Overtaking - how to do it!

Hey guys, there hasn't been a topic in my blog for a while now, sorry for that! From September until the beginning of December I was only on the road with the LMP3 in Europe and the IMSA in the USA, so there was no time to take care of the blog.

Today I would like to talk about the topic of "overtaking".

1. How do I prepare an overtaking manoeuvre?
2. How do I execute the overtaking manoeuvre?

1. How do I prepare an overtaking manoeuvre?

For me, there are two types of overtaking manoeuvres. Firstly, there are the manoeuvres that take several turns and where the tactics have to be constantly adjusted (dog fighting) and then there are overtaking manoeuvres that take place in a fraction of a second and leave the opponent no chance to react.

In both cases, it is important to know where one's own strengths and weaknesses lie in comparison to the competition.

Am I stronger on the brakes?
Am I faster on the straight?
Is my car better in the corner?

Am I a better driver?

 

All these things need to be thought of while closing up on the competition. If you start thinking about this when you have arrived, you will spend too much time behind the competition as you will need to

2. How do I execute the overtaking manoeuvre?

Once you have found out where your own advantages and disadvantages lie compared to the competition, you can start to use them: You put the opponent under pressure, force him into a defensive position by having him protect the inside before a corner. When you have put your opponent in this position, you can concentrate on a good exit from the bend, because your opponent will have a bad exit onto the next straight due to the worse line into the bend, so that your own exit becomes all the more important. The goal here is clearly to out-accelerate the opponent. Such a manoeuvre can also take several turns. Here, the driver has to react really quick to the new positions of the vehicles in relation to each other and to the different curves:

If several vehicles are fighting with each other, it gets really complicated: Then the driver also has to watch in the mirror what the car behind him is doing.

All this takes time, you don't learn it overnight. Simracing can be a good help here. Of course, they are not real cars, but they are real people who behave like real racing drivers.

This kind of duel often happens in cups or right after the start, when the whole field is still close together.

In addition to these long duels, there are also the duels where you run into a slower competitor with a quite clear performance advantage, here I personally think of the VLN / NLS, for example. Here, many drivers drive one car, so there can be significant time differences due to the different drivers. The general rule in such a situation is: don't waste a lot of time with "I'll see where my strengths are, where the other driver might be making mistakes", etc. If you allow yourself to follow the pace of the other vehicle for too long, you may lose your own rhythm and then it becomes really difficult to overtake. In such a situation, you should try to find a way past as quickly as possible. In such a situation, for example, I let myself fall behind again and then regained my "momentum" in order to overtake the competitor with my higher rhythm. But if you can, just go for it as soon as possible!

 

In the following example the GT4 in front of me was held up by some slower lapped traffic before the start/finish straight. I was closing up on him but here I saw the chance to keep my ryhthm so I just went for it:

In the following video I realized that in the upcoming corner my competition was a little less brave, so tried to get the run on him coming out of the fast right-hander:

Basically, you should always have a good overview of the overall situation. What is going on in front of and behind me, where are the advantages and disadvantages, does the other rider make a nervous impression when he is under pressure, etc.?  If you orientate yourself too much to the front, especially at the start, you can be surprised from behind. If its raining, the rain line comes into play aswell, so knowing where the rain line has it advantages and disadvantages is also really helpful:

And sometimes, you just need balls:

But especially in Endurance Racing, you sometimes have to calculate risk vs. reward, so please keep that in mind.

Any questions? Message me at moritz[at]moritzkranz.com

 

See you!

 

Moritz