Category: aerodynamics

Most people enjoy the feeling of oversteer, it’s usually accompanied by a loud whoop and a “yeah,” “woooo,” “ha ha ha ha,” etc. It doesn’t matter if you’re on four wheels, two wheels, or no wheels, there is just something innately human that enjoys sliding sideways and yelling with glee.

Conversely, nobody likes the feeling of understeer, it often immediately evokes inward frustration rather than outward joy. Understeer is usually accompanied with words like “turn already,” “goddamnit,” “stop pushing,” “pig,” “fuck,” or more eloquently, “goddamnit, stop pushing and turn already you fucking pig!”

And yet, understeer is usually faster. Why?

• Traction sensing is easier
• You can brake later and accelerate earlier
• Mistakes require fewer corrections
• People suck at driving

Traction sensing

One reason understeer is faster for most drivers is that it’s easier to get to the limit of traction by pushing the front tires. Understeer is safe, and going over the limit doesn’t cause any drama. Conversely, exceeding the limits of rear traction can result in a spin.

You might even say that the reason most people find it easier to sense front traction is that most people are afraid of spinning. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I also fall into that camp.

My personal style of driving is to grip the steering wheel hard (probably too hard) and sense the feedback through the wheel. I don’t saw at the wheel, though, I’m very deliberate and economical with steering.

My style of driving requires a more geometric racing line, and returns a higher min speed. And while this may not be the fastest way to navigate a corner, I do so at the limit of traction. As Ross Bentley says, a person driving off the ideal line but on the limit of traction will be faster than a person driving the ideal line and driving under the limit.

Brakes and acceleration

A car that is unstable is easier to turn. Understeer is inherently more stable, which is exactly why it’s harder to turn. But this stability pays off in braking and acceleration.

An oversteering car can be difficult to control when threshold braking, and especially when trailbraking. It takes skill to keep the back from coming around. An understeering car is more stable, and allows later threshold braking and more aggressive trailbraking.

The same is true on acceleration; oversteer requires deft throttle modulation to keep from spinning, while understeer allows you to mash the gas as soon as the car is pointed correctly. In my experience, I get on the gas earlier with an oversteering car, but I get to full throttle earlier with an understeering car.

Mistake recovery

A good driver makes a lot of small mistakes and corrects them instantly. They are constantly losing and catching grip with skill and grace. A car that understeers is very easy to correct; if the car starts to lose traction, just wait until the car turns before adding more throttle. An oversteering car takes more skill to correct; sawing at the wheel and dancing on the pedals repeatedly until the car gets back into line.

An important factor here is the stability index of the car, which in layman’s terms is exactly what it sounds like, but in reality is so much math and calculations that it will make your head spin. Let’s not do math here and talk generalizations.

Mid-engine and rear-engine cars with a lot of weight on the rear tend to be very pointy, swapping ends if you are careless and lift the throttle. A car like this without modern traction control systems suffers no amateurs in the cockpit; you need skill to drive one quickly. Conversely, front engine cars tend to be much more forgiving. If you look around, how many people drift with mid- or rear-engine cars? Not many, because it’s much easier to control a car that doesn’t snap oversteer.

This isn’t just about mechanical stability and grip, but aerodynamic forces as well. Cars that have a lot of rear drag or lateral surface area (like a LeMans prototype shark fin) move the center of pressure rearwards. This in turn makes the car more stable at speed. The distance between the center of gravity and the center of pressure is called static margin, and cars with a greater static margin are more stable, and require fewer corrections to mistakes. They are also harder to turn, and so this is again an understeer vs oversteer situation, where more rear aero is easier to drive and typically faster.

People suck at driving

You can add all these factors together and conclude that understeer is faster simply because most people suck at driving. Driving a pointy car at the limit demands a lot of skill. Driving an understeering car is child’s play. That’s why virtually every car off the showroom floor comes with understeer from the factory.

Manufacturers know that people suck at driving. You’d go broke selling cars to people that requires the skill to regularly catch a spin. I’m an enthusiast and decent driver, but I’m no Max Verstappen, and I never will be (not in skill, nor in attitude; I would have sacrificed one win to let Perez take second in the Drivers Championship last year). I didn’t cut my teeth racing karts, or spend every waking moment being a douchebag racing cars.

Otherworldly drivers like Max can do things I’ll never be able to do, and driving an oversteering car faster than a understeering car is just not in my wheelhouse. I’m quite happy with my conservative, front-biased driving style. By using that style, and driving at the limit of front traction, I regularly beat the pants off people overdriving their cars under the limit.

Oversteer mythology

If understeer is faster for non-pro drivers, why do so many non-pro drivers believe that oversteer is faster?

• If oversteer was faster, the 1000 hp drift missile at your track day would set FTD. But instead it’s a Miata with too much wing on scrub SM 7.5 tires.
• If oversteer was faster, F1 cars would rotate through the majority of corners. But they don’t. You see more F1 cars push the front than the rear.
• If oversteer was faster, people would put wider tires on the front than the rear. But they don’t. High powered cars run a staggered setup, or maybe square – but you won’t see a RWD car in a gorilla stance.
• If oversteer was faster, you’d see cars with more front aero than rear. But most race cars are split about 1/3 front and 2/3 rear downforce.
• If oversteer was faster, Spec Miatas would have more oversteer than a stock Miata. But SMs have a 63% front roll couple, compared to a stock Miata’s 59%.
• If oversteer was faster… well, you get the idea. It ain’t.

If you think oversteer is faster than understeer, I want to see your data.

Driver 61

Driver 61 is a YouTube channel with great content. In one of his latest videos, he delves into understeer vs oversteer, and why Alonso loves understeer. He goes on to examine various drivers and what they prefer, and shows this list.

• Oversteer drivers: Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Charles Leclerc, Michael Schumacher, Lando Norris, Ayrton Senna.
• Understeer drivers: Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Sergio Perez, Jenson Button, Nigel Mansel, Alain Prost.

It’s an illuminating video, and worth the watch. What’s interesting is that Driver 61 himself was originally an oversteer guy, and more recently has transition to an understeer guy. My twin brother Ian is the same, originally very rear happy, but transitioning more to understeer sadness.

Ian vs Mario

I wrote an article called Twin Studies, which is an in-depth analysis of my identical twin brother and I driving the same cars very differently. In that article we drive a NA and NB Miata, and a Veloster N, back to back.

Ian has an oversteer driving style, a la Verstappen and Schumacher. He holds the wheel lightly, thumbs on top, and pivots the car on entry. I have a more understeer style, like Alonso and Hamilton. I grip the wheel tighter, and sense traction through the front wheels.

Both styles are fast, but I know the track better, and so I was faster on this day. But not by much, and he might have eventually beat me. But he did transition more and more to my style of driving throughout the day ….

Gran Turismo Test

In this article I’ve thrown a lot of theory around, so it’s time to get the gloves on and actually do some (virtual) driving. You should do this as well, it’s very illuminating data.

In Gran Turismo (or any other game where you can easily change front and rear grip), try out this experiment: get a Miata or similar RWD car with near 50/50 weight balance and mismatch the tires.

I used a bone stock ND Miata and put Sport Hard (SH) tires on the front and Sport Soft (SS) tires on the rear. Set up like this, the car understeered quite a bit. I ran ten laps at Tsukuba, then swapped the tires so that the car would now oversteer and did another 10 laps. In both cases, the car has the same amount of grip.

I started with the understeer setup and then switched to the oversteer. This gave the oversteer setup a bit of an advantage, because it’s been a while since I raced GT7 and I would have to hit my marks right away on the understeering car. I did OK, with a best lap of 1:09.695. What’s surprising is that my outlap, which isn’t shown in the lap summary, was a 1:10.3. Meaning that the understeering car was easy to get up to speed on immediately.

Next I swapped the tires and tried the oversteer setup. Whoah! Big difference. I almost spun twice on my outlap and barely managed a 1:13. Unlike the understeer setup, I needed to learn how to drive this. Eventually I figured it out and got down to a best lap of 1:11.028. It felt like quite an accomplishment to string together that many corners and catch the slides each time.

Then I put Sports Hard (SH) tires front and rear, just to see what would happen. This is using the worst tire on both ends, and isn’t really part of the oversteer-understeer experiment. But you can see that a balanced car is the fastest. Even with tires that have the least grip I did a 1:09.347.

But to get back to the two ends of the spectrum, the understeer setup went 1.3 seconds faster than the oversteer setup, and was 1.6 seconds faster on average. In both cases, the car had the same amount of grip, and so you can see that understeer is a lot faster. At least for this driver.

I also included the optimal lap time for each, and you can see that the understeering car’s best lap was about 1/10th of a second off the optimal lap. On the other hand, the oversteering car’s optimal lap was over half a second off. This shows how sloppy my best lap was, and how difficult it is to put together a clean lap in an oversteering car.

Driving impressions

The way to drive an understeering car fast is to make it oversteer on corner entry. In the tight hairpins, turns 1, 4, and 8, I found myself diving towards the apex on the brakes, releasing slowly, and sharpening my steering through the whole corner. I didn’t always brake traction on the rear and rotate the car, but I kept the weight on the nose for as long as I could. I did something similar in the 90-degree T5, but using lift-throttle oversteer to help turn the car, then got right back on the gas again.

Conversely, through T9 I used understeer to get to full throttle early. I ran it in tight until the front set, and then stood on the throttle to the exit, purposely pushing the front tires the whole way.

I found that to drive the oversteering car quickly, I had to adopt a more “momentum” style of driving: lighter and longer braking, optimize mid-corner speed, and get on the gas early using maintenance throttle. Unlike the understeering car, which I could mash the accelerator as soon as the car was turned, on the oversteering car, feathering the gas was important.

With less grip on the rear, I needed to shift weight to balance traction, and so T5 was on throttle (lightly) the whole time. I also tried holding a taller gear, which helped keep the rear from stepping out, but I eventually figured out how to gradually get on the gas in the correct gear. I did a lot less trailbraking because the back would come around, so I rookied my way into straight-line braking and releasing the brakes quicker.

The other major difference in driving the two different tire setups was the number of steering corrections required. In the understeering car, if I went in too hot or misjudged my turn in, it was a simple matter of waiting for the car to turn before adding throttle. There was very little drama, if maybe a little cursing (“turn you pig,” kinda stuff).

On the other hand, the oversteering car was a fucking handful! I made more steering corrections in two corners than I did over an entire lap in the understeering car. It was a lot of work, but it was also more fun.

Finally, driving the balanced car was the most fun of all, and it was the fastest as well. I used some strategies from both styles of driving, and was finally able to drift all four wheels. For example, in T1 I trailbraked heavily, and in T5 I used LTO to turn the car, both understeering tactics. But I also found myself getting on the gas earlier and feathering the throttle out of most turns. The final turn was completely different: a four-wheel drift through the entire corner. You can really only do that with balanced traction.

Wet track

Next I made it rain in Japan and tried the same builds on a wet Tsukuba. This time I only did 5 laps though. No more shitty screen shots of my TV, just the data this time:

The delta between understeer and oversteer grew a little in the rain. I put down one good lap on the oversteer setup, but the the optimal lap was two seconds faster on the understeer setup, and so it had way more potential in it.

What’s interesting is that the SH/SH combo, which was the fastest in the dry, became the slowest in the wet! So when the track is wet, you’re better off with more traction at either end than you are with balanced traction and less grip.

Conclusion

If your car has criminal understeer, you want to fix that for sure, because you’ll go faster on a dry track with a balanced setup. To do that, check out Emil’s video on the subject:

But don’t make the mistake of going too far in the opposite direction and making a car that oversteers, because that’s even worse than understeer. The ideal setup is balanced traction, and with that, you’ll go fastest on a dry track, even with tires that have less grip. But if the track is wet, or there’s mixed conditions, you’d be smart to dial in some understeer.

Real-world testing?

My brother and I have been talking about doing this Gran Turismo tire test in the real world at Pineview. It’s easy to get an empty track session, and there are so many slow corners that we’ll spend the whole time breaking the tires loose. I just need to bring two sets of different tires and make this happen.

Unfortunately both of my Miatas are out of commission right now, but if I get one up and running this summer, I’ll fill this space with the Gran Turismo exercise done IRL. I might also be able to borrow a Miata and try this, and I’m planning to meet Emil Dogaru (from the video above) at Summit Point later this year and maybe do this test with him.

Subscribe to get updates or watch this space.

If I was to grade the average splitter I see on the average track car, I’d give it a D+. I know that grades are supposed to average out to a C, but the average person sucks at aero. I see better splitters on Miatas than other cars, and those generally fall in the C+ range.

• Grade F: Flimsy splitters or front lips, usually bought on Amazon or eBay, but some reputable aero companies also produce shit. These look like splitters, but that’s where the similarity ends.
• Grade D: A misunderstanding of how splitters work results in splitters that are optimized for the top surface, not the bottom. They are are often too high or too low, and universally have sharp leading edges and are flat. Most have splitters wider than the front fascia, but do nothing with the exposed ends. Some might have a spill board on the outer edge, which is at least something, but that does nothing for the underside.
• Grade C: A splitter gains downforce through suction, which is achieved primarily through proximity to the ground and using diffusers and/or curvature to accelerate the air underneath. A splitter without height adjustment is like a wing without angle adjustment. A splitter without any diffusion is as useless as a flat wing.
• Grade B: With great suction comes great responsibility. Because the air under the splitter is low pressure, everything around it is higher pressure and wants to get in there. You need to extract air using hood vents and fender vents, and kick air upwards and outwards wherever possible.
• Grade A: At this point the splitter is making a lot of downforce, but there are still minor problems that occur around the wheels. Air hitting the rotating tires compresses and squirts out under the splitter, and air intrudes through the wheel spokes as well. Mitigating losses around the wheels and tires is the last frontier.

Grade A

Let me show you what a solid Grade-A splitter looks like. It’s not surprising that it’s on a Miata, because we do aero better. We have to; our cars suck. It’s also not surprising my teammate Alyssa Merrill made this. We bounce ideas back and forth, and while I think I’m pretty clever, she’s got a lot of great ideas of her own.

First, you have to use the right material. Alumalite is an automatic grade C, not because of the material properties, but every single person using Alumalite leaves a sharp leading edge. Despite the fact that Alumalite curves nicely, pretty much all of them are flat, as well.

Alyssa chose to use my favorite splitter material, Meranti BS6566 plywood. It’s very light (32 lbs/cu-ft), stiff, easy to work with, boil tested for delamination, and x-rayed for voids. It’s expensive, but you get what you pay for. She’s doubled the thickness of the lip to about an inch and done a good job of rounding the underside of the leading edge, so that air stays attached along the bottom surface.

The location of the radiator opening makes a difference to how the pressure side of the splitter functions, and has an effect on drag and cooling. I’ve seen a lot of radiator openings just barely off the splitter. When you put a hole there (for radiator or brake ducts), you lose the high pressure air bubble on top of the splitter, and with it, some of the downforce you’re trying to make. You might be thinking that a lower opening is better for cooling, but with the radiator opening down low, the air has to take a hard upward turn inside your radiator duct. Air can’t change directions at more than 12 degrees, and because the duct is much steeper than that, air separates from the surface of the duct causing drag and losing cooling efficiency.

Alyssa made the radiator opening as high as is practical while retaining the center bumper support. The higher opening holds a larger/taller high-pressure air bubble on top of the splitter, making more downforce. In addition, this provides a straighter route to the radiator, increasing cooling efficiency and decreasing drag.

All the air that goes through the radiator has to go someplace, and the worst place for that is under the car. The best place to send that air is upwards, because it creates downforce. Some people will use louvered hood vents, while others will use just a front wicker and a gaping hole behind. Louvers smooth the air over the hood, and result in less downstream losses on the wing. But since most cars are front-limited with respect to downforce, a gaping hole is a better solution for a track-only car. For a street car, louvers look better for sure.

Having a splitter without any height adjustment is akin to a rear wing without any angle adjustment. You see that kind of junk on OEM body kits, and you can do better. With a proper wing, tuning the high-speed handling of your car is as simple as changing wing angle.

It’s like that with splitters as well. Most of the downforce comes via interaction with the ground, so setting the height is critical. I’ve seen a lot of splitters that adjust for height initially, but then once you mount the airdam or fascia, the height is fixed. This is a C grade. At least there was some height adjustment at first, and that’s an acceptable situation if you can later modify it.

People getting a B grade with a fixed height splitter do so because they understand aero maps and have set their splitter height for maximum downforce, and thereafter do all of their adjustments via wing angle. But having both ends adjustable for downforce is obviously even better.

A-grade splitters are adjustable after the fact. Alyssa used turnbuckles to support the splitter, which are sturdy and make height adjustment a simple twist of the wrist. The turnbuckles are behind the airdam, which makes height adjustment more difficult, but it also completely hides them, for less drag. This is some trick shit.

What’s even more trick is that the turnbuckles fasten with pins, and so removing the splitter entirely is super easy. Just yank four pins and the splitter drops off the front.

Another area to address is the width of the splitter, and what to do with the ends. Under most racing/TT rules, splitters can be the width of the car or the front tires. In most cases, this results in some unused material on the outside edge of the splitter.

You get a D for doing nothing with the exposed end. A flat splitter with a flat exposed end is just additional drag and an invitation to catch on something. You get a C for putting a spill board on the outside, because while this can reduce drag, there are so many better uses of that real estate. Higher grades are achieved by putting a vertical dam on the outside edge (front tire spat if you will), which builds local pressure on top of the blade, creating more downforce. Also, air spilling off that will direct air sideways, extracting air beneath the splitter, making more downforce.

Alyssa chose to do something similar, but pulled the bottom edge of the airdam outwards to meet the end of the splitter. This won’t make quite as much local pressure on top, but should be better at sideways extraction and have less drag. Hard to say which is better, both work.

Let me address another huge mistake: flat splitters. Most people understand wings, and and flat splitters are like flat wings; meaningless. You need some curvature in the rear of the splitter to diffuse the air. When air expands behind a restriction, it accelerates the air in front of it, lowering the pressure. This suction is the purpose of a splitter.

Time attack cars often curve the entire rear of splitter blade upwards, essentially making a splitter diffuser the full width of the car. Miatas have historically used the rear subframe as mounting points for the back of the splitter, and the consequence of that is that Miata splitters are flat. To get suction, Miatas need to use splitter diffusers.

Splitter diffusers operate on the same principle as rear diffusers; they expand air in the tunnel. The diffuser itself doesn’t create the downforce, but it helps air expand and creates downforce in front of it.

Alyssa and I are designing splitter diffusers and will make them for sale sometime this summer. Here’s your first sneak peak.

These splitter diffusers have one large tunnel that diffuses air inboard of the wheels. This is an area of loss to begin with, and also an easy place to extract air from. Most splitters diffusers have only the one main tunnel.

But you’ll notice our splitter diffuser has additional area outside the main diffuser, with strakes. The purpose of this area is to mitigate tire squirt. As a tire rolls forward, it compresses the high-velocity air underneath it, squirting air out the sides. Some of this air goes under the splitter, which decreases the suction and downforce. By adding a diffuser in this area, it slows the air down, hitting the tires with less velocity.

The strakes spin a vortex off the trailing edge. Because vortexes take energy to create, the air hitting the tire has less energy, which reduces the amount of tire squirt. The strakes are also angled just-so, to achieve the maximum amount of extraction from under the splitter and send it outboard, protecting the main tunnel of the splitter diffuser.

Recall that most of the air is dumped inside the wheel well. Air here is extracted via vents on top of the fender, and behind the wheel. By extracting air upwards, you create an opposing force downwards. And by sending air sideways, you mitigate losses from air intruding underneath. Fender vents are important to make the most out of splitter diffusers.

A+ splitter

There’s an old saying I think attributed to fighter aircraft: 90% of the cost is the last 10% of performance. The same applies to car aerodynamics. While this splitter is a solid A, to make this into an A+ requires a lot of labor and cost, for little return.

First, I’d cut out the center bumper support completely, it isn’t necessary for chassis rigidity, and I can fashion a custom bumper after ducting the radiator. Removing that center support allows a slightly higher radiator intake, with the benefits I already discussed. I’d put a 100mm radius on the edge of the radiator duct, and reduce the opening size slightly.

I’d also tilt the radiator forward to reduce the frontal area, and duct the radiator exit straight upwards through an extractor vent to create more downforce. You might call this more engine bay management than splitter improvement, but it’s all related to creating more front downforce, and goes hand-in-hand with designing the splitter and ducting.

I’d also make the splitter slightly wider. Alyssa’s car is for HPDEs and is unbound by racing rules, so an extra couple inches on the end isn’t a problem. With that extra space I’d place place a simple piece of angle aluminum. This end-wicker, if you will, holds pressure on top of the blade and locates a higher stagnation point behind. This pressure differential creates more downforce, and it’ll still kick air sideways for extraction.

With a clean sheet, I’d also add curvature to the entire undertray. I’d laminate two pieces of 6mm plywood together, rather than using a single piece of 12mm. This would allow the rear edge to sweep upwards, creating more suction under the middle of the splitter blade.

Alyssa’s car doesn’t have a flat bottom, so it’s not a huge problem to diffuse some air into the center of the car. There will be some additional downstream drag due to local flow separations around the suspension bits, exhaust, transmission etc, but this is just a little bit of extra drag on things that were already creating drag to begin with.

I’d also put some height differential between the center and sides of the splitter. Remember early last year when all the F1 cars were porpoising? That was a cyclic gain and loss of downforce via ground effect, and it’s the natural consequence of trying to make as much downforce as possible, losing that downforce, and watching the car rebound on its springs. Once the car is back at a taller ride height, it again gains more downforce, repeating the cycle.

Many cars mitigate that effect by having a higher center tunnel, which gives two different heights of the splitter. This way if the lower part of the splitter goes under 1.5″ height, you don’t suddenly lose all of the downforce. The higher center portion also feeds the underside aero, which isn’t a factor on Alyssa’s car, which has neither a center tunnel nor a flat bottom.

So on her car I’d make the sides of the splitter slightly higher, rather than the middle. This will have the same effect of balancing ground effect losses, and will also protect the splitter blade, because the sides will ground out before the middle when cornering.

Finally, I might address some of the aerodynamic losses that come through the wheel spokes. By covering the bottom half of the wheel with caketin covers and spinning a vortex outboard, I’d reduce losses and redirect air down and out, with a minor gain in splitter suction.

But like I started with, modifying her splitter to go from A to A+ is a 90% effort for 10% gain situation. Addressing other parts of the car to the 90% threshold is time better spent.

I’ve had a tow hitch on just about every car I’ve owned, even my Mini and Miata. I’ve never towed anything with my Miata, but I have a cargo carrier I use for taking an extra set of tires to the race track.

The tow hitch also makes a convenient jacking point for the rear of the car, and I thought I might one day use it as the base for a quick-release diffuser.

So naturally I ordered a tow hitch for my Veloster. I got the Curt model from eTrailer, and in my stupidity, didn’t realize it was for the non-N versions of the car. FML.

The tow hitch sat on the shelf for a couple months while I pondered whether to return it or modify it. I saw a post on the Veloster N forum, where someone modified the Curt hitch to fit, and so I thought I might try to do that.

Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I had the day to myself to mess around, so I went after it. The first thing I did was remove the faux rear diffuser. I thought this would make access a lot easier, and it did, but it wasn’t the easiest thing to remove. Then I dropped the exhaust off the three rubber connectors, and test fit the hitch.

Fitting the tow hitch is easy by using a floor jack to raise it in position, then attaching the four supplied bolts. There was some body putty on my frame, which I had to scrape off before the ends would go into place.

Bolted up as intended, the hitch sits quite low. When hitches are this low, they can ground out going up a driveway, and the height is generally too low most trailers with tongue jacks, and even some bike racks. More significantly, the hitch is also directly in the way of the muffler.

I had a few different ideas on how to modify the hitch, including making a new one using the existing side plates. But after measuring some more, I reasoned it might actually fit if the hitch went above the exhaust.

I cut 3.5” out of the side mounting plates and tack welded it together, and then test fitted it. So close! The muffler just barely made contact with the hitch.

I cut off the tack welds with an angle grinder and moved the entire hitch portion half an inch rearward. Then I test fit it again and found it fit quite nicely. But I had mis-aligned the plates a couple degrees and the bolt holes were not lined up perfectly.

I could have widened the mounting holes, but instead cut the tack welds off one side, re-angled the end plate, and tacked it together again. Third time is the charm, right? Right. This time it fit like a glove, and so I removed it one last time, welded it all up, and spray painted the grinds and welds.

This sounds like a lot of work, and it was. Cutting and welding the mounting plates is a 20-30 minute job, but the trial and error part took hours. But probably the most time consuming part is removing the diffuser, which mounts with a bunch of annoying plastic tabs.

It would have been pretty easy to cut a square hole so that the trailer hitch protrudes through the bodywork. But I decided not to put the faux diffuser back on. I don’t like fake aero to begin with, and I actually think it looks way better this way. (Please don’t ask me what a cut bumper is worth for drag reduction!)

I’m not sure I’ll tow anything with the VN (the manual says not to), but now I can use my cargo carrier for race tires. I also got a hitch mounted bike rack.

Side note, the Harbor Freight hitch-mounted two-bike rack is a very well thought out design and a bargain at double the price. If you get a short hitch extender, you won’t need to pull the pin and swing the rack down; it’ll clear the hatch lid easily, so you can get to things in the trunk.

For the few dozen of you who subscribe to the blog, let me update you on some of the things that have been happening in my life, and how that’s going to affect this site and future content.

I bought a Veloster N for what I thought were pretty good and mature reasons. I took the car to Watkins Glen for Grid Life, but I didn’t really get a chance to open it up in the monsoon conditions. An NC Miata would have been a better choice (if you don’t get that joke, it’s a boat reference).

Then I drove the VN out to Detroit to see my buddy Chris Gailey, and in preparation for that, I built a bunch of aero parts for testing. No plan survives the enemy, and my Veloster didn’t survive one lap.

I accelerated out of T2 at Waterford and heard a loud noise, which then got louder, kind of like an exhaust gasket getting blown out. I’d recently replaced the straight pipe with OEM, so I thought maybe this was a gasket issue. But then the car lost power, and then died as I entered the pits.

We took off the undertray and found oil; it didn’t look good. A warning came up on the screen, I touched that, and it called Hyundai service. They said they’d pick up the car and take it to the Hyundai dealership, Glassman Hyundai in Southfield.

While waiting for the tow truck driver to arrive (high as a kite), I let Chris’s son have my track day. The good folks at Summer Track Days allowed Griffin to drive in my place, and I let Griffin borrow my helmet. Unbeknownst to me, Griffin let his buddy borrow my helmet so he could ride shotgun. Welp, the passenger got sick, couldn’t get my helmet off in time, and threw up all over the inside of my lid. No good deed goes unpunished.

We rented a Jeep Grand Cherokee, possibly the worst car I’ve ever driven, and drove 500 miles home to the smell of stale cigarettes. People who smoke in rental cars should have their lungs ripped out. Fuck you.

The people at Glassman Hyundai were awesome, especially Ralph, and kept in touch with me. The good news: the motor will be replaced under warranty. The bad news: N motors are on “international backorder status.” I’m pretty much expecting October.

I had some track days coming up, so I dusted off my 1.6 Miata, which recently had HLAs serviced and new valve springs. I spent a bunch of time on new aero for that, including fitting my fastback to it.

Then I took it up to Pineview, and it dropped a valve in the first session.

So now I’ve got three broken cars and four broken engines (my race car’s engines are also currently apart) and I have nothing to drive for the PCA event coming in a few days. So I figure I’ll find a 1.6 engine, throw it in there stock, and at least I can drive something for two days at Watkins Glen.

I found a 1.6 a few hours away for $750, and tried to trace back the ownership. It was apparently Dieter’s engine once upon a time, and I get his assurances that it’s decent. So I buy the engine, take it over the Shade Tree, and have them install it. Except the engine is rusted on the inside and worthless. WTF?

Well, apparently Dieter had two engines, this one isn’t the one he was talking about. This engine used to be Stefan’s, and he pulled it out of a junkyard car and sold it before checking into it. Fucking boat anchor, that’s all it’s good for.

So now I’ve got five broken engines and no car, so I figure I’ll go to the PCA event and just do data coaching. That didn’t really work out great due to some scheduling mishaps (the classroom sessions were double booked with my data sessions), and then just a lack of people wanting to do data. So I didn’t get a chance to use my vMin coaching tools or show the slide deck I worked so hard on.

So I sat in the stands with Josh and watched turn 10 for a bit. In an entire session (20+ minutes), four people hit the rumble strip on exit. I’d say 90% of the cars left a car width or more on the exit of the turn. A good number of cars exited turn 10 in the middle of the track. Did I mention this was the advanced run group? Maybe data coaching isn’t that important.

All of this has kind of reframed what I want to do with my life. I’ve spent 12 years racing and being a prisoner of this hobby. And it isn’t just the racing I got into, there’s the instructing, data coaching, racing rules, Pineview bullshit, etc. And of course all of the aerodynamic crap: theory, building, testing, simulations, and eventually writing it down here.

I’m not sure what comes next, but I’m due a break from the chaos. One thing I’ve decided for sure is I’m no longer owning a racing team or any Miatas. I’m selling or giving away everything Miata related. It’s been a great journey, but that part of the journey has come to an end.

As soon as I’d made that decision, I felt better. My wife simply said “It’s about fucking time!”

I’m still going to write; I have a lot of unfinished drafts and some really good ones coming up. I’m still going to race, but it’ll be as an arrive-and-drive. I’m still going to track my Veloster and do a bunch of aero experiments, but it’s going to be a while before I get back to it. The future is undefined, but looks brighter already.

Just today Ralph from Hyundai sent me a little movie – the new engine is in, the car is running, and it’s ready to be picked up. Hallefuckinglujah.

My brother recently wrote a blog post on the Driving Progression, which is a Dunning-Kruger of performance driving. I thought it would be fun to do the same thing for aerodynamics.

If you don’t know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is, it’s that people with very little knowledge have a lot of confidence. They’ll freely share the benefit of their inexperience with everyone. As they gain knowledge, they start to realize they don’t know anything, and lose confidence, eventually reaching a low point of “I don’t know shit.” After hitting rock bottom, an increase in knowledge steadily rebuilds confidence to the point that they master the topic.

The D-K effect is not about being stupid, it’s about not knowing any better. That’s certainly how I started my journey through aerodynamics, and it’s probably similar to how other people got started.

I’ve identified four general stages of the D-K effect, which I’m calling Fanboi, Learning, Experiments, and Optimization.

• Fanboi – Buying aero parts for looks, drag reduction, or blind trust.
• Learning – The apple of knowledge brings despair.
• Experiments– Tools and experiments to expand knowledge.
• Optimizations – Applying aerodynamic principles to any object with good results.

Fanboi

The first phase of aerodynamics is largely acquiring parts without understanding their specific use.

• Appearance – Many people buy aero parts because they look cool. Most dealer options like a front lip, side skirts, or spoiler are early on the upward slope.
• Drag reduction – People easily grasp the concept of drag reduction, and not knowing any better, it defines the next level of purchases or DIY projects.
• Blind trust – At this point a person has bought a wing or spoiler and some other aero that has good results (I dropped 3 seconds with a wing!), and now they think more aero is better and buy it all, whether or not it’s designed well or would be useful on their car.

You can ask a fanboi why they have this aero part, or how it works, and you’ll get a reply that has nothing to do with personal aero knowledge and everything to do with blind trust in the manufacturer. Businesses have a vested interest in parting you with your money, are they really the people you should trust on this matter?

Some people never get past the Fanboi phase, and good for them, ignorance is bliss. But some of them watch a video or read a book, or god forbid they find this website, and then they fall down a very deep hole into despair.

Learning

The next phase begins when a person does actual research into aerodynamics, and thus begins a slippery slope down Dunning-Kruger’s backside. Often YouTube is their first inkling that things don’t work exactly the way they’d hoped. For example, maybe they saw Kyle Forster’s video on how wings don’t work with convertibles. Or they watch Julian Edgar read yet another bedtime story from his book.

Some people might stumble onto my Occam’s Racer website, and if you’re a regular reader, you know I do a lot of debunking and peeking behind the curtain. Other notable stops on the way to the pit of despair include Competition Car Aerodynamics, by MacBeath and the more challenging Race Car Aerodynamics, by Katz.

From there you might dig deeper into to the grandfather of texts, Hucho’s Aerodynamics of Road Vehicles, or hit the lowest point, SAE papers and peer-reviewed university studies. At this point aerodynamics, or should I say, fluid dynamics, is so full of numbers, equations, and nerd stuff that you feel you know shit-all of nothing.

Experiments

Further knowledge comes through experimentation. Just as you were once a fool to trust aerodynamics manufacturers, you’d be a fool to trust anything you read or see on YouTube. So this next phase is where you get hands-on, experimenting to see the result.

Personally I jumped right into Airfoil Tools, OptimumLap, and other free resources, then DIY’d my own projects. A more sensible approach, and one I took later, is to enroll in Kyle Forster’s (JKF Aero) online course on aerodynamics.

Most of us aren’t going to have the means to get into CFD, and so Kyle does that for you, performing the experiments you’d do, and doing a nose-to-tail breakdown of different cars in CFD. If you are serious about aero, there’s no better use of your time or money.

It’s worth noting that Kyle uses OptimumLap in his course, since it’s a great way to get instant validation on whether something works or doesn’t, and how it plays out on different race tracks. I was already using the program for years before taking Kyle’s course, and it being FREE, everyone who is serious about aero or validating any other modifications to their car should use it.

The final stop in the Experiments stage is oddly where I started: real-world testing. That could mean going to a wind tunnel, or in my case, hiring a professional to make Watkins Glen into our own personal wind tunnel. And with that hard data, one comes to certain realizations about aero, and it turns out that it’s not that difficult after all.

Optimizations

Once you reach this level of understanding, you realize it’s not about the parts, but by applying certain principles. You are either optimizing the car for a particular rule set, or in the absence or racing rules, to handling characteristics, efficiency, a particular race track, or other factors.

The principles go something like this:

• Attached flow – You want to keep air attached along surfaces. A thicker and turbulent boundary layer is better than detached. Streamlined objects have rounded leading edges and break cleanly at the trailing edge.
• Change the direction of air – If you aren’t changing the direction of airflow, you aren’t doing dick. Most often you want to send air upwards, creating an opposing force: downforce. You don’t want to change direction too much or air detaches, causing drag and destroying downforce.
• Maximize suction – Pressure is good, suction is better. Maximize suction and minimize losses to the underside of splitters, underbody, and wings.
• Manage tires – Tires are draggy, disruptive to airflow, and create a jet of air as they roll forward on the ground. Manage tire drag and squirt to mitigate losses.
• Manipulate vortices – Vortices are usually thought of in terms of loss and wasted energy, but you can manipulate vortices to create air fences, delay flow separation, reduce energy on the face of the tire, etc. At the bleeding edge of performance, like F1, it seems like most of the effort is spent managing and manipulating vortices.

Conclusion

There is nothing wrong with being on the early, upward slope of the Dunning-Kruger graph. Choosing aero parts because you like the way they look, or because you support a particular manufacturer, or because they work and you don’t care why, is a happy place to be. This covers the 90% usecase.

In reflection, I can’t think of a compelling reason to get into early aerodynamic texts or plunge into SAE papers, they can be too much. Instead, leave that shit to me, I’ll translate it for the masses and make it fun to read (I won’t say “dumb it down” because y’all are smart or you wouldn’t be here).

But if you really want to get into aerodynamics because you’re developing something for the last 10% of performance, or because you need a competitive edge, then I’d start with the JKF aero course. You’ll definitely be making your own aero parts, because the aftermarket doesn’t support the kinds of things you’ll be doing, so plan on investing in tools and materials.

This is a worthy journey, but all-consuming, and requires sacrifices. Have fun with it.