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ross bentley speed secrets
Speed Secrets: Setting HPDE Expectations

Speed Secrets: Setting HPDE Expectations

The story of two bad wrecks and how experience teaches that managing expectations is key for track days (and even more important for wheel-to-wheel racing).

By Ross Bentley | February 08, 2022
electric vehicles, formula e
The Vancouver Formula E Debacle
The Vancouver Formula E Debacle

This is a spectacular case of how not to promote a much-anticipate race.  After just finishing it's 8 season of around-the-world racing, Formula E has endured multiple debacles throughout it's growing phase (Miami, Montreal, & London to name a few), so it's not entirely surprising the young Series fell victim again to over-promises and under-deliveries.

By Ross Bentley | September 02, 2022
The Start: Ten Seconds That Can Make… Or Break Your Race
The Start: Ten Seconds That Can Make… Or Break Your Race

The old saying goes, “No race has ever been won in the first corner, but many have been lost there." Well if that’s true, then why do so many drivers go for it at the start?

By Ross Bentley | August 29, 2022

Racing

Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: Brakes – A Recipe For Disaster!

As they learn performance driving techniques, most drivers demonstrate the same pattern when it comes to using the brakes; beginners either have no idea how effective their brakes are at shedding speed or they immediately abuse them. Then, the timid ones flop to the other side by extreme braking by the end of their first day. All beginners, at some point, typically overuse this pedal.

By Ross Bentley | November 03, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 1: Getting Started – SCCA vs NASA

So you want to get started in competitive road racing, but you don’t know where to begin? Fret not, as this is the first chapter in our ongoing series chronicling my journey toward the goal of becoming a bonafide race car driver from a background devoid of previous motorsport experience. Accordingly, I’ll be starting this process with nothing more than the desire to challenge my fellow man in the arena of amateur motorsport and a vehicle to do it with. So, where to begin? Well, above all else, I knew there was one simple question I needed to answer: What do I need to do in order to get involved?

By Bradley Iger | October 27, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: Pick Your Battles

When was the last time you were stuck behind cars on the track that you knew you were faster than? You had to fight tooth and nail to get ahead, but it wasn’t enough. Stuck in mid-pack with a voice on the radio telling you to work harder and move up in the pack but, ugh! It was just arduous….

By Ross Bentley | October 27, 2020
Features , Racing
2020 SCCA Runoffs Coverage Posted!

The 2020 SCCA Runoffs at Road America ended two weekends ago, and we’re still reading stories of both glory and despair within the car counts of its 26 classes that graced the Fall-foliage-covered track.

By Winding Road Staff | October 20, 2020
Features , Racing
The More Stepping Stones, the Better: HPD Partners With Skip Barber

TC America action is where it's at. Photo: HPDHonda Performance Development (HPD) and Skip Barber Racing School (SBRC) have partnered to include the HPD Civic…

By Winding Road Staff | October 20, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 12: Time Trials

In our previous segment of the guide we introduced you to Track Night in America, a new SCCA program designed to serve as a low-cost entry point into driving on road courses with street cars. Within the SCCA ecosystem, it’s fair to consider Time Trials as the natural next step up the ladder from Track Nights in terms of driver experience and progression, and along with autocross events, for many it serves as the first exposure to a competitive driving environment. That newfound element here serves to ratchet up both the intensity and driver’s responsibility to be keenly aware of his or hers situation on-course substantially.

By Bradley Iger | October 20, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: This Is Easy

Do you remember your first driving experience at a track event? For most people it was, “Wow, what an eye opener.” For me it was even more. It became an identity crisis.

By Ross Bentley | October 20, 2020
Features , Racing
Spec 986 And Spec Boxster

If you are thinking about what classes are a step up from Spec Miata, but still affordable, running a class based on Porsche Boxsters has some intuitive appeal. You get a sexier car, with a mid-engine layout and more power. You retain a spec class, with the advantages that has for car counts and close racing. Let’s take a closer look at the results.

By Tom Martin | October 13, 2020
Features , Racing
The Mysterious Origins Of The Checkered Flag

Time for a little history lesson, along with solving a mystery. This week, E. Paul Dickinson covers a topic that I hadn’t previously put much thought into, but then wondered about. I’ll leave it to him to explain this interesting mystery.

By Ross Bentley | October 13, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 6: Getting Started – Race Weekend #2

After completing Driver School and a race the following day, we set our sights on the next local SCCA race: a two day divisional event at Willow Springs International Raceway. With class in the rear view and racing season in full swing, the training wheels were coming off and it was time to build upon what was learned thus far and expand from there.

By Bradley Iger | October 06, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: How I Won The War Against The Foot That Lifted For The Fast Sweeper

As someone who has studied sports psychology, brain function, learning strategies, and more for many years, I have known the power and effectiveness of using visualization for a long time.

By Ross Bentley | October 06, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 5: Getting Started – Race #1

One of the cool things about Cal Club Super School is that it takes place in the two days before the first race of the season. That means we walked into the first day of race school on a Friday with no track experience and by Sunday morning we somehow found ourselves prepping to take our qualifying laps for the race later that day. Our instructor kept reminding us to “think about it like it’s another practice”, but that’s certainly easier said than done. For us, the simplest way to stay relaxed and focused on the task at hand was to eliminate the logistical guesswork ahead of time so we had an idea of what to expect when the green flag dropped and things got real.

By Bradley Iger | September 29, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: Learning From Experience

I have been very lucky in my career to not only have a chance to drive SO many different kinds of cars (Grand-Am DP, Grand-AM GT, ALMS GTLM, ALMS PC, ALMS LMP2, Porsche Cup cars, World Challenge, Continental GS, Continental ST, NASCAR Sprint Cup, NASCAR Nationwide, NASCAR Trucks, Late Models, Midgets, Formula Atlantic, Pro Mazda, IMSA Lites, Radicals, Formula Renault, karts, etc.), but I have also been very lucky to have been raised by a professional race engineer my entire life. I guess where I am going with all of this is that I may only be 25 years old, but I feel like I have seen quite a bit and experienced a lot in my racing career. I want to talk this week about a few things I think club racers can learn that are easy to execute and will deliver results right away. These are things I have seen and continue to see over my career. I do quite a bit of driver coaching alongside my pro racing, so I have worked with drivers of all different experience levels.

By Ross Bentley | September 29, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 8: Passing Etiquette

Like many sports, racing has written and unwritten rules. And, just like other sports, it is the unwritten rules that can often get you in the most trouble or lead to the biggest misunderstandings.

By Tom Martin | September 22, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: The Approach to Fast Turns

The big, fast, and hairy turns are often the ones that separate the winners from the also-rans, right? Most often, it’s the fast turns where you stand to gain the most in terms of lap time.

By Ross Bentley | September 22, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide To Road Racing: What Is A Tech Inspection?

There is plenty of confusion about what an annual tech inspection of your race car actually covers. Here is a simple guide to help you understand.

By Winding Road Staff | September 12, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: This is Your Brain on Dopamine

True story: before I became a performance driving junkie, I was a college professor. From my perspective, driving is almost entirely a head game, and maybe this is why a nerd like me is so into it. This might also be why I give a lot of thought as to what goes on inside my head when I’m driving, and now that I’m an HPDE instructor, why I think a lot about what goes on inside the heads of my students while they’re driving and learning.

By Ross Bentley | September 12, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 2: Getting Started – Safety Gear

With the Novice Permit secured and the light reading of the 2014 SCCA rulebook to tide us over until Buttonwillow, we set our sights on procuring the necessary safety gear we’d need for Cal Club Super School. We’re starting from scratch here, so we needed a helmet, a racing suit, gloves, and shoes. We also opted to use a balaclava and Nomex socks as well, though their inclusion is not required by the SCCA. Here’s a look at what we got and why we got it.

By Bradley Iger | September 05, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: Physics For Gearheads

Randy holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and for 30 years has been an automotive engineer at General Motors, where he is a technical specialist in noise and vibration (N&V) at their proving ground in Milford, MI. He has published numerous papers on powertrain N&V, and holds three patents. His first assignment at GM was the enviable task of developing Corvettes for minimized “rough road shake.” Randy sent this week’s feature article on a Saturday evening, right in the middle of driving his Cayman in a 2-day track event at Putnam Park. So you know that he not only knows the theory, he drives the theory.

By Ross Bentley | September 05, 2020
Features , Racing
The Guide to Road Racing, Part 10: Getting Started – ChampCar

In this installment of the guide we’ll be diving into the ChampCar series, and what sets it apart from the more traditional sanctions like SCCA and NASA. We recently had the opportunity to run a stint amongst a six-driver team in a ChampCar 24 hour endurance race, held at Buttonwillow Raceway. For a number of reasons, this sort of racing is substantially different from the Spec Miata SCCA sprint racing we’ve been discussing thus far, so we’ll be covering some of the key components that make both ChampCar and the endurance racing format unique in comparison to our previous segments.

By Bradley Iger | August 29, 2020
Features , Racing
Speed Secrets: Are You Cornering Too Slow?

If the car feels like it’s on rails, you are probably driving too slow.

By Ross Bentley | August 29, 2020

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