Two words that don’t go together using conventional driving wisdom. How can someone possibly be “passively overdriving”? The funny thing is that I see it more often than anything else when with a new student…especially if they have prior experience.

In Optimum Drive I drone on and on about the foundational significance of car control. Typically, car control is thought of as an ability to correct understeer and oversteer skids. This enables a driver to actually push the car up to and beyond its limits and live to tell the tale because the inevitable skid is deftly caught by the driver. Crucial stuff for any aspiring driver. We should (and hopefully do) spend enough time skidding on a skid pad to ingrain this ability to “catch” the car before any track lapping. There is more to it though…

A big part of being able to catch a skid is recognition, the faster and more accurately you detect the skid (or better still anticipate) the less of a correction is required and therefore minimizes the inevitable associated time loss. Recognition is “feel” and to a driver feel is literally everything. It is the enabler of confidence and confidence is in turn the enabler of flow…and no human has ever done anything great without flow. This is the basic “org chart” of ability.

I also mention in Optimum Drive how people misuse skid pad time, focusing on drifting. If your goal is being fast time spent drifting will only cost you speed and that is the most understood form of overdriving, a lot of spectacular excessive oversteer “take it by the scruff of the neck and make it do your bidding” …spectacular without doubt but also without championships (the steep price of driving narcissism). No doubt drifting is as fun as it is counterproductive which explains why people fall into this common speed trap. This however is not passive overdriving.

Passive overdriving is more subtle and that is the issue, they have no idea they are doing it. They have not developed feel for it and it is… (sad trombone) mild understeer. Almost everyone I have ever ridden with hasn’t developed enough of a feel for the front end, what they think is imminent understeer is a car that is already actually understeering and they put the car there corner after corner lap after lap. It is not horribly slow (but it’s not fast either) and it feels safe…benign. That is precisely the issue as soon as the front goes the car becomes unresponsive and numb, it no longer readily responds to the controls and that can feel safe but also can be frustrating since the car almost seems stuck there like that is “the set” or “balance” the car has while the driver puts it there thinking “that’s the limit” also remember it feels comfortable which feels right and it becomes habit. Habitual mild understeer.

It’s hard to get people to create oversteer on the skid pad because they can’t feel understeer. If the car is already understeering (even just a little) booting the throttle or an abrupt lift (the two most effective ways of intentionally making oversteer on a skid pad) will get you either more understeer (booting the throttle) or just less understeer (the abrupt lift). You need to have the front tires either at the limit or below for the car to respond appropriately, if it is already understeering it just kind of sits there, lazy, unresponsive.

Therefore, the single most important thing to learn about driving at the limit (hopefully on a skid pad) is to develop an innate feel for front grip. The signs are all there, the radius subtlety growing in size, the lightening of steering wheel resistance, slight steering wheel vibration that vanishes, on a good front end you can feel the inside wheel lose grip just before the outside (due to load and geometry) and depending on the tire certain noise pitch characteristics. The car held just below or at front end limit is eager and alive, ready to take your balance inputs and can be deftly put anywhere from neutral to oversteer as needed. The car can now be driven.

Take this onto the track proper and we now add the possibility of increasing front grip even further by with potentially using trail braking to add load (and therefore grip) to those crucial front contact patches increasing front grip relative to rear making the car even more eager to turn. This responsive platform enabled and maintained by the drivers innate feel for grip and balance. Don’t overdrive in any case…Optimum Drive.