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Perhaps the biggest challenge when racing in the rain is visibility. Your helmet's visor and car's windscreen can fog up and tire spray from the cars in front of you can put up a wall of mist that is virtually impossible to see through. Hopefully your car has a blower motor or windscreen defogger, but if it doesn't then applying some defogger solution (spraying on and wiping off foam shaving cream works remarkably well as a ghetto solution) to both sides of the windscreen and your helmet's visor is a good start. Rain-X is also a great product that helps speed rain drops off your windscreen, so much so that you won't even need to run your windshield wipers unless the rain is absolutely torrential.
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| Spray from the cars ahead can make visibility a huge problem. For HPDE or Time Attack, be smart and leave a gap so you can see where you're going. If you're racing, get out front as fast as you can! |
As far as avoiding spray from other cars goes, the best solution is to be out front. If you follow the tips included in this story and get out there and practice, practice, practice in the rain, chances are you'll be out front kicking up lots of spray for the poor buggers behind you. Keep your driving smooth, minimize tire slip angle, find the grippiest parts of the track, soften your car's setup if you can, and you'll also be the first to see the checkered flag.
The Real Rainman
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| Open-faced helmet in the rain in a F1 car around the Nurburgring? Makes the current breed of F1 drivers look like the biggest bunch of spoiled pansies on the planet. |
Jackie Stewart may not be able to count how many toothpicks hit the ground if you dropped a box of them on the floor, but he is undoubtedly one of the greatest rain racing drivers of all time. Under a thick fog and heavy rain, Sir Jackie dominated the 1968 F1 German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring Nordschleife and a formidable lineup of racing legends including Jackie Ickx, Graham Hill, and John Surtees. Starting sixth on the grid and nursing a broken wrist, Stewart knew he'd have no chance if he got caught in the blinding spray behind the lead cars, so on the first lap he charged to the front and never looked back, finishing the race some 4-minutes and 3-seconds ahead of the second place finisher.
Sounds bold, I know, but don't for a minute think Stewart lacked respect for the Ring. He was, after all, the one who coined its nickname “The Green Hell” because of how dangerous it was and how mentally and physically taxing it was to drive at the limit. Nevertheless, the man clearly had testicular elephantitis to be going fast enough to catch air in the teeming rain around a tree-lined track like the Ring.
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| Sir Jackie taking the term “balls of steel” to a whole new level. Balls of Carbon Steel doesn't even cover it, but don't mistake Jackie's courage for recklessness. You can be damn sure he was using every trick in the book to find grip (when he wasn't airborn) where ever it was hiding around The Green Hell that day. |
