Posts made in October, 2013

Back when I was autocrossing and racing all the time, it became apparent that I had lost a significant amount of driving skill after not driving for about 3 months. After a gap of any significant length, it would take several events before I was back up to my usual performance level. During the 4 year gap while I worked for Jim Hall’s Indycar team, I completely lost it all. My first several events after that were humbling. It took me about 1.5 years of getting my character built to get back up “on the step” in terms of competition driving ability. Those experiences convinced me that driving a race car is not at all like riding a bike: race driving skills fade quickly with disuse. Considering the fact that most professional race car drivers...

My latest article for NASA‘s Speed News magazine is called Communcation Theory. It’s about how to measure and eliminate bump and roll steer from your suspension, and why it’s a good idea to do that. This is a complicated subject for a magazine article, so I applaud Brett Becker, the editor of Speed News, for letting me try to tackle the subject in a general-interest publication. If I succeeded in presenting the material in a way that is easy to understand, or if I didn’t, let me know in the comments. I appreciate all of the feedback that I get about these articles, and I look forward to working with Speed News for future opportunities to contribute to this excellent...