Posts made in April, 2012

Implementing the innovations that I have developed over the years into the front anti-roll bar on my DB-6 turned it into a bizarre looking science project. This is the story of why it looks like that and why it does the things that it does. An anti-roll bar adds roll stiffness to the end of the car that it is attached to. The reason we care so much about bars is that changing the relative roll stiffnesses of the front and rear suspensions is the most effective way to change the cornering balance of the car. The ideal cornering balance is neutral, with the slip angles of the front and rear tires the same while cornering. A neutral balance is faster, easier to control, and easier on the tires than understeer or oversteer. Here is an illustration of a typical race...

Here are my thoughts after a 2 day SCCA road racing driver school that ended a 16 year gap in my competition driving. Hopefully this will help others who are considering getting back into racing. 1. Be humble, and be patient with yourself. You will have to accept the fact that your early days back in competition driving will be really embarrassing, and that grinding the rust off your skills will take serious effort and focus. The alternative to this is major frustration, because you will remember how good you used to be, but you won’t be able to do anything like picking up where you left off. You are starting almost from scratch. Honing your driving skills back to where they were will take many, many months, so don’t think that a one day recovery is...