Hello, Kansas City, and welcome back to the Bespoke Automotive Refinement Podcast. We’re so glad that you’ve joined us on this wonderful Thanksgiving week. Thomas, are you excited for Thanksgiving? I’m pumped.
I’ve been bulking, and so I was thinking about starting my cut, but I decided I’m gonna wait until after Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons. That would have been really sad, to be like, sorry, I can’t eat anything. No, it just would have been a bad week to cut, because I still would have gained weight.
Today, we’re going to be talking about track cars and racing. Thomas, give us a little bit of information. What is a track car? Like, is a Jeep a track car? Is a Corvette a track car? What specifically is a track car? Well, a track car is really anything that you want to take to the racetrack.
So there’s different types of racing. What I refer to as like a weekend warrior canoe. You know, you’ve got your drag racing, which is what I did a lot of.
That’s heads-up racing. Two cars just race in a straight line, so you can get to the quarter mile the fastest. There’s bracket racing.
Never really got into bracket racing, but it’s basically drag racing, but you race within bracket times. There is half mile, which is one of my favorites. It’s basically running your car and a half mile on like a shutdown airstrip.
And rather than seeing who gets to the end of the fastest, you’re racing for the like top speed. And then there is road course racing. Which is something that I have done a couple of times.
You were with me one time when I did it. And road course racing is the most technical. It’s the most nuanced.
It’s also the most It’s the most expensive, but I think it can be the most fun. Do you offer any Kansas City Car Detailing services or Kansas City Car Detailing packages for any of your Kansas City Car Detailing clients if they decide to do any track racing? Of course, I mean Peg correction is a big thing. What’s even bigger though is getting the track prep and the tar off of your car.
Now you’re burning up tires and typically you get a lot of burnt tires up along the quarter panels of your car. You get brake dust because you’re doing heavy braking going into corners. Drag racing you get track prep Slung all over your car and it gets sticky.
It gets hot. You got to try to chip it off. So we offer lots of different Kansas City Car Detailing packages for people that race on a track.
All right, question number one. What’s the most important technique for going faster on a track? Is it just putting your foot down on the pedal? No, so if you are we’re going to talk about road racing and actually, a lot of it is it’s called finding a line. You find your line and finding a line is figuring out how to go around the track in a way that you never You’re on the throttle the most and your turns are the most efficient.
So like when you’re coming into a corner, you never want to be on the inside of the corner. You want to try to go to the outside and then cut through the corner. Versus being on the inside, you’re going to slow down a lot more to take that corner because you’re going to have to go sharper.
The other thing about cornering is you want to go into the corner slow, but accelerate out of the corner faster. So a lot of guys, they’ll go into the corner really fast. They have to brake hard and then when they come out of that corner, they’re going slower versus the guy that goes into the corner.
More technical, finds a perfect line, goes into it slower, and then they can they can slingshot out of the corner. That’s one of the best techniques. How do you know the perfect braking point going into a corner? How do you find that apex? For a beginner, there’s cones that are set up that kind of show like accelerate to this point and then let off the throttle.
There will be two cones and then your three cones are for braking. For a beginner, that’s a good way to figure it out. It’s one of those things that’s just trial and error.
My theory is always with track racing or with road racing and autocross is not going into the corner fast, but going into the corner smooth. Then accelerating out of the corner quickly. Braking point, every car is different because every car has different brakes.
It’s nuanced to what kind of car you’re driving. What level of car you’re driving, I should say. What’s the biggest mistake new drivers make? They think they have the fastest car.
The first time I ever went around a track, you know when I’ve shown you those little Mazda convertibles and I’ve pointed them out before, like that’s the best sports car ever made. Every person that races on a track will tell you that the Mazda Miata is the best race car ever. They’re slow, but with the right driver behind the wheel of a Mazda, Miata or an S2000 or a Porsche Boxster, they’re light, they’re nimble, they don’t have a lot of power.
It’s hard to crash a slow car going around a track, if that makes sense. It’s really easy to crash a fast car. So, guys will take their brand new CO6 Corvette to the track and they’ll try to drive it like a race car driver without learning proper techniques.
That’s the mistake I made. I had a driving coach that I went and spent the weekend at Hallett with and this guy’s actually a company driver for Porsche. And I drove my C6 Z06 down there and he said, I want you to make three laps in your car just doing what you would normally do.
And I learned very quickly that 680 horsepower on a track with a lot of corners, it’s very technical, is too much for a beginner. My Z06 was way too much power for me. And there were guys that were passing me in Miatas.
Wow. Because they were professional drivers. They knew where to find their line.
They knew where to brake. They knew where to accelerate. And I may have been able to pass them on the high end.
There’s a Z06 right there. But they were able to go around me on the corners because I was struggling. So, beginners make the mistake of thinking that they need to have the fastest car out there.
Well, it’s like when you and I went to K1 Speed, I decided I am not a driver in any regard. I can literally drive my daily drive, but I’m not a racer. And I literally had my foot on the throttle the whole time and I kept hitting walls.
I literally ended up with these ginormous bruises on my shoulder because I kept seatbelt, I hit the wall really hard, it would yank me around. So I had huge bruises. But I was just trying to go fast.
Yep, that’s the mistake made. That is a perfect, perfect example. And even the guys that showed up at K1 Speed that had their own gloves, $400 helmets, the reason that I beat all of them was because I was more efficient in my braking than I was my acceleration.
Makes sense. How do you feel when you hit a perfect lap? I wouldn’t know. It never feels perfect to you? I mean, they get better.
I’ve never really had a perfect lap. Because every driving coach that I’ve ever worked with was always, you know, after I came out of a corner it was, you were braking too soon, or you braked too late, or, you know, you didn’t give it enough power going out of the corner. So I don’t know if I’ve ever had a perfect lap in an actual car.
I’ve gotten it before in a shift car, like what we were doing at K1, and it feels pretty good. What makes a good track car versus a street car? Brakes, suspension, and your… I guess power to an extent. Like, you wouldn’t take this Jeep around a track that’s top-heavy.
It doesn’t have race brakes. Brakes and suspension. The first modification that I would ever do to a car I was street racing would be… I would add power to it because we were going fast in straight lines.
The first mod that you would do to a track car that you’re going around corners in would be coilover suspension that are very stiff, very analog. Makes sense. So if someone is wanting to book a Kansas City Car Detailing Package or Service, you can give us a call at 620-282-0402.
You can also go online to BespokeClimate.com. There you can check out a list of all of our Kansas City Car Detailing Packages and Services that we have to offer the Kansas City area.