How Data and Instruction Can Close the Speed Gap

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My brain hit a wall. No matter what I tried, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t go faster. My lap times at Mid-Ohio were consistent. But while I thought that I was pushing the 2011 ex-IMSA BMW E92 M3 GT, it was clear I wasn’t improving.

The point was driven home once Bill Auberlen got in the car and thoroughly embarrassed my lap time.

Auberlen has been racing for a long time. He ran his first 24 Hours of Daytona in 1987, the year I was born. He’s BMW’s longest-tenured factory driver, with more than 500 races to his credit, and he hasn’t slowed down a bit over his career. He’s also impossibly cool, California in human form. Now 52, Auberlen is still at the top level of sports-car racing, and he’s still winning.

This story originally appeared in Volume 7 of Road & Track.

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I am decidedly not a pro, though I do consider myself above average. I started racing karts when I was 12 and have been competing in endurance races in a variety of cars for the past seven years. I’m frequently at the top of my class, but the competition should not be considered cutthroat. I also don’t race every week; it’s not my job. I’m lucky if I get a couple of race weekends each year. Racing is Auberlen’s job, and he takes it extremely seriously.

Pro drivers are a different breed, able to do things with a car that others only imagine. Much of it is innate talent, the ability to exploit a car at the limit and do so repeatedly. There’s the understanding that choices involve risk, and a pro’s threshold for risk is higher than an amateur’s. And there’s the uncanny ability to brake that much later, to get on the power that much earlier, and to experiment and trust that if you make a mistake you’ll save the car.

But pros also use the latest generation of data acquisition and analysis, which can pinpoint exactly where a car can go quicker and where time was lost. Can that granular data help an amateur racer improve? There’s only one way to find out.

Before computers, driver improvement relied on practice, lead-follows, discussion with other drivers, and in-person coaching. Now, racing technology extends to extremely advanced software that plugs into a car’s brain to give details on throttle application and brake pressure, and GPS-based systems that track everything from g-loads to location data. We rigged up a video VBOX from Racelogic, which uses GPS mixed with video.

My first runs at Mid-Ohio were full of trepidation. While I know the track, the car was intimidating. This is a very real, very valuable race car, the one Auberlen actually ran in IMSA’s GT class in 2011 and 2012. In it, he finished second in class at Sebring in 2011 and won his class at Road America in 2012. Breaking it was not an option.

I took two brief orientation sessions to get used to the M3, with its button-laden steering wheel and hyper advanced traction control, before we began timing laps. This is really an E92 M3 in name only. It has an Xtrac sequential transaxle and a highly modified V-8 engine dubbed P65. There is no ABS and no stability control. It was the car to beat in IMSA a decade ago. After just a few sessions, it’s easy to see why.

It’s not hard to drive. At all. Initial intimidation gave way to joy. The carbon clutch was shockingly easy to use, the steering light and communicative, the brakes amazingly solid and confidence inspiring. After a few laps, I was comfortable enough to start going fast. Or so I thought.

Above: The author's quickest lap on day one was the final fast lap of this session.

I felt I was getting quicker in each timed session, braking deeper and feeling like I was carrying more speed in each corner. So much so that I had a hell of a moment at the end of the straight, locking the rear brakes yet somehow not spinning. I pitted in and handed the car to Auberlen. He was immediately on it in a car he hadn’t driven in years. He ran six laps, returning with feedback that I wouldn’t have been able to parse.

“You had a lack-of-experience problem with this car,” Auberlen told me. “The brake bias was dialed too far to the back. No wonder you locked them up.”

I’d never driven a car with adjustable brake bias, so there was no chance I would touch that knob.

A looming thunderstorm cut the session short, so we analyzed the data in the garage during the rain. While I was consistent in each session, there was no real improvement. My quickest lap time was 1:29.21, and all my quickest laps clustered around that mark. Bill, meanwhile, promptly laid down a time in the 1:26s. Then he hit a 1:25.35 on his final lap. With the videos running side by side, the differences were stark. Auberlen appeared to be qualifying for a race, and I looked like I was out for a weekend drive.

Above: Auberlen's set of fast laps on day one of our time at Mid Ohio.

I was just slower. There wasn’t only one spot where I was losing time, either. My braking points were earlier, and I was over-slowing for many corners. I wasn’t exploiting the drivetrain like him. And while our minimum speeds were similar, I was holding them far longer, the dearth of experience in the car and lack of confidence in myself holding me back. Bill is human; all racers are. So how does a pro keep his foot planted when a regular driver’s brain says to lift? They have no choice.

“If one of my teammates does something quicker than me, and I see it in the data or on track, I just go out and do it,” Auberlen told me. “My choice is to either do it and keep my job, or go too slow or crash and lose it.”

It’s not something we think of as fans of the sport, but it’s obvious. Pro drivers are paid for their services. If they are slower than someone else, they’re eminently replaceable.

Ross Bentley is a former IndyCar driver, a current driver coach, and the guy who literally wrote the book on performance driving—a series called Speed Secrets. He went over my data and video with me.

“At this level, the difference between Bill and another pro is pretty small. In some ways Bill can look at his data and go, ‘Well, I’ll just go and do that because it’s not a huge leap of faith.’ Whereas for you, first time in the car, the gap is bigger and you’re going, ‘Really? It can do that?’”