Melons' Guide to Better Driving #3 - Steering Control

Hey guys!

Welcome to my third edition of #MGtBD - which will be a continual series on how to prepare the people of CarThrottle for track day driving and racing scenarios. I’m starting off with basics, fun things, and things which teach with little danger to the car and driver/spectators.

Even so, though, this sort of driving is best reserved for tracks, closed roads, or closed parking lots.

To read the ones that you have missed, click: https://www.carthrottle.com/discover/Melons'+Guide+to+Better+Driving/?sort=recency&exact=true

Seating Position

Pedals

I’d like to show a bunch of the main seating advice I follow for racing, be it good or bad, with an explanation of why. I’ll start with the order of doing things. The obvious bits of advice, I will still cover, in order to aid everyone, but there will be some parts that may feel blatantly obvious - please don’t be too upset, I’m writing this article in a way that I hope will answer everyone’s questions and questions they didn’t even know that they would have.

I’ll start with the first thing I do when I get into a car… I set the pedals properly.

When you sit in your car, you should sit with your whole spinal cord along the seat, to the best of your ability. This is primarily a safety concern (for crashing), and it allows you to exert maximum pedal effort on the throttle, clutch and brake, without sliding back in your seat before that point. If your feet cannot touch the floor firmly (with the entire sole of your foot resting against the floor board), move forward. You do this to ensure that, if necessary, your feet can push the pedals as far down as they will go. This is especially important in racing! Clutch will break if you don’t. Gearbox will grind. Brakes will not work well. Throttle will not unleash full power.

Don’t worry about the angle of the seat, yet. Just make sure it’s reasonably upright, without being too far leaned in either direction. You’re only worried about the pedals for now, but the pedals will not be set correctly if your seat is not in a roughly ideal situation. Set it roughly. Don’t worry too much about the seat, and not at all about the steering wheel, yet.

Now, bring your feet onto the pedals. When your feet are at “rest positions” (not pressing on the pedals, but hovering over them,) your legs should be bent at about 120 degrees. If your legs are completely straight at any point, that is extremely unsafe and will cause you to break your hip in a crash. Your legs should be bent, slightly, even when they rest on the floor, behind the pedals. Too much bend, (90 degrees) and you will not ever be comfortable. Too little bend (160 degrees) and you still risk breaking your hip in a crash (where the newly-bent firewall will push the pelvic bone through the hip because your leg didn’t bend, but instead directly transferred the force of the impact into your hip bone. Fun?)

When the pedals are fully depressed, you should still have an angle of about 130-150 degrees, depending on how much adjustment you have. This will cause your knees to go upwards (leg bending naturally) instead of backwards (into the hip bone) in a crash, and you will also have better pedal modulation than you would if your legs were entirely stretched (180 degrees/flat).

You will probably notice that the steering wheel and pedals all feel closer than you’re used to in your car. Good. Learn this system, it’s much better.

Steering Wheel

Now, with that finished, it’s time to work on the steering wheel. It’s the thing I think people screw up most. Below are 6 of the reasons…

The first one is a problem I really struggled with (being 6’4”) - until Crazy Leo asked me if my steering wheel was telescopic. It turns out, it is. I didn’t know that, but he figured it out! So, by moving the steering wheel upwards and towards my chest, I was able to give myself more room. Thanks Subaru and Crazy Leo!

In my last cars. such adjustments were impossible and the cars were more difficult to drive, especially to drive comfortably. My hands would always brush against or actually hit my legs. Trying to steer right while I was on the throttle, with my left leg brushing against the steering wheel would result in what I call “leg-block steering” where I would simply not have space for my hand to pass through!

If you ever have this problem, please consider adjusting your seat and steering wheel, according to the rest of the 5 photos still to come.

In that image above, the lines are meant to indicate that my back is pressed all the way against the back of the seat, which is adjusted to an optimally upright but not uncomfortable position. My arms are bent at 90 degrees when I am driving normally, and - with my back resting against my seat - I am able to wrap my wrist all the way around the top of the steering wheel. I’ll explain why in the next photos.

Sitting too far away from the steering wheel will often make your arms become “hyper-extended” and this will leave you less room for your pectoral muscles [and breasts, ladies and gentlemen] while limiting the fine motor control over your steering. This was my driving style before Leo showed me the steering wheel adjustments! I didn’t realize I had them, so I made do.

You see, the last photo is the most ideal. This one gives you the most control and the most comfort. I can have my arms crossed over each other for a long time and I won’t be uncomfortable. I have the ability to cross them over in less than a second, and I can do so with strikingly perfect accuracy. It enables me to drive better, with more control and faster reflexes. I can’t stress this enough.

The reason I can’t give a more comprehensive guide about how to do it, is that every car has vastly different setups for how to accomplish these tasks. Some vehicles have adjustable pedals, so you can move the steering wheel in order to accomplish the task of sitting correctly with the steering wheel. Other vehicles, like mine, have telescopic steering wheels which are intended to enable the steering wheel to move towards the seats, so that the pedal position remains constant. Some cars have terrible adjustments and will never work as racing cars without an aftermarket interior (2005 Hyundai Santa Fe, the worst car I’ve ever driven hard)

The WRX has adjustments for every aspect of the seating position, from the height of the seat, to the forward & backward position, and the tilt of the seat (top and bottom, separately.) I like having the seat bottom facing upwards from the rear, so that it’s a little closer to a real rally car/formula car. The reason is, it enables me and my lanky legs even more bend for optimal pedal control.

Grasping the Steering Wheel

When you have set the driving position, the feeling of grabbing the wheel should be comfortable. Almost all talented racing drivers will prefer the 9 & 3 position (except Japan, we won’t talk about Japan.)

I’ll provide some examples.

However, you may sometimes see rally drivers and drifters doing a hand-over-hand technique. It takes a lot of practice, but when done right, it should look like I do in my video, or…

That fantastic thing is perfect. Do you see how his arms are almost always crossed over? But one of his hands, he doesn’t cross over. This is because he wants to be ready to “clap” the steering wheel like I do, to recover from a near-spin before or as it is happening. Crazy Leo himself taught me this, and is another fine example of it.

Thing is, after the steering wheel passes that 190 degree mark, if you still need to turn more and the steering wheel can be turned more (people with quick steering racks like in F1 will know what a challenge this is!), you will want to slap the steering wheel at the 12 o’clock position each time. This will aid in turning the steering wheel further, faster.

I wish I had a good video to demonstrate this, but I don’t. Crazy Leo himself is the master of this technique and he doesn’t post many onboard videos - and any that I have seen would be a no-go for public sharing!

If you watch my video, you should be able to get some general understanding of the system. It really works. I used it to recover from a near-crash… I almost crashed into a huge rock at about 120 km/h (closed road!) when I misjudged a corner. I had a passenger - he was definitely scared, until I recovered control, when he was highly impressed and told me that I’m “definitely the most psychotic driver [he had] ever ridden with.”

This near-crash was because of a jump. I couldn’t see the other side as well as I would have liked and landed a bit too far to the right… But I was able to gather it back up with the steering technique I’m trying to teach you guys, so you can regain control, too.

That was one of the now-rare moments when my heart rate skyrocketed from only driving. I still have my scares, every driver does. But, I have a “driver’s toolbox” to pull from which keeps me safer than the average person. I am able to maintain control more readily than the average person. This is not to brag, and I don’t mean to say that I’m better than everyone. I’m not. But, as someone who has been teaching himself to drive better for 12 years, the “average” driver is appalling. Again, this whole article is aimed at helping.

Anyways, that’s kinda the end of the article. Please feel free to ask any questions. I will answer them. If there’s anything that you feel you would like to question, add to, add entirely, or which you do not understand, do not hesitate to ask. I can answer - I may even make videos to answer.