,
Turn 3:
For turn 3 Mark is mainly focused on his braking, namely:
- How hard of a level of braking can be applied?
- Overall, what does his braking look like? He aims to have a sharp initial braking, then tapering it off based on his entry speed to avoid locking up the brakes.
The image above shows the data trace for straight 3 and turn 3. Looking at the pink circled boost trace, we see that Mark lets off throttle 13 meters earlier and overall has less aggressive initial braking on the main lap in comparison to the secondary lap. Looking at the GPS speed trace circled in green we see that this causes Mark to lose a lot of speed at the end of straight 3 and going into turn 3. Mark tries to fix this by getting on throttle 27 meters earlier on the main lap in mid turn on turn 3. This does help him gain more speed towards the exit of corner 3, but he then briefly lets off the throttle. This ends up hurting him as we look at the GPS speed trace further towards turn 4 where he carries less speed entering and through the middle of turn 4 on the main lap. Looking at the speed split report again, Mark is 13.3 mph faster at the end of straight 3 and .3 seconds quicker on the secondary lap in comparison to the main lap. In turn 3 Mark has an average speed that is 2.9 mph faster and a total time that is .1 seconds quicker on the secondary lap in comparison to the main lap.
Turns 4 and 5:
For turns 4 and 5 Mark is mainly focused on:
- Shifting, namely how long to hold out a shift for.
Above we see the data trace for turns 4 and 5. Looking at the yellow circled portion of the boost trace, we can see that Mark gets on throttle earlier on the main lap in comparison to the secondary lap. This allows him to carry more speed though the mid section of the turn on the main lap. However, looking at the boost trace circled in green, we see that he does not hold out throttle for as long as he did on the secondary lap. This ends up costing speed at the exit of turn 4 and the entrance of turn 5. Looking at the purple circled portion of the boost trace, we see that Mark does end up getting on throttle earlier on turn 5 on his main lap in comparison to the secondary lap. By doing this, he carries more speed from slightly before the middle of turn 5 through turn 6 on his main lap. Looking again at the speed split report, we see that Mark is on average .6 mph faster through turn 4 and .1 seconds quicker on his secondary lap. Turn 5 shows that his sector times were equal between both laps, despite Mark carrying less speed in the entrance of 5. Since he was able to get on throttle earlier on the main lap, he was able to make up the lost time at the beginning of the lap.
The data on straight 3 and turns 3, 4, and 5 is important because they show a potential area where Mark can improve his total lap time by .5 seconds. Consider that the total time variance between the two laps is .3 seconds with the main lap having a total time of 1:20.400 and the secondary lap having a total time of 1:20.700, the .5 second advantage Mark had in the secondary lap could be applied to the main lap to bring the total lap time into the 1:19s.
Turns 8 and 9:
Note that we did not go into the data for turns 6 and 7. This is mainly because the speed traces were fairly similar for both the main and secondary laps in this region.
For turns 8 and 9 Mark focuses on:
- Improving his braking zone
- Can he carry more speed through the turns?
- Reducing small errors that can cost a lot of time
