09/29/2026
When are you getting to full throttle?
I’ve been getting into a cycle of thinking about my driving again. Last time on my personal account, I talked about figuring out how to get the car to rotate quickly in a tighter element. The other thing I’ve been working on this year, really the last few years, is being patient with getting on throttle out of such a corner. In this process you also need to make sure you are still going to hit your apex. So, like this last event, we had two tight circles, in opposite rotations. Most of the time in autocross I believe there’s two ways to be fast, spending more time at “full throttle” and “cutting distance” is how to cut time in a run. In these circles it’s best to stay tight to your apexes because any distance added into the circle is the same amount of distance you must go back in the opposite direction since these were 180* turns. This circle, the same cone was the most important in each direction. The counterclockwise direction, it was important to apex the first cone going left as well and then NOT carry too much speed past that cone to add distance, only enough to get the car to rotate with a brush of the brake around the far apex cone. Now in this counterclockwise direction, you had enough room to get on the gas a bit earlier around that far apex cone, carry speed out and set up for the left hander to the Chicago box. This “carrying speed out” adding distance though works well in a track setting, because most of the time it’s just a decent straight after said corner. Here, my goal was to get the car to rotate just a bit more so I could also stay close to the next cone on the inside of the circle. Doing so, still pointed me to those 3 outside cones, but it got me pointed in the direction I wanted to go so I could commit to full throttle earlier. Yeah, I might have been able to get on throttle earlier, but I would’ve needed to maintain it, working my way into throttle carrying the car wide otherwise the car would get too loose if I got on throttle too strong too early. I know the feeling all to well where you get into the gas too early and you have to back off of it some because of how early the application started. I think I’ve gotten enough data that tells me being patient feels way better than getting on throttle early.
Funny enough, the first lap going the clockwise direction, you needed to rotate your car around the apex on the west side of the light pole, get on the gas, and the car naturally carried speed out. I think because of those three outside cones heading east it felt natural not to want to carry out as wide as you can the other direction, so you were instictively already wanting to be where you should entering the clockwise circle. It also helped that the west corner was a bigger radiused corner, so you could naturally get on gas sooner because the speed you already had, was going to make it harder for the car to want to rotate on full throttle.
In autocross, getting the car pointed where you want to go in this tighter stuff before committing to the throttle fully might be the way to go. I just know that it can seem painful to have to wait that extra little bit.
Most cars and arguably all cars are momentum cars but heavy, powerful cars really benefit with that rotation because they have the power to move out of the corner. Smaller cars, that might seem like they have more grip than power, are still going to benefit from that rotation but there’s a management of making sure that rotation doesn’t slow the car down too much. Really, it’s the same thing for these big cars too, that slowing car penalty just isn’t noticed as much because they can power out of a corner.
Another thing, many cars can be setup to allow it to naturally rotate earlier. This makes it easier to rotate the car so you can get on the power earlier but here you need to manage that early rotation. It’s important to either get the car to the right speed a bit earlier in the corner, or don't initiate the turn with the steering wheel as early so the rear of the car doesn’t want to exit the corner before the front of the car. If you can learn how to manage this style of car setup it can be really fast and honestly, it’s a hoot because that rotation make the car feel really playful. Again though, if you can manage that playfulness to get the car to hook and boogy on exit, that rotation on entry is fast then exit is fast too.
The car I’ve been driving this season, most of the speed management is carrying enough speed into the corner to be fast but not so much that it wants to push the front end to far adding distance away from the next apex, then there’s the patience needed to let the car rotate just that hair bit more so its pointed a bit more straight and in the direction needed so I can commit to full throttle sooner. Because in all reality, as long as I keep that cutting distance idea in mind, the speed I’m going after letting the car straighten up that hair more isn’t much slower than getting on throttle sooner, but I will be going faster before having to brake and work the corner entry for the next corner because I was able to commit to full throttle sooner.
Lastly, much like car setups, each car is different and reacts to its throttle differently. I was made aware of this to the extreme when I got to drive that 500hp LS swapped Porsche 914 with manual steering and brakes, then immediately went into an AWD Audi RS3. The Porsche was raw, steering was unassisted and wanted to rotate without much work on my end, if you rotated it too well the steering wanted to counter act that, and you had to man-handle the steering wheel to point the car where you wanted the car to go. It would’ve been better to brake this car sooner, get it through the corner without letting it rotate so much and get on the gas once it was pointed where I wanted to go since it was so fast on exit. The Audi, was a whole different ball game and you had to treat the car differently to make speed, much like my current ride you couldn’t carry too much speed into the corner, but with it, it wouldn’t let you downshift to the most opportune gear, then on corner exit if you had too much wheel angle there was some back end programming that kept the power low and it felt like it ramped up as the steering wheel opened up. All the power was there, it just felt like the power was being restrained until the wheel was straighter, but the car could handle the power it should’ve had. So that car you wanted to rotate the car quickly to get the car straighter so you had the most power sooner.
It’s all a game on how to manage your speed, how well you can rotate the car, do I add distance, how do I get to full throttle(or power?) sooner, and if you can, do you set the car up differently to make some of these tasks easier. All in the fun, if you’ve read this far, I hope you’ve enjoyed my banter to myself. My goal with this is not only to put my thoughts to myself out there so I can understand them better but to also let you see how I’m thinking through this stuff to hopefully help others get faster. See you all at this weekend’s event!
