SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Driving rFactor: A Fast Lap at Orchard Lake Grand Prix

Turn 5 (R): Recommended Gear: 3rd. So you’ve survived The Kink, and now you’re looking at a long, gentle, wide corner. Should be a piece of cake, right? If you think so, you obviously haven’t driven Orchard Lake before. Turn 5 is another deceptive corner, a decreasing radius affair with it’s true apex out of sight, near the very end of the turn. Getting this one right is important because it feeds out onto a short straight that will help with your lap times.

Brake just before reaching the kerbing on the left side of the track. You'll be down-shifting from 5th (or 4th) to 3rd for this corner. Turn 5 is a wicked corner, one that will challenge your skills for years to come. Turn 5 is a long, decreasing radius corner, one that tightens up quite a bit before it's through. Half way through the turn you'll feel like you've been decelerating too long, but in reality you're nowhere near the apex yet and still going to fast to hold the final line through the turn exit. Getting on the gas too soon here will cause the front end to plow to the outside kerbing, and guarantee a slow exit from the turn, making lap times will suffer.

The challenge of Turn 5 isn’t just in the decreasing radius — no, the track designers at ISI thought that would be “too easy” for us. Not only is the inside kerbing quite capable of spinning out your car if you brush against it, but the crown in the pavement appears to take on a negative camber (ie, pavement slopes down and away from the inside of the turn) as you reach the apex of Turn 5, which further challenges the tires to maintain their grip on the track. No wonder so many drivers hate this turn!

What to do? Well, get the car down to 3rd gear quickly, and look for that very late apex. Don't get on the gas too soon. You may find that you're riding the throttle slightly to maintain some speed as you approach the true apex of the corner. If you are, then you'll need to let off the gas slightly to get the nose to tuck in for the apex, followed by a liberal dose of throttle to get the tail out and apply some power-on oversteer to keep the car’s nose in and tracking aggressively through the exit. If all goes well, you should be shifting into 4th gear by the time you reach the end of the kerbing on the left side of the track.

Turn 5

Turn 5 Late Apex

Chunx’ Tip: It’s typical to feel a bit anxious as Turn 5 unfolds, and you’ll have to fight the urge to get back on the gas too soon. Because if you do, you’ll induce unwanted understeer, driving wide of the track or being forced to lift off the throttle after the apex — both will spoil your lap time. What you really want is to turn the car in tighter as you set up for the apex, and here’s how you do that: A paradox of driving is that as you apply the throttle with the wheel turned, the subsequent weight transfer to the rear of the car will reduce the grip of the front tires and cause the car to understeer (push or plow) ahead without turning. The way to avoid this is to get the car pointed well and early in towards the apex by briefly breathing the throttle (car weight will shift forward, providing more front end grip and a touch of lift-throttle oversteer in the back), then as you get on the throttle slightly unwind the wheel. This will put the car into a gentle oversteer, and keep the car on the track as you accelerate out of the corner.

Turn 6 (L): Recommended Gear: 3rd. This is the final turn in the infield road course, and getting this turn right is CRITICAL for good lap times, because as Ross Bentley tells us, turns that exit onto long straights must be taken so as to ensure maximum exit speed, so that our speed across the subsequent straight is as high as possible. Turn 6 opens out onto the Tri-Oval, which for our purposes is nothing more than a long, start-finish straight. Make this your best corner, and your lap times will see their largest improvement.

Use the “Tire Bridge” pedestrian overpass as your braking point cue. Depending on the car, the fuel load and tire wear, you’ll be braking just before or just after you cross under the bridge. Brake in a straight line, and downshift as appropriate, depending on your drivetrain setup. Turn 6 is best taken in 2nd gear in the Proton, or 3rd in the Porsche. The goal is to maintain as much momentum on the car as possible, so that exit speed is maximized for the long “straight” ahead.

Since Turn 6 opens onto the wide Tri-Oval pavement, there's lots of spare asphalt that you should not go unused. Mash down on the throttle as early as possible in the corner, and let the car drift wide towards the SAFER barrier as you accelerate hard out of the corner.

Leading Turn 6

The Tri-Oval: Why not call out the turns in the tri-oval? Because you can negotiate them all flat out, effectively making them a straight as far as driver technique is concerned. The track is very wide, so car placement isn’t critical, although for quicker laps you might want to stay near the bottom of the track. But do not drive inside of the white stripe — the banking drops off dramatically on the “apron” area inside of the white line, and stepping a tire or two onto the apron can easily induce a spin at speeds over 150 mph.

The first thing you’ll notice about Orchard Lake’s Tri-Oval is it’s progressive banking (i.e., banking angle increases as you move from inside to outside of the track's turns), This feature allows you to place the car on one of several racing grooves where it feels most comfortable. But remember that the shortest distance around the Tri-Oval is always achieved by hugging the inside line. A higher line may feel more comfortable, but it might be adding seconds to your lap time if you don’t really need to be up there.

Out of Turn 6

If you watch oval track races like NASCAR or the IRL, you'll see that the drivers handle the oval corners just the way we do on the road courses — they come down to the apex in the turns, and float back to the outside edge of the track on the straights. That said, you won't find any "straights" on the part of the tri-oval you're driving on, but you will find places that have more turn to them than others. Expect to enter the Tri-Oval on the bottom groove, and let the car drift up towards the middle of the track as you exit the Tri-Oval's "Turn 4", just before the pit road entrance. Run the car up through the gears, and expect to top out at about 160 in the Porsche and 180 in the Proton.

Lap Highlights from the PCC Porsche (left) and the Proton.
Click on the thumbnail images for enlargements.

Go To Page 6

Click here to go to top of this page.