camera info is stored in ...\Documents\Assetto Corsa\cfg\cars

@Seria17hri11er Yep I could add that the slip angle of the whole car when cornering is higher than what we want on corner exit, the car needs to straighten up a little before we give it full beans to settle perfectly with minimal countersteer - and thats the second reason for going with steering first.

 

I think if you're ever going to use the letting go method you need to learn the correct way first. You'll never learn to handle the wheel in a drift any other way if you just rely on the letting go idea and its bad form in most cases and totally unnecessary except in extreme cases like going one direction to another or extreme angles. With weak wheels you'll also need to flick the wheel around instead of letting it go around if you do let go.

Personally my favourite hooligan mobile at the moment is the Ford Mustang. That thing has a very nice balance of torque, grip, drift, and weight transfer. It really just wants to drift when you power over on it. Its better for learning than those insane Ferraris or the drift cars that have extreme set ups that don't really reflect the normal kind of Chris Harris driving you have to do with most cars in Assetto Corsa though the E30 Drift is the easiest Drift car to start with in my opinion. Very luscious drifting feedback through the wheel unlike with other drift cars that can be more brittle. Once you get more advanced the 488GTB is surprisingly responsive despite the power. Its torque curve is alarmingly flat across the revs. Its much easier to handle than any other Ferrari in my experience.

As for a model for using your hands you can't go wrong with this classic and obvious choice. The guy almost never lets go as far as I can tell and never crosses his hands despite the radical inputs necessary. Most people have probably watched this video 100 times but I wonder how many times they paid good close attention to his steering and hand work. Notice how he'll reach over the top to pull the wheel back around from deep drifts instead of just wheeling his hand around like a truck driver which is how you find yourself doing the naughty hand over hand thing. In my experience with good practice and habits hand over hand becomes only the most panicked of responses to crazy moments.