One day I will install a car seat low enough for me to fit inside with a helmet on my head. Then I will finally be able to sign up for a BMW CCA driving school. Until then, I am stuck reading books about driving. Unlike most people, I realize my performance driving skills are lacking. I turn into corners too early, and if I think I'm going too fast, I tighten my grip on the steering wheel making adjustments jerky. [And if you listen to my friend Ron, I brake far too abruptly - though I attribute some of that to increased brake boost on rentals verses my own car]. "Speed Secrets, Professional Race Driver Techniques" by driver/author Ross Bentley is the first of three books on driving I picked up last summer. For me the real meat of the book occurs in a handful of chapters near the beginning. By the time you purchase a book like this, you've long since understood what oversteer and understeer mean, but other concepts like the "traction circle" put steering verses braking/acceleration in perspective. One thing that stood out was a comment not to use the rubber laid down in a curve as an indication of the proper racing line. The black tends to be more indicative of what path scrubs the most rubber off tires. Chapter 3 discusses what I consider the Holy Grail of competitive driving, "heel and toe" braking. All kinds of magazine articles tell you it's a way to blip the throttle to enable a downshift while braking for a corner. But until this book I never saw enough detail to be sure I understood what ones feet really have to do. Whether I can pull it off remains to be seen (my right foot isn't much for counter-clockwise rotation). Bentley spends several chapters discussing how the next corner affects the optimal exit off the current corner, driving in the rain, and driving around other cars. The last chapters discuss mental preparation, health, and economic issues associated with being a racer.
I think driving is kind of like playing Billiards. You can understand all about inelastic collisions, conservation of momentum, and angles of contact, being able to predict the path of each ball. But it doesn't mean much when you can't actually control where the cue tip strikes the ball. So eventually I need to take a driving school, but I think with Speed Secrets I will be better prepared. Speed Secrets originated as a standalone book, but has blossomed into a four volume series.