Category: aerodynamics

In a previous article, I go over the origin story of the MSHD, and the minor role I played in getting this wing to market. I have no financial relationship with Wing-Logic, and only met the owner Michael Jui last week, when I invited him to come to the wind tunnel to test his wing.

Wind tunnel testing is important because it’s real, accurate, and measures the entire vehicle. You see a lot of companies using CFD alone, often in free stream (not the entire vehicle), which is often misused as a marketing gimmick.

Professional race teams develop in CFD, but they struggle to get within 10% of reality. They then use wind tunnel and track testing to verify CFD. That’s because CFD is just a computer calculation. The simulation gets better and better with feedback from the real world, but if you’re not putting real data back into the feedback loop, CFD results in colorful pictures, wild claims, and aero balance figures that are laughably incorrect.

I don’t do CFD. I do track testing and wind tunnel testing. Only. There are enough people publishing CFD, and not enough doing wind tunnel testing, so I’ll keep doing the harder work.

At this point I’ve tested 40-ish car/wing combinations in the wind tunnel, including Pro Car Innovations (55”, 68”), 9 Lives Racing single (55”, 64”, 68”, 72”), and dual wing (64”, 72”), Wing Logic original (70”), APR GTC 250 (61”), S1223 (54×11), 3D MSHD 500 sq-in (63”), GLTC 250 sq-in, lots of my own DIY wings, and a few others that are sworn to secrecy. So getting the MSHD tested and compared against this database of knowledge was important.

I brought three Wing-Logic MSHD wings for testing: 71”, 68”, and 64”. I tested both bottom mounts and swan necks, and put 10 different endplates on them. The 64” wing is set up to be used as both a single wing and a dual wing so that I could test that as well. I’d put these wings on my Veloster N and a first gen BRZ, and get not only the data, but apples to apples comparison with other wings.

MSHD airfoil

MSHD stands for Motor Sports High Downforce and that’s what it was designed for. It has more camber and thickness than airfoils developed for aviation.

Which makes sense. A wing should be designed for a particular application and speed. Cars are not airplanes, and so putting an airplane wing on a car makes about as much sense as putting a car wing on an airplane.

As a motorsports airfoil, the MSHD needed to be useful not only as a rear wing, but also as a front wing (taking advantage of ground effect), and as a dual element. But primarily it needed to work at lower Reynolds numbers, which means lower speeds and smaller wings (less chord).

Someone recently sent me an Instagram reel about the MSHD being only useful for low speeds, since it was developed for FSAE cars, with Reynolds numbers of 300K. Doing your aerodynamic research on social media is eating other people’s vomit, but I’ll address that nonsense right away.

• Just because a wing was designed to work at low Reynolds numbers doesn’t mean it won’t also perform well at higher Re. Go to Airfoil tools and look up all the low-Reynolds high-lift wings and notice how they improve in efficiency the faster you go, even up to 2 million Re.
• The Wing-Logic MSHD has a 250mm chord, and 300K Re calculates to about 38 mph (61 kph). The A2 wind tunnel operates at 85 mph, which is around 680K Reynolds. So if the MSHD works well at over 225% of its designed speed (it did), rest assured that it will work at whatever speed your car goes (it will).
• And finally, if you need a wing for FSAE or autocross, then this is your guy.

MSHD vs 9 Lives and PCI

Probably what most people want to know is, how does the MSHD compare to industry standards, like the 9 Lives Racing Big Wang and Pro Car Innvoations (PCI) wing? So let’s start right off with comparisons. To even the playing field, all of the wings were tested with the same endplates, and not the ones that come in the box.

First I tested a 64″ MSHD versus a 64″ 9 Lives Racing Big Wang. This is their original wing, which is now sold as the Express. I put these on my Veloster, which doesn’t work particularly well with wings, so it’s a great worst-case scenario.

In the following table I list both the L/D ratio of the wing itself, and also the L/D ratio of the entire vehicle. This is an important distinction, because an ultra efficient wing that doesn’t make a lot of downforce won’t influence the overall aerodynamics of the car. It’s far more important to make a lot of downforce, which results in the vehicle having a better L/D. In the end, this is what matters.

Also, if you’ve read my other articles you may have noticed the L/D ratio of the wing is different every time. That’s because the shape of the vehicle has a lot of influence on the performance of the wing. The same wing on my hatchback might be 4:1 L/D, while on a Miata it might be 10:1, and on a 8th gen Civic Si, a magical 25:1. That’s yet another reason why looking at the L/D of the wing is less important, and what really matters is the aerodynamic efficiency of the entire vehicle.

As you can see, the 9 Lives Racing wing is more efficient, in the sense that it has less drag for the downforce that it produces. However, the MSHD makes significantly more downforce, and results in a better L/D ratio of the entire car.

Next I compared a 68” MSHD vs a 68” PCI on Raul’s first gen BRZ/FRS/86. This is a properly shaped fastback and a better test of rear aero.

On the BRZ we only ran the MSHD at 6 degrees, to match the high-downforce setting of the PCI wing. Again, you can see the MSHD results in a better L/D of the vehicle, and surprisingly the MSHD wing itself is also more efficient than the PCI at the same 6 degrees.

(If you’re wondering how a 9LR and PCI compare, see my first wind tunnel report, they were quite similar.)

Isn’t this just about more chord?

The Wing-Logic MSHD measures 250mm chord, which is 106.5% more chord than the 9 Lives wing, and 113% more than the PCI. If we just scaled up the 9LR and PCI to the same chord, wouldn’t they perform better, and maybe even beat the MSHD?

Possibly. For sure more chord is better, it means you can a) make the same amount of downforce with less wing angle, and b) wings are more efficient at higher speeds or larger chords (which are essentially the same thing), and so a wing with more chord is more better.

But one thing that sets the MSHD apart from really any other wing I’ve tested is that it can be set to absurd angles of attack. This is why we tried the 9-degree setting, and even at that, the wing wasn’t stalling yet. It’s likely that with a Gurney flap, we could have gone to 12 degrees or more. Which is crazy, because the roofline itself is adding 5-7 degrees to the wing angle.

But that’s one of the great things about the MSHD shape, is that it can use aggressive angles of attack. The wing won’t be especially efficient at high AoA settings, but it does mean you don’t necessarily need a 3D wing.

3D shapes, or twisted wings, are made so that the center of the wing doesn’t stall. This is because the air coming down the middle of the wing is effectively at a greater angle of attack than the air on the sides of the car. Twisting the ends down means the entire wing is at the same angle of attack. However, you can use a 2D MSHD wing and the center still won’t stall, getting much of the benefit of a 3D wing.

MSHD single vs a dual element wing?

Wing-Logic’s Michael Jui wondered out loud how his MSHD would compare to a 9 Lives dual element. I told him that the dual element has more chord and camber, and so there’s no way they can compete against each other. But for shits and grins, I’ll combine a couple data points from the wind tunnel to see how close we can get.

For comparison sake, I’ll use a 9 Lives dual element using standard bottom mounts, with the main wing set to zero degrees and the upper element to 35 degrees. This is about the maximum downforce setting, and very hard to beat.

For the Wing-Logic, I’ll use swan neck wing mounts, a 1/2″ Gurney flap, and set the wing to 5 degrees. (It would have been better to use 9-degrees AoA, but I didn’t run that angle with the Gurney flap, and I don’t want to guess at the values.)

You can see the MSHD single falls short of the 9 Lives dual element by 34 lbs of downforce, but it also makes less drag. So the 9LR dual element is clearly superior to a MSHD single element for outright downforce, but I’m surprised how close the MSHD got. And I wonder about a higher angle of attack, and using higher downforce endplates (you can read about that in my next article, Time Attack endplates closed the gap to just 18 lbs between MSHD single and 9LR dual).

So the next obvious question is, what about using the MSHD as a dual element?

MSHD dual element

I already wrote up an article on how I built a MSHD dual element, and so click over there if you want the backstory. The upper element is eBay crap I cobbled together, and not a great wing. Nevertheless, the MSHD dual element worked great.

That’s a lot of downforce, especially in the 5-degree setting, and also a lot of drag. For an autocross or low-speed track, where downforce matters and drag doesn’t, this would be pretty awesome. Michael Jui was so impressed by the results that he’s planning on making a proper MSHD extrusion for the upper element. More on that in the future.

Conclusion

I have no financial relationship with Wing-Logic, but I wish I did. Compared to the original Wing-Logic, the MSHD makes more downforce, even without the built-in Gurney flap of the original wing. The MSHD is also significantly lighter than the original wing, and a better product at the same price.

At the same length, the MSHD makes more downforce than any other aluminum wing I’ve tested. The end result is that a car with a Wing-Logic MSHD will have a higher aerodynamic efficiency than with any other wing. (I’m not including carbon fiber wings with 12+” chord, as that’s a different playing field, and market).

When I graph the downforce and drag of the MSHD at different angles of attack, and then compare the resulting vehicle lift-drag ratio with other wings, it’s clear that the MSHD results in better vehicle efficiency at all angles. Equally important, the MSHD allows you to use a higher angle of attack than any other wing, which obviates the need for a 3D wing. With a swan neck wing mount and a Gurney flap, the MSHD isn’t that far off the maximum setting for a dual wing, although I have to admit I’m looking forward to a proper dual element as well.

I tested a bunch of endplates and Gurney flaps on this wing, and I’ll get around to posting those results sometime soon. I’m also putting the dual-element on a Lancer EvoX for some real-world track testing. But stop reading now and jump over to Wing-Logic. Michael tells me he sold out his last shipment quickly, and I expect the latest batch to go fast as well.

Last week I went to VIR and the A2 wind tunnel. Both are about 10 hours away from me, so I made it a twofer and hit them on the same trip. I couldn’t get two consecutive days at A2, so the wind tunnel testing was on a Monday and a Thursday, with VIR in between.

I’ll get around to sharing some of the data in the upcoming weeks, and follow up with another wind tunnel report. I’ve been talking to AJ Hartman about writing a book together, and I think I think this could take the place of the wind tunnel report, but we shall see.

Monday was slated as hatchback day, with my Veloster and Andrew Rivers’s CRZ. We also had some extra company, with Kaan from the Blind Apex podcast, Michael Jui from Wing-Logic, and Robertson Racing’s aerodynamicist Tim Miller.

Thursday was fastback day. AJ Hartman brought a customer’s C7 Corvette, Raul Iriarte brought his ST5 BRZ, and Pete Mink a Porsche 944. We also had a few more guests with fellow blogger TJ Lathrop from The Rising Edge, and aerodynamicist Ido Waksman, who used to work for Honda and Pratt Miller, but now has his own business called MAD Aerodynamics. AJ also brought along a couple employees, past and present, who hadn’t been to the wind tunnel before.

So it was a full house on both days, and sometimes chaotic. But with plenty of hands on deck, we had extra people to turn wrenches, fetch things, wool tuft the cars, and fabricate parts as needed. All of which is necessary because nothing goes exactly as it should.

I spend a lot of time organizing, building parts, figuring out the order in which to test things, and putting together spreadsheets. This mostly works out, but there’s always a fitment problem, or something you left at home. No plan survives contact with the enemy.

For example, Andrew’s S1223 foam-core wing didn’t make the test. During vacuum bagging the core shifted, and so he got a pretzel instead of a wing. Andrew ordered a Simon McBeath wing, but it wasn’t ready until the day after the wind tunnel test. I thought maybe we could use a new nylon wing from Adam Bao of Epsilon, which was coming hot off the presses from Asia… but it too was stuck in shipping.

In the end, I made up a set of temporary mounts for my 71″ MSHD wing, and I’m glad that worked out, because we got great data from his car.

Day one testing

After unloading 8 wings, 4 spoilers, a roof extension, tools, parts, raw materials, etc., the Veloster went first into the tunnel. The first four runs were canard size and edge height, the former being obvious, the latter less so.

Then I was onto wing mounts and locations. I started with basic mounts below the wing, then also used radiused fillets, which both reduced drag and increased downforce. I ended with reverse swan necks, which oddly increases drag, but also increased downforce a fair amount.

All of this testing was with a 71” Wing-Logic MSHD. I then tested endplate shapes, sizes, vents, etc., then set the wing aside so that I could do wing comparisons.

I swapped to a 64” version of the MSHD, so I could test it versus a 64” 9 Lives original wing. I tested both as single wings and dual wings, and the MSHD made more downforce, which resulted in higher efficiency for all angles and arrangements.

I’ll do a full write up on the MSHD performance soon, but to sum it up, it outperformed every other aluminum wing I’ve ever tested.

We then switched to Andrew’s CRZ, which put down some of the best numbers I’ve seen, with over 1.6 L/D ratio. This is pretty astonishing since he doesn’t have a splitter (but does have an undertray), and that he borrowed a wing which we riveted on just before the test.

He did some tests on canards, open/closed windows, and a wing sweep. All of this should be quite useful when he gets his new wing, which is of course different, but should give at least some point of reference.

All told I did 31 runs on my Veloster, and 8 on the CRZ, which brings me up to about 70 runs just on hatchbacks, over my various tests. I really should write a book on hatchback aero at some point.

And then I was off to VIR for what was supposed to be a couple days of instructing and driving.

A day at VIR

I was supposed to instruct for two days VIR, but we had more instructors than students and so I had nobody to teach. Which was fine for me, since this was my first time at VIR.

The first session was spoiled by my helmet being soaking wet because the Veloster A/C vent gets clogged easily, and then dumps water into the passenger footwell. I forgot about that, which is where my helmet and DE gear was.

But it was hot at VIR and my gear dried out quickly. I made the second session, which was a “how does Assetto Corsa match up with real life” experience, and it went well enough, except for the number of cars passing me. Everyone was on better tires and had more power, which made me the rolling chicane in the advanced group.

By the next session it was 130 degrees on the asphalt. My “cold” tire temps measured 117 with my pyrometer. I started to pick up the rhythm, but I was slowing too much for South Bend, T14, and Hog Pen.

I did one final session at the end of the days and managed a 2:20. I’m not particularly proud of that, it should have been a 2:14-15 based on the fact that VIR is a couple seconds faster than WGI.

Anyway, it was hot, three sessions wasn’t really enough for me to feel comfortable, my RS4s were toast, and whatever other excuses I can manage. The straights are too long for my tastes, but wow, it’s a fun track. VIR is every bit as good as people say it is.

Interlude: Pete’s 944

Getting back to the “no plan survives contact with the enemy” theme, let’s talk about Pete Mink’s Porsche 944 endurance racer. In this case the enemy was his neighbor’s son, who broke into Pete’s garage, stole his racecar, and took it for a joyride! I give the kid props for figuring out the kill switch, but teenagers these days don’t know how to use a manual transmission, so he money-shifted it, locked it up, and crashed into a ditch.

I found out about this midday Tuesday, while I was at VIR. Pete’s truck broke later that same day, and so he was well and truly fucked with no car, no truck, and much to do before the wind tunnel test on Thursday. Talk about kicking a man when he’s down.

So I did what any fellow racer would do and sacrificed a day at the track to help a brother in need. I left VIR at 6am the next morning, drove to Asheville, spent all day with Pete, and got back to my hotel in Mooresville some 14 hours later. A long day surely, but we got the aero installed, fetched his fixed truck, pushed the 944 into the trailer, and called it a day.

We didn’t get all of the aero transferred over to Pete’s backup car. The front was trashed, and so all the runs were done with no splitter or undertray. The backup car also didn’t have a transmission, so we had to push it in and out of the trailer, and so it was good that Pete is an ex-strongman competitor. He literally used to put on a harness and pull a semi truck from a standstill. This came in handy.

Back to the tunnel

Day two in the tunnel was hectic, with three cars to test. AJ Hartman went first because Raul and Pete were still in transit, but we had planned for that. His customer’s C7 put down some impressive numbers with the 14” chord wing and well developed splitter.

Then it was Pete’s turn, and we did a wing sweep with the new 9 Lives Evo wing. Since his car has no front aero, the balance is way off, but now Pete knows where to set the wing before it stalls.

We also made some DIY canards, using some of the knowledge from my Veloster testing. These worked really well, with almost no loss of rear downforce, and really good gains on the front. The surprising part was an efficiency of nearly 5:1, which you don’t generally see from canards.

Raul was next, and we did some of the coolest stuff on his car. Wing sweep and wing swap (PCI, 9LR, APR GTC200, Wing-Logic MSHD). We even did the 250 sq-in spoiler vs wing (swan neck this time) test for GLTC free points.

Raul got some great results out of splitter test, with both splitter angle and tunnels being evaluated.

I will say, the fastback shape of the BRZ makes it tricky to get the aero balance correct. The sleek shape means the rear has a ton of lift with no rear aero, but also makes a lot of downforce with a wing. And so the front/rear balance shifts more on this car than any other car I’ve seen.

You can’t just throw parts on a car like this and know what you’re getting, you have to test it. The car on the first turn, with a splitter and wing, had 0% front aero load distribution, but by the end of the test, was hitting the right numbers.

After that it was load up all the gear again, and drive the 10 hours back home, with a stop at Phil’s house to drop off the 9 Lives dual element I borrowed. I was back at Phil’s a couple days later to pick up some skateboard ramps his son Andy made. They generously gave these to me, and so thank you wind tunnel community, lets keep growing and sharing.

This weekend I was instructing at the Mass Tuning event at Watkins Glen. I saw three cars with Racebred splitters. All of them had their splitters mounted upside down.

What do I mean, aren’t splitters just flat? Sometimes and unfortunately yes, but even when they are flat, a splitter behaves essentially as a wing; there’s high pressure on top, and low pressure beneath, and the difference creates downforce. The low pressure undersides of wings and splitters produce much more downforce than the high pressure top sides, and so flow attachment beneath these components is critical.

Racebred only rounds the leading edge on one side of the splitter, and that’s where they put their logo. So people think that’s which way the splitter goes, logo side up. But the underside of the splitter is what matters, so it’s the bottom of the leading edge that needs rounding!

I mentioned this to one guy and he said, “but the texture is on the top side.” Waitaminute. You think putting texture on the blade is a performance enhancement… on the pressure side? The pressure side is of little consequence; any modifications you’d do to reduce flow separation (texture, whatnot), would be under splitter, not on top of it!

It’s understandable that customers don’t know the fundamentals of aerodynamics; it’s not their job. Their job is to buy things. They trust manufacturers to have done the research and give them the products to go faster. So it’s a shame when aerodynamics manufacturers literally don’t know which side is up.

Look, I don’t want to just pick on Racebred. Putting your logo on the wrong side of your splitter is endemic in the aerodynamics manufacturers community. Look around and you’ll see lots of manufacturers who round the wrong side of the splitter blade.

And when they do round it, it’s like just breaking the edge a little bit. The leading edge of the splitter should be as thick as possible, with as much radius as possible. On the underside of the splitter. This is one reason an Alumalite splitter screams “Amateur!” But I digress.

If you have an aftermarket splitter, do yourself a favor and examine which side the rounding is on. In most cases you’ll want to flip that embarrassment upside down. If the splitter isn’t rounded on either side, round the heck out of the underside leading edge.

At this event, and really at every event, I see a lot of splitters with unused real estate on the outside edge. This does nothing, because it doesn’t change the direction of air. All you’re doing with this extra width is inviting contact with hard objects.

A small kicker here is an easy way to increase the pressure differential above and below the splitter. Or put a fence on it and reduce downstream losses. But do something with this extra width people!

These and other mistakes are in my Your Splitter Sucks article. If the manufacturers can’t get it right, at least you have the information to fix it.

A few years ago I tested end plates in the A2 wind tunnel. The data shows that there wasn’t much difference between them, and I may have drawn some hasty conclusions about that.

The fact is, a hatchback with a 55” wing is not the ideal playing field for this type of competition. The combination of a short wingspan and an odd C-pillar vortex coming off the hatchack roof may have polluted the air right next to the end plate. So this really needs to be tested again on a proper coupe or fastback.

I’m going to the wind tunnel on 5/18 and 5/21 with two good candidates, a BRZ and a 944. We’ll be using a much wider 68” wing, and will test end plates for realz this time. (Also, I may have space for one more car, contact me if you are interested.)

So here’s an open call to everyone who makes an end plate for a 9 Lives original (now Express) wing with 4 holes on the end. Send me your end plates and pay for return shipping, and I’ll send them back after the test. I’ll publish the report and send you a copy for free.

I don’t want to leave anyone out. So if you don’t make an end plate specifically for this wing, but you want to be included, I can drill and mount your end plates accurately, to your specifications.

Ken Hill recently posted an article on substack of how the no-brakes drill eroded his confidence and made him 10 seconds slower per lap. I read this with great interest, because I personally feel the no-brakes drill is the foundation of performance driving.

I feel so strongly about that, that I can get into this fixed mindset: “Everyone will benefit from doing the no-brakes drill!” But after reading Ken’s article, I 100% agree with his assessment of why and how it didn’t work out for him. This seems contradictory, so let me explain.

22 years ago I was a globe trotting motorcycle journalist for a boutique quarterly magazine called Moto-Euro. It was a heavy and expensive coffee-table magazine, and our snobbery meant we only covered British and European bikes. But Keith Code’s California Superbike School wanted us to write an article about them, and I wanted to take the school. So the publisher went colorblind for an issue and said OK to a lime green Kawasaki ZX-636, rather than our usual blood red Ducatis.

I was a rider of average skills, with a motorcycle racing license from the Penguin Racing School at Loudon, NH. My racetrack experience was limited to NHMS on my Hawk GT and tracking a brace of Ducatis in Almeria (Spain). So this would be only my 5th track day, and my first time at Sears Point (which is Sonoma Raceway now, but is forever Sears Point to me).

Sears Point is a rollercoaster of blind corners and walls, and not what I’d call an easy track to learn. Nor would I call it one of the safer tracks in the USA. And if that setting wasn’t challenging enough, it was raining.

But it gets worse; in the classroom, Keith informed us that the first two sessions of the day, we would not be shifting or using the brakes. Wait, what?

I’m supposed to ride a high-performance bike I’ve never ridden, on a highly technical track I’ve never seen, in the goddamn rain, without using the brakes?!?!

But we all did it. And survived it. And then we did it again. And I can tell you, it was astonishing. Self preservation is a strong instinct. But as any racer can tell you, catching the rider in front of you is a stronger instinct!

So I gradually increased my speed, changed my lines, took a few risks, let off the gas later, found even more time on corner entry, and kept going faster and faster. All the while staying in 4th gear and never touching the brakes. In the rain.

Of course we eventually got around to shifting and braking, but those first two sessions were the foundation of the entire program.

Over the next two days, most of the coaches, including Keith Code himself, shared track time with us. As often as not, they’d elect to do the 4th-gear no brakes drill for the entire session – the whole train of them going nose to tail, scything through backmarkers.

Since that school, I’ve done the no-brakes drill on over 30 tracks, both on bikes and in cars. These days I use 3rd gear instead of 4th gear, because I’m in cars more than on bikes, but the drill is the same.

Trailbraking on a motorcycle

Back in 2004, the Keith Code order of operations was brake in a straight line while downshifting, release the brakes completely, then tip the bike into the corner, next crack open the throttle to stabilize the bike mid corner, and finally roll on throttle to corner exit. You read that correctly, no trailbraking.

Later (much later) I would learn motorcycle trailbraking from Bill Sink at EvolveGT, and that brought a whole new level to my riding. Same bike, same track, I dropped 1.5 seconds on corner entry alone! As effective as trailbraking is in a car, on a motorcycle, it’s a world of difference.

What happens when you trailbrake a motorcycle is slightly different than on a car. In both vehicles weight transfers to the front end, which results in a wider contact patch from the increased load, plus more heat, more mushing into the tarmac, and thus more grip.

But on a motorcycle, it’s proportionately more weight transfer. You never see a car go into the braking zone with the rear tires hovering just off the ground, but this is business as usual on a motorcycle. And so corner entry depends almost entirely on the front tire, and you control that, and feel that, with the brake lever.

Another thing that happens when you trailbrake a motorcycle is that the steering sharpens due to changes in geometry. The forks compress, which shortens the wheelbase slightly, but this also changes the steering angle, because the ass-end of the bike is in the air, and the forks are shorter.

When you take all of these factors together, it means a motorcycle on the brakes at corner entry has a very different feel than one that is coasting. Feel is super important, especially on a bike. Less so at the novice level, but certainly at Ken’s level, so let me delve into that for a sec.

Driving the front vs the rear

There are two types of riders and drivers: those who require front-end feel, and those who drive the rear end. Riders and drivers who drive the rear tire(s) are looser and more fun to watch. Their general attitude is “I’ll throw it into the corner and figure it out.” These are riders like Marc Marquez and drivers like Michael Schumacher or Max Verstappen. Their skill is legendary, and they seem like aliens because no other humans can do what they do, lap after lap.

Then you have the riders and drivers who depend on front-end feel. They can be incredibly fast and consistent when they are 100% comfortable with the front end. But it takes them time to get there, and if the planets aren’t aligned, the aliens are light years in front. In this category I’m thinking of riders like Colin Edwards and drivers like Jenson Button or Alain Prost.

I’m a front-end rider and driver myself. I suspect Ken Hill is as well. But even if he favors the rear, he’s obviously comfortable standing the bike on the front tire with the brakes, trailing off the brakes gradually while turning in, and then settling into the corner, and doing that all as one smooth uninterrupted action. He’s been able to take that complicated series of steps and push it into the subconscious, executing the dance with thoughtless precision. And so not doing that with the extra grip and feel generated by trailbraking seems weird and unsafe.

Coasting into the corner isn’t just a strange feeling, it’s new. Ken has to engage his conscious mind to do it. The subconscious mind can process information 500,000 times faster than the conscious mind. Think about the scale of that for a second. Actually, don’t think about that; if you have to think, you’re processing power goes down by magnitudes.

And this is why an intermediate rider doing this drill is faster. Intermediate riders have too much on their minds, and nothing has been pushed to the subconscious yet. They are thinking their way into the corner: Brake, blip-shift, trail brakes, tip in, body position, weight balance, roll throttle, etc. The fewer things they can think about, the better they get at executing everything else.

As they say, smooth is fast, and that’s the other reason the no brakes drill is faster than it should be. There is no braking that’s smoother than air braking. There is no downshifting technique that’s smoother than the not-shifting technique. There’s no acceleration that’s smoother than being in too tall of a gear. The end result is that 4th gear no brakes on a motorcycle results in a smoother and faster corner for the intermediate rider.

But not for riders that are very advanced, because not-braking takes more mindshare than braking. You can see this in Ken’s vMins. His mid-corner speeds are lower everywhere compared to when he’s braking, and that shouldn’t be the case; mid corner has no braking or accelerating in it. He’s thinking his way into the corner, and losing speed because of it.

Now this was the first time Ken did this drill. If he’d done this 1000 times, as I’m sure Keith Code has, then Ken’s vMins would be the same or higher than when using the brakes. He may not believe it, but the law of physics says so.

I’ve already described the reasons that trailbraking is more effective on a bike than on a car, and how feel is perhaps the most important variable when you have a contact patch that’s smaller than a credit card. But there’s yet another difference between cars and bikes, which is how a motorcycle steers.

Motorcycle tires aren’t flat across the tread surface like a car tire. Turning on a bike is accomplished by leaning the tire onto the curved profile of the tire carcass. Ergo, a tire with a more triangular profile falls into a turn quickly, while a tire with a more rounded profile, takes more effort to turn. But there isn’t a lot of scrubbing of the tire surface, and therefore, turning doesn’t slow a bike much.

Conversely, on a car, the front tires turn by scrubbing and this reduces speed a lot. It also gives the driver a lot of feedback through the steering wheel, making it heavier to turn. Motorcycle riders can also feel trailbraking as a a waggle through the bars, but they don’t get the dramatic slowing down that you get when steering in a car, and this is a significant difference between cars and bikes.

Let me show you what I mean.

Pineview Run, no-brakes drill

In the following speed trace, both drivers are in the same car (Miata) on the same tires (Hankook RS4). The red line is an intermediate driver, braking and shifting, and trying his hardest to impress his instructor. The blue line is the instructor (me), doing the 3rd gear no brakes drill (3GNB). I also put up the latG trace so you can see we have the same amount of peak grip, but we use it differently.

You can see from the steepness of the upward slopes that the red driver is using 2nd gear a few times, while I’m in 3rd gear the whole time. Likewise, his deceleration slopes are very steep, and mine are gradual, because I’m air-braking. But if you look at the very end of the deceleration zone, it looks like I’m braking or in some cases, even trailbraking. I swear I’m not.

What you’re seeing is nothing more than me increasing steering angle towards the apex, but it results in a lot of deceleration, and grip, and feel, right where it matters most. If you look at the data, you can see the intermediate driver at this point of corner entry often has less deceleration than I do, even though he’s on the brakes. Crazy, right?

In the end, my ability to be smooth and carry entry speed into the mid-corner is more important than any amount of braking and shifting, and so I go two seconds faster than my student. Let that sink in.

But don’t take this to mean the no-brakes drill is the fast way around the track. Beating up on intermediate drivers is easy, so let’s see how I compare, as Bad Brains would say it, I against I.

In the following speed trace, the blue lines are the same 3GNB lap I did against the student. Contrast that with the green line, which is me braking and shifting. I’ve added longG to the middle of the graph so we can see just how much more braking and accelerating I’m doing, it’s a ton.

In the speed trace, you’ll notice that I’m getting down to the same vMins in most corners, but sometimes it’s difficult to improve on a no-brakes vMin. The reasons for that are A) smooth is fast, and B) sometimes it’s important to sacrifice maximum cornering grip to rotate the car early in the corner, so that you can get to full throttle earlier.

The result is that I’m 5 seconds faster. In reality, the no brakes drill is quite slow. This is a short track only 1 mile long, but it has a lot of corners, and on most tracks the difference is usually around 6 seconds or so. I obviously don’t teach the no-brakes drill because it’s the fastest way around the track, I teach it because it’s the foundation of performance driving.

A skid pad No-brakes is the foundation of performance driving

Is the no-brakes drill the foundation of performance driving? Or is a skid pad?

It’s hard to argue the incredible value of a skid pad. This is the best way to learn how to drive the limit of lateral grip. Skip Barber taught this for many years at Lime Rock Park, and if you watch this old video (skip ahead to 15 minutes), you’ll see that the skid pad was how they taught both limit driving and car control.

The skid pad makes it easy; hold the wheel so that you’re turning at a constant angle, go faster and faster, and you’ll find the limit of lateral grip. And then you’ll push harder and go over it. And then recover. And then go over. And recover. Again and again and again. A skid pad is the best way to find the limit, input that sensory information into your brain and butt for later retrieval, and train muscle memory for recovery.

Once you can regularly find and stay at the limit, you can experiment with limit steering. Most people start with the gateway drug, lift-throttle oversteer (LTO).

LTO is exactly what it sounds like; when you’re cornering at the limit, lift your foot off the throttle for a second, and the weight transfers forward, giving the front tires more grip. This in turn makes the rear end have less grip, so the car oversteers. You’d want to practice this many times on a skid pad, rotating the car just by interrupting the throttle.

After LTO you might practice holding oversteer into a drift because A) that’s super fun, and B) it’s a tool in your toolbox. After drifting, maybe you practice fully pivoting the car so that it spins. Because spin recovery is another important skill.

But you’d also want to practice inducing understeer by adding too much throttle too soon. That’s another important skill, for dealing with a loose car, driving in mixed conditions, or pushing understeer to the exit in an increasing radius turn.

After doing all of these experiments, you come to the realization that when the car is at the limit, you can steer with your feet and control speed with your hands! And now you’ve gone from a person who drives a fast car to someone who drives a car fast. Thank you skid pad.

But a skid pad isn’t always the answer.

• Most of us don’t have access to a skid pad. I daresay it’s cheaper and easier to find track time than it is a skid pad.
• Only one person can use it at a time. If you’re teaching a class of students, you have to rotate everyone through. Each student might need 15 minutes, half an hour, or half a day to get comfortable finding the limit and experimenting with what they can do there.

So if you don’t have a skid pad, what can you do? Simply drive a track without braking or shifting! This is essentially the same thing you’d do on a skid pad, but do this on a track. The no brakes drill is how you can find and experiment with the cornering limit, with the added benefit that many people can share the track at the same time (provided they are all doing the same drill).

In the end, the reason the no-brakes drill is the foundation of performance driving is because we don’t all have skid pads.

I’ve worked with one HPDE group that does the no-brakes drill, but it’s only for two laps at the start session. Their heart is in the right place, but they got it wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wrong: the whole pint of the drill is to be at the limit, and you can’t do that on cold tires. Braking and accelerating is what heats up tires, and so you need a couple laps going full blat before you can do the drill.

Wrong: two laps isn’t enough time to find your visual references of where to get off the gas. And you need those just to survive this! At Ross Bentley’s Speed Secrets Academy, we set up two cones for EoA (brave and braver) so students can instantly get up to speed. Otherwise they would spend the whole session identifying and remembering references, rather than driving and experimenting at the limit.

Wrong: they do no brakes at Watkins Glen, which is not an appropriate track for this drill. The straights are too long and the walls are too close. The best tracks for this drill are low speed, long corners, and lots of runoff. You know, like a skid pad.

I’d also say this drill isn’t for absolute novices. Right seat instruction is still important for making sure the driver has the right seating position, ergos, and can get around the track comfortably.

And as we saw with Ken, expert level riders (and perhaps drivers) may not get anything out of this drill. But that leaves the majority of people in the middle, who will truly benefit from setting a solid foundation for their performance driving.

So why is the limit higher?

I want to delve into one more thing that I’ve kind of touched on here, but haven’t explained yet. It’s the answer to the question, “why is the cornering limit higher in the no-brakes drill?”

The reason is, because this drill allows you to easily set the ideal entry speed for the highest possible mid-corner speed (vMin). Smooth is fast, and not upsetting the vehicle with any changes in speed means the tires can do all of their work in the lateral direction.

Does that make sense? Perhaps a better way to explain this is what happens when your entry speed is too low.

When you come into a corner too slow, your subconscious mind will make you add throttle. It’s a natural and almost unavoidable consequence of arriving at the corner too slowly. When you change speed in the corner, you create an artificially lower limit. This is because tires can accelerate, brake, or corner, and now you’ve asked the tire to sacrifice some cornering for acceleration, and so the limit is now lower.

The result of adding gas with an artificially lower limit is usually understeer. The weight has shifted off the front tires, and so the car pushes to the outside of the turn. I’d hazard a guess that 90% of people that complain about their car understeering are arriving at the corner too slowly.

The other thing that happens when you enter under the limit is oversteer. The tires were already being used for cornering, so they don’t have as much grip for acceleration, and it’s not that difficult to add too much throttle and lose rear traction.

In the end, both understeer and oversteer are the result of an artificially induced lower cornering limit, which is because the driver didn’t set the ideal entry speed. Which is why not braking, using a taller gear, longer and lighter braking, and other similar strategies that focus on maintaining momentum result in faster lap times. Lap times comes from lateral grip. But that’s a story for another time.

Getting back to Ken Hill

If there’s one thing I’m taking away from Ken’s experience with the no-brakes drill, is that it made him uncomfortable. I love that.

If you can execute something with 100% ability and confidence, then you’re not learning anything. You have to stretch your abilities and get uncomfortable in order to learn; that’s where the growth is.

I also think Ken is beating himself up too much. Given the differences between trailbraking on a bike versus a car, plus the fact that you can’t slow a bike much by steering, and the fact that Ken had to use his conscious brain for corner entry, I’m pretty impressed with his 10 second delta when not using the brakes.

Ken instructs mostly on bikes, but also in cars. In a car, I bet this drill would have gone better, and that 10 seconds would be more like 6 seconds. Perhaps his lack of comfort might even be reframed as a good thing. So here’s an open invitation to Ken:

Ken, come to Pineview Run as my guest, drive my Veloster N (it’s not that different from your son’s Elantra N), and do the no-brakes drill for a few sessions. Compare your data with and without brakes (we can be Race Studio 2 buddies), and see what happens to your vMins. We can both write about the conclusions on our respective blogs, and give the readers more information on the no brakes drill.

I’ll try not to have a fixed mindset about the result, but it won’t surprise me if you find that the no-brakes drill is the foundation of performance driving!

The Veloster N has electronically controlled shocks that dictate how the car rides in normal driving situations, and then changes the damping automagically whenever the system detects the need to do so. It’s a sophisticated system that allows the car to have both Jekyll and Hyde personalities, without the driver ever being aware that this transformation is happening instantaneously, behind the scenes.

This split personality has three pre-programmed modes, which are selected by using the different drive modes on the steering wheel. Or if you go into N Custom mode, you can choose the suspension setting you want in that mode, and save it. The three modes are:

• Normal – This setting is mostly Jekyll, and works great for everyday driving. But when the car detects a handling event, there’s enough Hyde personality to compensate. This is my preferred mode on a wet or bumpy track.
• Sport – This is quite a bit firmer, and so I don’t use this on the street. But it’s a good setting for both Jekyll and Hyde, as long as you have a smooth and dry track.
• Sport+ – At this setting, Dr Jekyll is an ornery pain in the ass, and My Hyde is an unpredictable and dangerous monster. I never use this, it’s awful.

In essence, the system gives you a three way switch. But since the shocks are controlled electronically, it makes sense that you could have the equivalent of a dimmer switch instead. This way you could set the firmness anywhere you want. For example, I’d like one mode that’s softer than the Normal. My daily driving includes many potholes, recessed manhole covers, potholes, bad pavement, and more potholes.

I’d also like a track-only mode that allows me to tune the suspension somewhere in between Normal and Sport. I also want to adjust the front and rear shocks independently, because on a FWD car, setting the rear shocks a bit firmer can help a lot with rotation.

The Mando ECS10 suspension controller allows you to do exactly that. It’s essentially a Bluetooth potentiometer that allows you to set the suspension softer, firmer, or anywhere in between. More importantly, you can set the front and rear independently. And in Advanced mode, you can even set the damping at different speeds!

Installation

It took me about an hour to install it, but it’s really a 30 minute job. You need to remove the steering wheel cowl, unplug a harness and plug in a piggy back harness that goes into the Mando brain unit.

The Mando has one wire that needs power, and so you’ll need to provide a fuse doubler for that. I jumped the interior light fuse, but there are plenty of candidates in the fuse box. Once it’s hooked up, you’ll see a green light indicating the unit is on. I mounted the Mando inside the fusebox area with some zip ties; it’s completely out of sight.

You access the ECS10 using a Bluetooth phone app. The app is a little quirky the first time you use it, it keeps saying that it’s not connected or some such. But be patient and you’ll figure it out, it’s just like most motorsports apps in this way.

How it works

Once in the app, the controller allows you change the settings for Ride and Handling. This is exactly what the shocks were doing all along, but now you have precise control over how much Jekyll and how much Hyde.

• Ride is the normal driving mode. It’s active whenever there are no Handling events.
• Handling mode is triggered by an event. This could be hard acceleration or braking, changes in steering angle or speed, changes in yaw, swilling a potion, etc. Out comes My Hyde.

The shocks go into Handling mode in milliseconds whenever one of those events is detected. It’s not clear on what triggers going back to Ride mode, perhaps just an interval of time with no more Handling events.

In both Ride and Handling modes, only the low-speed compression damping is adjusted. This doesn’t mean low vehicle speed; it means the shock has a single curve for damping. A dual-adjustable shock would have more sophisticated digressive damping, with low and high speed curves that absorb sharp impacts like curbing differently.

But the shocks aren’t that sophisticated, and so while we don’t get two damping curves, we do get to control the compression damping over two driving situations, normal (ride) and sporty (handling).

The controller allows you to set the compression from 0 to 100 for both Ride and Handling. Hereafter I’m going to refer to these numerical settings as percentages, because these go from 0 to 100. But 0% is not a blown shock absorber and 100% is not locked out suspension. These are just a range of numbers based on who knows what, and I’m calling it a percentage.

Pre-programmed settings

The Mando ECS10 comes with three pre-programmed modes. Although the names are similar to the Veloster’s suspension menu, I don’t know for sure if the settings within these modes are exactly the same.

• Comfort – I haven’t tested this vs Normal mode, as I made my own custom mode that’s as soft as it goes.
• Sport – I tried this once, it seemed similar to Sport mode in the Veloster, but I didn’t evaluate this much considering there are custom settings available, and that’s the whole point of the ECS10 controller.
• Sport+ – The Veloster’s Sport+ mode is useless and dare I say, dangerous. So I avoided this mode altogether in the Mando; once bitten, twice shy.

Custom settings

In addition to the pre-programmed modes, there are three user configurable custom settings. This is where the fun (and confusion) begins.

Luckily a user on the Veloster N forum who goes by ProjectVeloN went through an exhaustive process to determine what the Ride settings control (see parts 1, 2, 3.) He did this street driving, not on a race track, but the data and insights were still very valuable. Generally he found the following.

• Changes at the lower end of the scale were more significant. So going from 10% to 20% was a larger difference than going from 60% to 70%.
• He found that the rear shocks should be set slightly stiffer than the front: If the front Ride setting is 10% or less, multiply rear by 1.5; For front in the 10-20% range, multiply rear by 1.3-1.4; For front 20-30%, multiply rear by 1.2-1.3.

With that information, I started to experiment both on the street and on the track. I set the Ride to the following:

• F0%, R5% – This was too floaty for anything but street driving, but what a difference! More on this later.
• F10%, R15% – Feels too soft on track, and I preferred it softer still on the street.
• F20%, R25%: Still not stiff enough for track work.

For Handling events, I started with 60F, 80R, and then gradually softened both ends.

• F60%, R80% – Pretty terrible.
• F40%, R55% – Better, but needing fine tuning.
• F35%, R50% – Good for a bumpy tracks or rain.

My custom settings

You can save your custom settings and give them a descriptive name; I went with Buick, Track, and Rain.

• Buick – This is my daily mode (I don’t daily this car, but when I drive it around town, this is the setting I use).
• Track – My track mode for dry conditions.
• Rain – This is for driving on a wet race track, not on the street, where I always use Buick.

Buick

My philosophy for this setting was to make the car as plush as possible. I don’t foresee needing any handling events in this mode, but just in case I need to run from the cops, I changed the handling to base track settings.

1. Mode: Basic
2. Ride: Front 0%, Rear 5%. I’ve tried the rear at full soft as well, but I can’t tell much difference.
3. Handling: Front 30%, Rear 50%. This is an all-purpose track setting, which probably (hopefully) won’t be triggered during street driving.

Rain

My philosophy for this setting was to make the car as predictable as possible. Since I would only be using this on a race track, I could set the Ride and Handling settings to be identical. This should (in theory) keep the car from behaving differently when it kicks into a handling event.

1. Mode: Basic
2. Ride and Handling: Front 35%, Rear 50%.

Track (basic)

Before I got the Mando I used Normal mode for wet weather and Sport for dry and smooth tracks (Watkins Glen). For dry tracks with some undulations (Pineview, NYST), I flip-flopped between Normal and Sport without a clear indicator of which was better.

With the Mando I began to experiment a lot more, but I still haven’t figured out exactly what I like, other than a firmer rear. My Rain setting is honestly quite good all around. Bumping up both ends by 5% in the dry work great, but I haven’t found a full stiff setting that I like.

Track (advanced)

Advanced mode allows you to change the damping at different speeds. I don’t have enough data to say that the Advanced mode is better than Basic, but it surely has potential. Here’s how Advanced differs.

• You define different speed zones on a chart (see image).
• You can then set the compression damping at each speed, both front and rear, for both ride and handling.

This means you could do something like set front compression to 40% at 50 kph, and then at and 55 kph it bumps up to 50% front, and then at 60 kph it goes back down to 40% again. I don’t know why someone would do that, but it’s possible.

A better approach might be to set a low-speed zone where the front is medium-soft, say 35%, and the rear is much harder at like 60%. At lower speeds, you want the car to pivot more, and the imbalance in front/rear compression should help that.

Similarly, you might define a medium-speed zone where most of the corners are, say around 100 kph. At this speed you ramp up the compression of the front and rear, but more front, to gain some predictability in turn-in. Because you want balanced handling for the average corner, you set the rear to be just more than the front.

Finally you set a high-speed zone where the front and rear compression are both a little softer. This is so you don’t upset the chassis at high speed, or some such logic. This is depicted below.

The previous logic might make sense for defining three speed zones, but the ECS10 allows you to set five different speeds. These are completely custom, you can set them anywhere you want on the graph.

A neat usecase for this would be setting the suspension up for basic track work, but there’s one corner, like a bumpy fast kink or bit of bit curbing you hit at a particular speed, and you soften the suspension for that one event (speed). You could go pretty far into the weeds with this shit, fine-tuning the suspension for different tracks and specific corners, with a log book for every track.

Conclusion

If you daily your Veloster N (or Kona N) on shitty roads, the Mando ECS10 might be the best modification you can make. It has transformed my car from a being uncomfortably stiff to acceptably compliant. The change is more significant than going from 235/35R19 tires on OE wheels to 235/40R18 tires on lightweight wheels. Combine the Mando with the increased sidewall height and it’s like a totally different car.

On the race track, the Mando has allowed me to unlock much better handling balance, even just using the Basic settings. My suspension is otherwise completely stock, and the car handles just incredibly, with laugh-out-loud four-wheel drifts.

As for the Advanced settings, I’m still on the fence. Having the ability to control damping at different speeds sounds incredible, but is the complexity really worth it? I’m not sure yet.

I don’t know how the ECS10 would handle things like lowering springs, stiffer spring rates, sway bars, and other seasonings, but I can imagine the ability to tune all of those things together with the Advanced damping options could get very rewarding. And very complex.

Although this also reminds me of my youth as a twenty something living in Seattle. I was the guitarist in a punk/grunge band playing a Gibson Les Paul through a vintage Fender Bassman head. The Fender had a nice warm sound, to which I added a Rat rack-mount distortion pedal with three options (A, B, and stacking A+B). This gave me four different voicing options: clean, bluesy, sludge, and heavier than fucking dinosaurs.

Later I got a Mesa Boogie Studio amp with switchable channels, preamp inputs (for the Rat), and a built-in graphic EQ. There were so many good sounds coming out of that thing that I could never really settle on what I liked. I was like the proverbial donkey that starves to death deciding between two piles of hay. Except there were 10 piles of hay. A couple years later I sold the Boogie and kept the Bassman.

Maybe the Mando’s Advanced mode is like the Mesa Boogie? I don’t know yet, but being able to set five different speeds of my choosing, and then front and rear and ride and handling at each speed… well it’s going to take a lot of experimenting to get everything out of this. I’ll certainly document this journey, but I won’t be surprised if I wind up with a track mode that’s 35% front, 50% rear, at all speeds.

But honestly, the Buick mode is reason enough.