Hi all! I'm interested to know the community's opinion on which is the best driving style. I know that there are many slightly different driving styles that are between the 2 extremes but if we were to discuss on a more general level. The first of the 2 extremes is ultra smooth. A few examples of drivers who are more on the smooth side than rough are M.Schumacher, Fisichella and Button. Basic idea is, ultra smooth input everywhere (smooth braking, throttle and steering). Usually, constantly driving just below the limit. Then there is the other side of the scale, the rough stuff. A few drivers who are/were on the rough side were Senna(R.I.P ), Villeneuve and Alonso. Basic concept here is that you don't mind if you go a bit above the limit (small skids here and there) as long as you come down from it a bit. Personally, I'm of the latter I believe. So, which one do you think is more efficient? ragged roughness or silk smooth?

Smooth. Without doubt. Less wasted energy, less wear and tear, less reliability problems, less physical effort, less mental effort, less adaption to rain...

What do you mean by "rough" and "smooth"?

Line? Defence? Offense? What?

If you mean line, then by no means was senna rough with his line, or not imo anyway.

If your talking about steering movement/motio then smooth is the way to go

...for once I must say I agree with Tristan

The one that brings your car over the finish line the fastest...

In real life definitely smoothness, but in Lfs you definitely see some hotlaps that would have destroyed the car and the laptimes in reality...

I assumed you meant smoothness as in not drifting and screeching the tires, in which case it's definitely faster.

However, if you mean smoothness as in not hitting the curbs on the turns and bashing your suspension, then it depends on the track.

Generally though, the less your tires are squealing, the quicker your lap time will be.

I'd defenately say that smooth is very fast to a point. Sometimes you may need some more drastic and aggressive inputs to keep the car on the limit but that is the last <1% and things get tougher there.

Personally I find that a bit over the limit is most fun. Not that I have much idea how fast the car can go, or where the said limit is. All I'm saying is that those little messups can be quite fun if you just overdrive it just a bit. Like they say, if you feel you are going slow, you are going fast :gandalf:

Overaggressive racing style ftw!

Smoothness. Although especially the downforce cars need unexpected roughness if you're not used to them, otherwise you don't use their full grip potential. Of course, the more you practise with them, the more it comes back to being smooth.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Generally though, the less your tires are squealing, the quicker your lap time will be.

Actually, I'd say the opposite is true, to some extent. Your tyres should squeal and squirm as much as possible, else you're not using their full grip. If you go around the skidpad you can easily learn to distinguish between the "on the grip limit" and "over the grip limit" sounds, basically the moment when the squealing is replaced by a screeching.

I would disagree with Schumacher being smooth. There's some footage on youtube showing comparison traces of telemetry from Schumacher and Herbert going through Bridge. Schumacher is much more active with all the controls at his disposal where he is correcting slides almost before they happen.

There was another aspect of Shumi's driving I spotted on youtube on the exit of corners which is anything but smooth and that helped me no end in driving the BF1 and my results with the car have improved since I incorporated it.

To answer the question:

"Whatever works" is basically the most efficient driving style. Setup contributes hugely to this. You generally tune the car to suit your style and get the most out of yourself. Alonso wouldn't be able to drive Button's setup and Button couldn't drive Alonso's setup, but put them both in the same car set up to their liking and the results would be close and probably depend on which sort of characteristics the track favoured.

Quote from Storm_Cloud :

There was another aspect of Shumi's driving I spotted on youtube on the exit of corners which is anything but smooth and that helped me no end in driving the BF1 and my results with the car have improved since I incorporated it.

Care to elaborate?

Well, I suppose I forgot about the little corrections bit that Schumi does with the wheel but his throttle input is very gradual.

Even though, logically, smoothness would seem to be the best option when in a race since you're not throwing tons of strain on the tyres quickly but in a more gradual motion, making the tyres last longer but way I see it, if you're more willing to push the car a bit over the limit, just a bit, or to what I personally understand as the "limit", its more likely to keep you more alert because you can feel the car more and if the car does anything odd, its more likely that you'll catch it before it goes nuts than when being smooth. An example of this is my brother and I. We have contrasting driving styles (guess its kind of expected, isn't it? ). He's quite a smooth driver and its beautiful watching him drive but when he's faced with a hairy skid, it usually catches him off guard and he really has to work with the car to get it steady again whilst for myself, I'm in a constant alert mode since I'm always doing small corrections coming out of corners so when I'm presented with a hairy situation, I can usually correct it with ease and quickly.

What I'm basically saying is that smooth driving can put you in a trance, any slight skid can be a huge surprise and you'll have to do something quite special to get it back on to the track while when you're already constantly doing small corrections, any slight skid doesn't seem like a problem and you can continue on with your race normally.

Quote from Storm_Cloud :

"Whatever works" is basically the most efficient driving style.

My brother told me that a while ago and while I kind of agree with it, I still want to know the technical and mental advantages of either and compare

Quote from Leprekaun :

My brother told me that a while ago and while I kind of agree with it, I still want to know the technical and mental advantages of either and compare

look at tristans post, he has basically summed it up in one

Quote from Jakg :

Care to elaborate?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2p2nRK-p4

It shows the steering trace of Schumacher through Bridge. Quite interesting.

Quote from Leprekaun :

Well, I suppose I forgot about the little corrections bit that Schumi does with the wheel but his throttle input is very gradual.

Even though, logically, smoothness would seem to be the best option when in a race since you're not throwing tons of strain on the tyres quickly but in a more gradual motion, making the tyres last longer but way I see it, if you're more willing to push the car a bit over the limit, just a bit, or to what I personally understand as the "limit", its more likely to keep you more alert because you can feel the car more and if the car does anything odd, its more likely that you'll catch it before it goes nuts than when being smooth. An example of this is my brother and I. We have contrasting driving styles (guess its kind of expected, isn't it? ). He's quite a smooth driver and its beautiful watching him drive but when he's faced with a hairy skid, it usually catches him off guard and he really has to work with the car to get it steady again whilst for myself, I'm in a constant alert mode since I'm always doing small corrections coming out of corners so when I'm presented with a hairy situation, I can usually correct it with ease and quickly.

What I'm basically saying is that smooth driving can put you in a trance, any slight skid can be a huge surprise and you'll have to do something quite special to get it back on to the track while when you're already constantly doing small corrections, any slight skid doesn't seem like a problem and you can continue on with your race normally.

why bother putting up a poll and asking for other people's opinions if your mind is already made up? rationalizing why your style is the best doesn't make it so. pehaps it is true that if you spend most of your time just below the limit, a small skid will upset your rhythm, but the fact remains that you will still be faster most of the time.

when planning a race, a project, or just about anything, i always try to think in terms of "racing to win" instead of "racing to lose". if your race strategy involves going past the limit often, just so you will be comfortable when that happens, you are "racing to lose" in my book. in other words, you are planning for how to deal with problems before they arise, but by planning for them, you are actually making them happen. "racing to win" means planning not to have such problems in the first place. ie, if you practice keeping the car just below the limit, then you will be less likely to cross the line, and you wont need to worry about what happens if you start skidding.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Smoothness. Although especially the downforce cars need unexpected roughness if you're not used to them, otherwise you don't use their full grip potential. Of course, the more you practise with them, the more it comes back to being smooth.

Actually, I'd say the opposite is true, to some extent. Your tyres should squeal and squirm as much as possible, else you're not using their full grip. If you go around the skidpad you can easily learn to distinguish between the "on the grip limit" and "over the grip limit" sounds, basically the moment when the squealing is replaced by a screeching.

Yea, you're right. What I meant to say is that people always seem to think that drifting around a turn is faster, when in fact it's not. You should be at the limit of the tire's grip (squealing) just not actually skidding (screeching).

EDIT: Which I realize is exactly what you just said now that I read your WHOLE post, lol.

Regarding Alonso's more agressive inputs...it was interesting to see what happened when the single set of tires for a race rule was put in place. He smoothed out his very agressive input on turn-in, to be a bit kinder to the tires now that they had to last the whole race (I assume that is why he made this change to his driving style). Once we came back to having tire changes, he started being more agressive on corner entry again. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this, but it's something interesting to consider regarding driving style!

TC nailed it, party over, poll redundant

Of course, perhaps if you'd asked which style is fastest, hands down, you might've received more mixed poll results. In some circumstances rough (or rougher than normal) inputs can gain you extra tenths or grid spots (search youtube for Senna's 1991 Pole lap at Adelaide, for example - although it must be said he tended to drive like that most of the time ) but whether roughness will work for you over a full-length race will depend a lot on how well you can look after your car (especially if you've thrashed it and the tyres are going), your setup, your skill level compared to your opponents (if you're Senna, it works pretty well), the weather, the gods, the giant squid in the pool under the S/F line...

basically Hamilton vs alonso??

Quote from evilgeek :

why bother putting up a poll and asking for other people's opinions if your mind is already made up? rationalizing why your style is the best doesn't make it so.

I didn't make this post to say "Oh look at me, my driving style is better than yours!" because I don't think like that. Reason why I brought up of why I think roughness is more efficient and providing to reasons to why it is because no one mentioned it, whether they were supporting roughness or comparing the advantages of each, so I wanted to provide a few new facts about roughness that maybe some people didn't think of. As tristan said, I have actually thought about it, especially the wasted energy bit. Its a new factor that I didn't think about before so definitely, if you waste a ton of energy making small corrections throughout a race, you're very likely to be quite fatigued by mid-race and can't maintain a high amount of focus and come to think of it, I personally experienced that during a race and it wasn't pleasant .

Way I see it, my driving style isn't fully developed yet and I've experimented with both and got great results with both but perhaps, I may go smoothness as I remember racing the XFR round Westhill Rev in a 25 lap race and the tyres were just dying out because of my rough style, I then smoothed it out and not only did my tires last better, I was getting much faster times than before so maybe smoothness is my way, I just don't fully know it yet

It's not just wasted energy of the driver (though that is considerable), but eac tiny correction will slow the car slightly - more induced drag, less traction available for braking/accelerating...

Being smooth does NOT mean that bigger slides will catch you out - you are still on the edge, feeling the car, and predicting (or reacting to) slides etc. But it does mean that slides are less likely to happen, and the car will respond to corrections quicker.

Quote from Mustafur :

basically Hamilton vs alonso??

if hamiltons driving style is so smooth ... why was he the one with the totaled tyres ?

Quote from Shotglass :

if hamiltons driving style is so smooth ... why was he the one with the totaled tyres ?

Because he was trying to make them smoother?

I wouldnt call hamilton smooth, he's arse out at just about every corner. with his input though he's far smoother than alonso. the OP has to really specify which type of smooth.