SlipAngle Podcast Episode 295 – Adam and Abe were lucky to catch Jeff Braun at PRI. Jeff’s been in pro racing forever and has been a long-time friend of the show.
Many fans and enthusiasts talk about or hear pro drivers and their engineers discuss the “diff” or “differential.” It’s a part of the car that is NOT easily changed and adjusted by the average high performance track day driver, but knowing how the different types of diffs behave can help you understand the handling of your car and what you can do to improve it. Then you can get a smart, experienced driver coach to help you drive around the limitations of the diff that’s in your car, or hire a smart race engineer to change or adjust it for you. So what is a diff and what does it do?
In my opinion, the race engineer’s primary job is to get the car to do exactly what the driver wants it to do. Some good engineers disagree with me; they only focus on the simulations and what the fastest set up is from a theory standpoint, then expect the driver to get the most from it. I figure if the car is to the driver’s liking, he can show me what he has… he has no excuses.