swagkingcole

So the question is, what is the most powerful performance upgrade?

Is it an exhaust? An ECU tune? Reducing unsprung weight?

It’s actually none of those things, and turns out that its FREE.

So what is it than?

Well, the most powerful performance upgrade is actually you.

More specifically, it is your level of awareness, sensitivity, and acuity.

It is your ability to tangibly sense and feel the living pulse of the car.

Yeah, I agree that it is fun to spend loads of cash upping horsepower, dropping weight, and the like, but in reality, if you aren’t fully in tune with what you have now, than how can you expect to really enjoy what you’ve spent your hard earned cash on?

Anyone can really mash the fun pedal from a stop light, but the real fun begins once we learn to develop a higher degree of precision and sensitivity. Not only is this more fun, but more importantly, it's much, much safer, especially as power goes up.

Because if you can’t even fully feel and sense what you have now, then how can you realistically expect to safely and adequately apply the power you may gain from mechanical upgrades?

Below you will find some simple mental exercises to play around with when driving.

These will really help you get more present and in tune with your car, and thus, enjoy it more, and have more fun. It’s amazing what we notice once we start paying more attention.

I believe Jim Rohn said that success was a refined study of the obvious and mastery of the basics.

What you need:

Your car of choice
Yourself

Main variables to tune into:

1. Drivetrain
2. 4 tires
3. Weight transfer/Weight balance

How to do this:

Remove distractions

Turn off the radio and put your cell phone away, so that you can free yourself from distractions and just tune into the car.

Use your ears to really listen and tune into the rhythms and pulsations of the drivetrain.

Can you know the RPM just by sound? Can you sense where you are in the REV range just by sound and feel? Can you sense what gear you are in just on feel?

Try to feel and SEE with your hands, feet, and butt.

What are the front wheels doing? What are the rear wheels doing? Can you see the road through the steering wheel with your hands? Can you really feel the road through your hands, feet, and butt?

Learn to really tune into and feel the weight transfer of the car.

Where is the weight? What is the balance of the weight?

Sometimes imagining holding a tube filled with water and moving it side to side is an easy mental exercise to learn to feel the weight transfer in the car.

Smoothing inputs

Play around with getting really soft and gentle with your inputs on the car. Pay attention to how this may, or may not affect and you feel and how the car feels to you. This can help us learn to be more gentle and efficient with our beloved cars and thus, learn to work more harmoniously with it instead of fighting or battling against.

In closing

I encourage you to remember these things and remember to play around with them next time you drive.

You may notice that you arrive at your destination feeling much more calm and relaxed due to focusing your mind and actually being present and more grounded in your body.

Hopefully this helps you have more fun and enjoy your car even more!

Thanks for reading and please post your tips and suggestions as well.

chrisridebike8

I assume you mean what NA mod gets you the most gains, because a supercharger would be the most overall. Haha. Tune if you are non-P31 will unlock the most power. And then headers. And I agree that launching is more fun that stupid burnouts. Can you feel the tune? Hell yes. The power delivery is insane and the shifts, especially downshifts with the EC v5 tune, are worlds apart.

rory breaker

He's making a point, that the best "mod" to increase performance is improving your driving skills.

chrisridebike8

^^^ahhh...I guess I missed that. Reading before I have coffee=fail. And yea, a driver mod is definitely a fun and worthwhile investment

CarHopper

Hi, I'm here for drivers education

unagi1

First mod is to tighten the nut behind the wheel <straight face>

alextaylor29

Good thread and I 100% agree. Both 5th Gear and Top Gear has done stories around this and they both found good driver instruction/driving technique leads to better lap times that simply adding HP or other performance add-ons. You ever hear that quote..."High performance car with a low performance driver..." this is along those lines and I 100% agree.


I've done both Bondurant and Rusty Wallace (NASCAR) driving schools/driving experience and they've helped me immensely.


Sometimes we forget this, so thanks for the reminder.

Ingenieur

Calling Captain Obvious!!! Lol

Professional training
Seat time using what you learned
Can be a closed track or the daily commute
And I don't mean faster, I mean safer and 'better'
Try to be smooth & precise at 30 mph or 100 mph
Simple things like blaring music, texting, phone, etc.

Good book
Sports Car & Competition Driving by Paul Frere
Very basic but it's surprising how few even know the basics

jrcart

One day on a road course at speed is like 10+ year of road driving experience. Getting comfortable in an opposite lock slide at 100mph makes one that happens at 45mph in the rain or snow on the street a walk in the park....or better yet a near impossibility. Learning how a car reacts in various situations in various conditions in a controlled environment is priceless. My two sons will NOT get their drivers permits until they have completed an advanced driving or racing school on a race track.

Ingenieur

But we drive on roads with
Poor drivers
Snow
Potholes
Debris
Etc

Track is good for car control but the road is a different set of hazards
2 second rule, how many people know how far they travel in 1 sec at a given speed?
Their vehicles braking distance?
How to gauge the speed of approaching traffic when you are stationary
Jeez, people don't use turn signals and drive in the passing lane while on cell phones
Drunk driving
Careless, wreckless and speeding
Running lights

Agree, mechanical skills, car control and techniques learned on a track are important but failure to obey basic rules lead to most accidents, not lack of skill
Some people get a day of track time and think they are the next senna
It's a double edged sword
Give me someone who has logged a million miles in 20 years without an accident or a ticket

Skill will help you avoid some of the morons lol

roadtalontsi

I can only hope to get the c63 on the track at some point. Being stage 2 it's way too powerful for my skill level but that wont stop me. My previous STi was great on the track and the supra was ok - will be much better next time. It'll be interesting to see if the esprit lives up to its race heritage when i get that out there. It's sad meeting people who are really dillusional about their driving abilities and havent been to a road course/drag strip/auto cross etc. Or ever bet yet when they consider driving like that in a controlled environment more dangerous than public streets.

unagi1

Going to the track is all well and good, but something like this is probably more applicable to the teenage driver and allow them to apply it immediately:
http://www.tirerack.com/features/mot...t_survival.jsp

In order of difficulty (and risk IMO, based on my progression):
Street course < Solo < HPDE < Racing School

sinape62

Huge assumptions being made... What if your driving a Prius? So duh, the car does make a difference. There is no joy driving a Prius, no sensory feel or feedback.. Corny OP. I think most here have the sense of connecting with our cars, or at least a high percentage of us do.

Ingenieur

BMWCCA also has a great program for teen drivers

I had the opportunity to take a police driving school and it was eye opening
I also took a private sector course taught by retired USSS instructors
both made me much more situationally aware
about the only thing you have any control (an illusion?) over is reaction time: you can leave more space/time betwen yourself and the vehicles you share the road with

hard at times, seems like if you leave > than a 1.5 car gap some asshol tries to fill the void

edwardsflight33

ADAC has some sweet programs in Germany. Hoping to go sometime this summer/fall to the one at the Hockenheim Ring.

jrcart

Yes but high speed track experience gets you comfortable traveling at a high rate of speed. Things come up on a race track and everything is sped up, closing speeds increase, you get to experiment with real braking distances and can actually find the limit of the car and see and feel how it behaves at or near the limit. All of it transfers over to the street. Spending at day on the track and experiencing how things happen at speed make a negative street situation on the streetnwhile traveling at 45-50mph feel like it is happening in slow motion.

unagi1

Lots of situations unfold differently at lower speeds than at the track. Cars handle differently, you don't have cars coming in at right angles trying to t-bone you after running an intersection, etc. A car that may slide at 90mph might push at low speeds, but that doesn't necessarily come into play at a high speed track.

Dealing with blind spots (yours and others), knowing how much room to leave in front of cars based on road conditions, and so on...

Ingenieur

I agree it hones certain skills. I'm just not sure how many transer to the street and the typical accident.

I've trained martial arts for almost 40 years, and the same type of mental/reaction conditioning applies. But it very seldom transfers over to a fight (or in this case an accident) which is unpredictable.

But a few days of training will never prepare one for a fight. It may be a disadvantage because you THINK you are prepared, you know, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It is a daily, as you 'live' situational awareness type of thing.

'Accidents' (I don't like the word since it usually negligence on someones part, then you have a true 'victim', the object of that negligence), are not predictable nor do they occcur in a controlled environment.

Being fully conscious in every move you make is a better approach than short periods of intense training. Avoiding risky behaviour and realizing you have very little control over the situation goes a long way, imho. In the martial arts it is called 'do' or a way of life, the real learning takes place outside the dojo, and in the case of driving, on the street, when talking about street driving.

Obviously these are opinions, and there is no 'right' or 'wrong.

most people do not know how to adjust their mirrors: I read an article years ago, decades actually, by a mechanical engineer who's advice was to set them to see a car next to you.
Mine are set as such: I can see a car transition from my rear view, to my side view (with a bit of overlap) and as it exits my sideview it enter into my peripheral vision (obviously with a bit of overlap).
no blind spots...with the caveat I still have to actually USE them, lol

jcfay

This is true. One of the benefits of ever having a job with a company car (I work in pharma and was a field employee for a while) is that you have to do some sort of evasive driving course, which was great (full antilock application, steering while full brake, etc.). But they also outlined how to properly set your mirrors, and you should only see the very edge of your vehicle, just a splinter. I mean when you think about it you know where the hell your car is, right?

I also drove a truck when I was younger, and when you're hauling freight, particularly very fragile freight (my least favorite was aquariums ), you learn very quickly to look far, far ahead and other valuable lessons. I'm sure all of the above comments are accurate. Bottom line is most drivers are crap, unfortunately. Some get better with age, and some don't. That's my 2 bits.

Ingenieur

I can't see any portion of my car as far as I can recall
My wife from the passenger seat can see perfectly out of hers lol

Looking ahead is so important
Always scanning
Down the road
Sweep the mirrors
Do not get distracted
2 sec at 70 mph is >200 ft
Over 12 car lengths
Close to the braking distance of a good car
Over it with the normal 1 to 1.5 reaction time as measured from the time you initiate action
Not including: detection, verification, decision and finally implementation
Forget about mechanical system lag of a few tenths

Drive 'seriously'
Not as if your life depends on it, but close lol
Be methodical and focused like a pilot or equipment operator
My wife says I 'zone out' lol