LegendaryHarry

^^ i should do that too. but my rear tires are poop right now so imma wait til i get new tires then learn the "limits"

but what i do practice and its not so scary no more is having the tail brake loose just a bit. havent gone full drift yet but baby steps..

J's_Racer

well nobody else can contribute?

i feel its good for new owners to read this up too so they wont total their S

4bang6

no amount of advice could really do you any good, it's once you feel like one machine with the car that you can anticipate the reactions of your inputs with confidence and balance speed with skill to rotate the car thru a corner and be pointed straight on the exit. practice, practice, practice. it will become second nature and you won't think about what to do and just react with the proper input on brake or throttle.

LegendaryHarry

word.

so far when the tail slides out and i counter. it grips hard and snaps back to straight.

chuhsi

I highly suggest autocross or the track to know how your car reacts in situations like this. Even if someone told you what to do, chances are, you won't do it in real life. There's no way you can go too hot into a corner and think, "hey, i remember reading how i should xyz"

It'll be a lot of fun, too.

I think people total their S when they drive hard in cold/wet weather and summer tires. Avoid that and you're in good shape.

If this happens on the track and you're not a pro, I think that you're NOT supposed try to correct your error (assuming you're already into the turn too hot). You're supposed to just drive straight and off the track. Otherwise, you could spin off the track into circles...spin off the track into a rollover..or spin partly off the track, get some traction, then fly back across the track uncontrollably into another car. Not good.

If I was in that situation on the road, I'd probably push into the turn with a bit more gas. The rear will kick out and I'll probably be sideways for a little bit. Then I'd countersteer and get back straight.

crazyasnboy

I like to use heel-toe right before entering the corner and using the gas pedal to steer. You have to learn how to modulate the gas pedal to get the car to do what you want it to do.

LegendaryHarry

i agree.

"experience is the best teacher."

but what if on the track i get some oversteer. no choice but to go with the spin right?

Lionheart

As mentioned by others, it has a lot to do with the transfer of the weight of the car between the front and rear axle. You can do very much with and to the car, but do it gently near the limits... like on any other car, this has nothing to do with the S2000 being snappy or highly oversteered or whatever, it's just physics basically and the fact that the S is RWD without ESP (up until some years ago)...

From powering into the corner and mid corner going on the brakes will put all the weight from the back suddenly to the front, so the rear tires will loose grip and the front will bite themselves into the road. Therefore the back end can step out, especially if you increase your turn in, and when it steps out, it's mostly a BIG step out, and mostly out of control if it's new to you without experience.

It's the same if you take a sharp (or not so sharp) turn in the wet being in or near VTEC and then hitting the gas. The weight of the car goes mainly to the rear axle suddenly and the tires can't put all that power down in the wet, so the rear has to go somewhere and it will kick a$$ big times. Basic physics and RWD...

So, going into a corner for example without knowing if you're gonna make it... What else can you do to slow down the car except from going off the gas or braking? Just take a little margin and you can always increase your speed if you notice you can go faster. I prefer going in a little safe and if so, increase my speed. It's a lot safer imo

Lionheart

I agree, but most of us will counter too much (the first times) and it will snap the other way big times within a second...

Fongu

This is probably the sanest and safest answer for new or inexperienced drivers. If you don't know the limits of the car, don't have the driving feel to know when you're close to the limit and approaching a new corner, just go slow. Do the same corner over and over, increasing the speed slowly until you reach your limit and then explore to find the car's limit. This applies to experienced drivers on the track also. It's just that experienceced drivers have more "experience" so they can get up to the limit and learn the corner a lot faster. It's all about preperation and knowing beforehand what's going to happen before it happens. To be able to correct you have stay close the limit. If you're an idiot and don't know better and go really hot in, nothing is going to save you. Even rally drivers (probably the craziest kind of driver) have navigators giving them route instructions a few seconds before coming on a turn for the first time.

There are a few basic things about car dynamics you have to know, but that incombination with the particular situation and when you realize you crossed the limit and have to correct, gives you many ways to recover. You need to make the reactions instinct, because if you have to think about it, it's too late. This boils down to getting the theory and then practicing it until it becomes automatic. So ignoring performance and racing, the three basic things to remember when mananging tire grip.

1) Always be smooth with your inputs, i.e. throttle, brake and steering. At the limit, small shifts in balance can lead to big differences in control. Jerk the wheel, stamp the brake, suddenly lift off or stamp the gas is a quick way to loose control of the car. Smooth doesn't mean slow, think of it as the difference between a punch and a shove.

2) Weight transfer control is important. The tire with more weight on it has more grip. When you brake or lift off the throttle, weight is transfered to the front wheels giving more grip giving oversteer. Adding throttle puts more weight on the rear tires giving understeer.

3) A tire gets more grip with more load up to a point where it suddenly loses grip and slides when over loaded. This means, too much throttle , spin the drive wheels and loose grip. So for RWD, big time oversteer, FWD big time understeer. Too much steering at a certain speed, big time understeer. Typically when this happens you want to dial back to regain grip. This particularly applies to steering, where you straighten out the steering wheel, regain grip and try again. This looks like sawing on the wheel when you see this in road racing. Too much throttle is a little bit more managable and turns into drifiting for RWD.

Those are the basic tools to recover. You can reason out what should be done in any particular situation.