This is the final entry in the series!
When I first started driving on track, my car was completely stock, with the stock tires and stock suspension.
But the stock suspension was difficult to drive, so I switched to coilovers.
At the time, I thought, “I don’t want to ruin the ride quality, and I’m still not very fast, so I’ll go with relatively soft springs.”
So I ran relatively soft 8 kgf/mm front and 6 kgf/mm rear springs.
And I spun.
Again.
And again.
The Roadster, especially at the rear, doesn’t have much suspension travel.
So yeah…
I spun a lot!
At least I got very good at spinning the car.
As I kept practicing, my lap times got faster.
And as I got faster, the rear end started stepping out earlier and earlier in corners.
So I tried all sorts of things to make the car a little more understeery and changed the setup in various ways.
Every time I changed something, the car’s handling changed.
But none of those changes solved the underlying problem.
Eventually, I switched to 12 kgf/mm front and 10 kgf/mm rear springs.
And suddenly, the car became much easier to drive.
Then something unexpected happened.
After a while, my driving precision improved dramatically.
There were corners where I’d always thought,
“I can get this right about 70% of the time, but I’ll mess it up the other 30%.”
But suddenly, I hardly ever messed them up anymore.
I could throw the car into the corner with confidence.
Looking back, I realized:
“I should have just gone with 12k-10k from the beginning.”
It’s not that you should use softer springs just because you’re not fast yet.
If the softer setup makes the car harder to drive, then you’re simply making the driving itself more difficult.
In fact, the slower you are, the more important it is to practice in a car that’s easy to drive.
If I’d been able to practice from the beginning in a car with proper handling that wasn’t bottoming out, I probably would have improved much faster.
Another thing that wasn’t good was constantly changing the car’s setup and, as a result, changing the way the car handled every time.
An experienced driver who has already established their driving technique might be able to adapt to those changes.
But if you’re a beginner who’s still trying to develop your driving skills, constantly changing the handling of your car isn’t a good idea.
And all of this came from one fundamental misunderstanding:
“I’m not fast yet, so I should use softer springs.”
Looking back, that was a pretty serious mistake.
I did become quite knowledgeable about suspension setup because of it, though. Haha.
The slower you are, the more important it is to practice in a car with proper handling and really take the time to build your skills.
At the very least, you shouldn’t be practicing in a car that’s bottoming out.
Oh, so that’s what it was. Idiot!
Lesson Learned
Practice in a car that handles properly.