Bentley - Ultimate Speed Secrets: The Complete Guide to High-Performance and Race Driving

ULTIMATE

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE AND RACE DRIVING

Ive used the Speed Secrets books since I was a kid just learning to drive racing go-karts, and I continue to use the secrets to this day. There are so many great tips, techniques, and secrets in this book that if you apply the things you read you can become faster and more complete as a driver!

Colin Braun, NASCAR and Grand-Am race winner

ROSS BENTLEY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you. Its people like you who read my books that drives me to share what Ive learned about driving and racing.

Of course, without all the drivers Ive raced against, taught, coached, and studied, I never could have written this book. I also want to acknowledge all of the mechanics, engineers, team owners, team members, marketing and PR people, race series and track personnel, sponsors, instructors, coaches, car club members, friends, fans, and anyone else Ive come across through the years Ive been in motorsports.

Thanks to MBI Publishing for helping me share my Speed Secrets with the world.

As always, thanks to my family for letting me do what I love. Im a lucky guy to have you.

Ross Bentley

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Its a rewarding experience when someone tells me how much theyve learned from my Speed Secrets books. But when the idea of combining Speed Secrets 1 through 6 into just one book first came up, my thought was, Why would I want to do that? The more I thought about, though, the more it appealed to me. After all, when I wrote my first Speed Secrets book, I didnt plan to write any of the others, and Ive learned a lot since then. Writing Ultimate Speed Secrets allows me to do what I would have done in the beginningalmost 15 years agoif Id known then what I know now.

Of course, I couldnt have written this book 15 years ago because I didnt have the knowledge or experience to write it. Now I do. Does that mean that everything youll ever need is in this one book? I can only wish. Im still learning.

In writing Ultimate Speed Secrets Ive tried to do more than just make a Best of... album. Ive attempted to combine my books in a way that would be most efficient for drivers and readers. My hope is that Ultimate Speed Secrets will be more than all my books simply put together. By combining them, rewriting sections, and putting them in the order that I would have wanted from the beginning (if Id known I was going to write them all), I can do more. I can make this one book more concise, clarify some things that Ive received feedback on, and add a little more of what Ive learned through the years. Ive also written new material, clarified some old material, and bridged old and new (and even old and old) in a way that I think will help you.

Who is this book written for? Primarily drivers of all levels, aspirations, and goals. Amateurs and professionals. Young and old. Track-day drivers, club racers, Indy car and NASCAR drivers. Road racers and oval racers. Even rally drivers, autocrossers, drifters, drag racers, and motorcycle racers. While there are differences between these various motorsport disciplines, they have more in common than you might think.

I said the book was written for drivers, primarily, but there are other people who can learn from the information in this book: engineers, parents of drivers, team managers, instructors, mechanics, sponsors, and fansanyone who wants to know more about how to drive a car at speed and how to race. Some of the book applies to driving better on the street (but I must emphasize right now that I do not recommend breaking any laws to test out what I say in this book).

INTRODUCTION

Driving a race car is not something you can do by the book. You have to learn mostly through hands-on experience, but you can learn many of the basics by reading and studying a book. In fact, this may allow you to learn more quickly once youre behind the wheel. If you understand the theory (and can picture it clearly in your head before you start to drive), you will be more sensitive and able to relate to the experience. That means you will learn to drive at the limit much sooner. You may save years of trial and error learning by simply reading and understanding this book.

For the beginner, I hope this book serves as a reference for a long time. Some of the information may not make sense until youve gone past the basics and begun working on fine-tuning your techniques. But I hope it will help you start on the right foot and that you can refer to it again later.

For the experienced driver, there may be a lot of information you already know. You may be using some of that information, and you may not even understand why you are using some of it. I suggest you read it again and really think it through. Its surprising how a fresh approach can sometimes make it all click for you, resulting in a dramatic increase in speed.

So this book is written for both the novice racer and the experienced driver, particularly if youve reached either a plateau or a point where you cant seem to go any faster. My hope for this book is it will do more than just teach you the basics of how to drive a racetrack quickly. I want to give you the tools or background to continue to analyze how to go faster at all times. And not only how to drive fast, but more important, how to be a winner in any class or level of racing and have a successful and enjoyable career.

Parts of Ultimate Speed Secrets are written with one focus: driving a car at the limit, getting the maximum speed out of it, no matter what the surface or layout of road or track in front of you. Another part of the book is written in the pursuit of winning races. No matter how fast you are, there comes a time in racing where the wheel-to-wheel competition, or racecraft, takes precedence. Its one thing to drive fast and another entirely to out-race the competition. And because some people either want to make a living racing professionally, or at least want someone else to offset their expenses, I touch on what it takes to be a professional racer, from career moves to sponsorship.

Theres often been an argument about how much of driving is mental and how much is physical. Ive even instigated the argument more than once. Its a silly discussion, because your body doesnt do anything without your brain telling it to, so I can argue that driving is 100 percent mental. At the same time, its physically challenging. And thats why I write about both the mental and physical skills in Ultimate Speed Secrets.

And thats where writing a book like this gets challenging. Driving, racing, mental skills, physical skills, techniques, learning. It doesnt happen sequentially. It doesnt happen one after another. To learn a relatively advanced topic, you need to know the basics, and then you need other basics that have nothing to do with that particular topic before we can come back to the topic again. For that reason, I will be juggling multiple topics and often come back to repeat and enhance what Ive written about earlier in the book.

Ive been fortunate to learn from many incredibly smart, talented, dedicated, knowledgeable, experienced, and interesting people. I cant claim to have developed every piece of information in this book. Far from it, in fact! But over the past 40 years or so, Ive been able to study driving from many perspectives: from behind the wheel, racing against some of the best in the world; from an engineering viewpoint; from the sides of thousands of tracks; from the passenger seat; and from video, data acquisition, and television. Ive studied coaching techniques from every angle, how humans learn, sports psychology, kinesiology, performance, vehicle dynamics and engineering, and just about every other angle that I think might give me or you an advantage in driving and racing. It helps to be a learning addict, because I cant stand a day that I dont learn something. I hope to share my learning with you in this book.