Driving technique in 1910s, 1920s and 1930s

[hollus]

Cars were unreliable, front engined and had thin tyres.
Tracks were in open roads and bumpy. The pavement barely deserved such name and often included spectators. Corners were the exception, the norm being more or less straight sections extending for kilometers.
Races lasted several hours, and we know about them mostly through overenthusiastic and very creative journalists.

What do we know about the driving techniques of the time? What made a good driver better than a bad driver? How did they maximize the potential of their machines? Do we have stories from the point of view of the gentleman-heros of the time?

[bill shoe]

When I see static pictures of race cars of that era I imagine they were slow and cornered like they were on rails. Then I see movie footage and I'm impressed by the aggresion, the slip angles, the speed. I think all the basic aspects of handling from a driving perspective were fleshed out very early on. Understeer, oversteer, drift, etc. Making the car behave took longer.

I think the biggest characteristics of a good driver were 1. willingness to take large risks, and 2. managing those risks at the limit so you don't go from very risky to suicidal. Self-funded gentleman and paid drivers all needed courage that's hard to understand today.

[Pierce89]

The old time cars seemed to do A LOT of drifting. It seems as though max cornering speed required A LOT of slip angle. I would imagine the tire made max cornering force at these crazy slip angles, but the drifting could have just been their way of overcoming handling deficiencies.

[Tommy Cookers]

..... all cars before the mid 30s had a basic oversteer (Maurice Olley had then just analysed this), and cars slid at the rear

the fashion today is to call this drifting (and it looks the same as Clarkson-style power sliding at 20 mph slower than the real limit, which any fool can do in a powerful car, and is also called drifting by some)

somewhere I had some footage of Rene Dreyfus explaining that Nuvolari introduced the unprecedented technique of the 4 wheel drift, and all the drivers studied this phenomenon
(this was the first use of the term drift, which meant 4 wheel drift)

all this came from Jano and the German designers designing (from Olley's work)for a handling balance that did not previously exist, earlier cars had a wider spring 'track' at the rear, and most lateral load transfer there, giving oversteer

drift is the symptom of a balanced car (near the limit), that's why it's a 4 wheel drift
(a lightly understeering rwd car will drift when the power is brought in, and need little or no opposite lock)
(high power reduces the 'weight' on the front and increases the 'weight' on the rear by reaction to drive torque, both front and rear run wide due to reduced grip, which is why the car is always pointing inside the corner)

[strad]

Perhaps watching these videos could should a cross reference to the change in style corresponding to the changing styles of the cars and their handling..
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