Steve Hoelscher
True Classic
Steve H, one question for you. With all the electronic adjustments in race cars today, do you have two "settings" for the pro driver and the gentleman driver so as driver changes are made a switch is hit for the right driving mode?
Interesting question. The answer is yes, sort of. There are way more things to fool with on a modern GT3, or GT4 car than one can imagine. Somewhere I have some photos of modern racecar steering wheels and dashboards. I'll dig one up and post it for reference.
Electronic controls have added another dimension to the setup parameters. So yes, I can have settings for driver A and driver B and often do, but its not just a flip of a switch. Modern driver adjustments (electronics) are things like; engine mapping, throttle mapping, shift mapping, rev limits. Stability control is mostly limited to street cars at this point but ABS and Traction control are very advanced in modern GT cars, with multiple settings available via a steering wheel mounted dial. There are now electronically adjustable shocks that can do lots of very exotic things and, like the other systems, can have a range of mapping options via a dial on the steering wheel.
Of course all of these system are programmable. Most race fans are familiar with the engine mapping selections for power or fuel economy, but few know that throttle mapping is a very important parameter. The rate of throttle opening to rate of change in throttle angle, or percent or dampening, are all configurable. One driver may prefer a very sharp throttle where another may prefer one with much more modulation available. Then an engineer may see in the TPS data that a driver is invoking too much traction control intervention because he's too aggressive with the throttle. So I can remap the throttle do dampen out his commands and actually improve acceleration.
I can adjust brake bias with the ABS system and the various ABS Maps can be selected via another steering wheel knob. Same for traction control. These systems can have dry and wet settings as well as other special conditions. As an example, years ago a driver had to retire a car because he spun off into the grass in the rain. He couldn't rejoin because the traction control system wouldn't let the tires spin on the wet grass. So the car effectively stalled every time he touched the throttle. So now most have an override setting for getting out of a gravel trap or wet grass.
Each driver will be briefed on the various settings and will know to make the necessary changes on the drive out of pit lane following a driver change. So the next time you see a driver spin exiting pit lane and the announcer blames "cold tires" it could be that, or it could be that the driver didn't get the correct switch settings, or was busy fiddling with the various dials while trying to make a reasonably quick exit and simply had too much going on.