Brake and Accelerator on corner entry

[BrightCandle]

Just occasionally I come across a car and corner where the stable way around the corner is blipping the throttle while on the brakes as I turn in. This weeks Rookie Brands Hatch Indy Race with the Olde Porsche on R3E is a good example where turn 1 seems to just work better this way rather than just coming off the brakes gradually. I am trying to work through the reasons why that works better than just balancing the car better with less brake. Initially I thought this was just a shock balance adjustment and moving to the rear temporarily stabalised the car over the crest of the hill, but I am wondering if from a simulation point this goes beyond just balance and the driving of the wheels themselves was important. I would anticipate this would make the situation worse as the power out does the balance shift but apparently that isn't the case.

Am I missing something here with this technique that I have obviously missed?

 

[aasasd]

I noticed the same or similar thing before: when the rear begins to slide in a corner, it sometimes helps to push the gas for a moment, and the car corrects itself. This baffled me repeatedly, since my intuition with a RWD car would be exactly the opposite.

However, I recently finally got around to figuring out what the differential settings do—and learned that higher acceleration diff means understeer on exit because the inner driving wheel pushes the car forward, instead of just the outer one making the car rotate. So now I think that perhaps, if the setting for acceleration diff is high enough, then putting in a bit of gas nudges the inner side of the car forward, stopping the slide.

This actually gives me an idea to test this hypothesis—I could try setting the diff to zero and see if the phenomenon persists. If I don't wipe out much sooner, of course...

 

[aasasd]

Also, this video (at 10:54) suggests that adding a bit of accelerator cancels the engine brake, and so may help when there's too much of it:

However, personally I'm not sure yet if it should make much difference when already braking plenty into a corner. Depends on the car, I guess (and some sims apparently have settings for the strength of engine braking—another thing for me to fiddle with).

 

[BrightCandle]

I think the impact of engine braking and differential and all the drive aspects do make it at the very least different. Its not just the weight transfer but also where the energy is coming from. Cancelling the engine braking on a RWD car for example could move grip to the rear by reducing the effective brake balance on the rear tires where the small acceleration is less stress than the engine de-acceleration. Differential settings also make sense, when driven there will be a different split of power to the wheels than when de-accelerating due to different diff settings for power and coast and that balance change could very well adjust the rear grip and introduce stability.

At least these two aspects definitely make sense and give me some tools for the toolbox. Its perfectly possble to use this to induce more oversteer into corners with setup which is easily catchable with just a slight bit of throttle to stabalise and to reduce the amount of stabalisation that this produces.

In the case of the Porsche I could reduce the engine brake and that may make the corner more manageable but impact other corner brake balance, or increase diff coast locking to just bring the rear into some alignment but this would also impact other corners. I think it was fixed setup so there wasn't a lot I could do and just had to be a bit suboptimal into that corner at the time but these two elements give me some insight into the value of this particular technique. Something to add to the toolbox.