Freestyle racing is a sport. To excel, you’ll want to log some closed-course cockpit time and practice these tips and techniques before employing them in competition, As always, remember to keep your MINI under control and drive safely. In the meantime, this should give you plenty to talk about when hanging out at the water cooler with fellow racers.
STEERING
1. 9 AND 3 O’CLOCK - Trust us, your high school driver’s ed. teacher was wrong. And not just about the latest fashions in footwear. To provide the greatest range of motion for steering,
the ideal hand positions are actually 9 and 3 o’clock, not 10 and 2 o’clock. Not so coincidentally, the steering wheels (especially the Leather Sport steering wheel) in a MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S were designed to provide your hands the most
support possible in the 9 and 3 o’clock positions, while also providing constant feedback from the front wheels.
2. GRIP – Remember, gripping your steering wheel tighter won’t give your tires any more traction, so relax. Grabbing too tightly will only exhaust your hands and cause them to lose
sensitivity to vital feedback they receive through the steering wheel such as the amount of traction your tires have at any given moment. Practice taking deep breaths and relaxing your
grip while still maintaining good control.
3. TURNING – On turns, it’s actually better to push the wheel then pull it because on a push your wrist will stay locked and provide better control. So say you’re taking a left turn. Instead of pulling your left hand down to the 6 o’clock position, try pushing your right hand up to 12 o’clock. In general, you’ll only want to pull the wheel when making quick, minor steering adjustments such as changing lanes.
4. CORNERING – As always, smoother is better. When cornering, try to make your turns fluid, calculated movements to maximize your traction. Many beginner drivers take a smaller, tighter radius than they need to, resulting in understeer through the first half of the turn. And as you accelerate out of the corner into the straight, let the wheel “unwind”. You’ll know you’ve taken the correct line if, after your initial turn, you don’t have to adjust the wheel again until you begin to straighten out roughly 50-75% of the way through the corner.
5. DEALING WITH UNDERSTEER – Understeer can happen when the front tires aren’t getting enough grip and the car wants to go straight ahead even when the driver turns the
wheel. In a high-performance, front-wheel-drive car like the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S, you can generally deal with understeer by understanding how weight transfer affects
handling. If your MINI is not turning into the corner enough, you can transfer weight to the front tires by either braking (or braking a little harder if you’re already braking), or by gently easing off the gas pedal. These shift weight to the front wheels, thereby increasing their grip and willingness to turn.
6. DEALING WITH OVERSTEER – Oversteer happens when the front tires have a better grip than the rear tires. This usually makes the back end want to swing around through a
turn and aim the nose of the car towards the inside of the corner. As you might have figured out based on the techniques for dealing with understeer, weight transfer is also the key to dealing with oversteer. If you’re turning more than intended or is desirable, you’ll usually want to transfer weight from the front tires to the back tires. If you’re braking, just ease up some
and you’ll be surprised at how much more cooperative the car becomes. On the other hand, if you’re exiting a corner and the back end starts to come around, the worst thing you can do in a front-wheel-drive car is to let off the accelerator or hit the brakes. Because either of those actions will simply transfer more weight away from the rear tires that are already losing traction, you’ll want to gently squeeze a bit more pressure on the accelerator to help take the weight off the front tires. This will shift weight, and traction, to the rear tires, thereby helping them hold their ground.
Courtesy of MINI USA
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