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For this follow discussion, refer to the image above. Going down the main straight we see that Mark brakes at roughly the same place between the two laps, at around 108 meters past our data marker. If we look at the longitudinal acceleration trace circled in purple, we can see that Mark’s braking is much more aggressive in the main lap (bright grey), in comparison to the secondary lap (faded grey). Looking at the boost trace circled in green Mark gets on throttle much earlier going into turn 1 than on the secondary lap. Looking a bit further past on the boost trace, we do see that he lets off throttle a bit mid corner before getting back on throttle again. Compare this to the secondary lap, where he gets on throttle much later into turn 1, but stays on throttle continually afterwards. Looking at the speed trace circled in blue, we see that in general he carries much more speed throughout this turn in the main lap than in the secondary lap. So which technique saved more time during the straight and through turn 1? To answer this question, let’s take a look at a speed split report between the two laps as shown below.
This report subtracts the data values from the secondary lap to the main lap. Looking at the speed and time splits for the front straight, Mark is 4.8 mph faster at the end of the front straight on the secondary lap than on the main lap, which allows him to be .1 seconds faster on this segment. Throughout turn 1, however Mark has an average speed of 3.9 mph faster on the main lap than on the secondary lap, which results in a segment time of .2 seconds faster through turn 1 on the main lap.
Turn 2:
For turn 2 Mark focuses on the following:
- The appropriate time for letting off throttle and braking
- The speed carried through the corner versus his steering inputs
- How much speed he is carrying at the midpoint of the corner
The screenshot above shows the data trace on the second straight and turn. Looking at the boost trace circled in green, as Mark goes down the second straight he lets off throttle about 10 meters later on the main lap than on the secondary lap. He also ends up getting on throttle about 23 meters earlier than the secondary layer. Looking at the blue circled GPS speed trace we see that this allows him to carry more speed throughout the beginning of turn 2, although as we see in the orange circled boost trace, he feathers the throttle a bit during this time. Mid turn 2 his speeds are about the same, at about 99 mph. Looking at the speed split report again, we see that Mark is 1.4 mph faster on average on the second straight on the secondary lap, and is .1 seconds quicker here as well. However, if we look at turn 2, we see that Mark is on average 3.6 mph faster as well as .4 seconds quicker throughout the turn on the main lap.
