54 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Skip Barbers Drive Faster, July 4, 2000
I race in AutoX and roadracing, and recently became an instructor in a racing license course. I bought and read several books about the subject of auto racing. The 'Drive Faster' book is absolutely excellent and definitely the most thorough read available on how to drive a racecar. It has the background, the theoretic part, the science part, the diagrams and is full of useful and detailed pictures. It's nicely laid out and written in a no-nonsense language. Every chapter is finished with a good conclusions part. As a bonus, there are separate pieces of useful and funny 'war story' experiences of several successful drivers, related to the subject of the chapter.
Drive Faster covers the subject of race driving from the ground up. I would say it's a big mistake not to buy this book if you race cars. I've gone back to read and re-read chapters in this book and everytime I start to think and find something to apply on the track. Best and funniest result was finding 0.5 sec in an AutoX by saying loud to myself "feeding, feeding" like Danny Sullivan suggests in one of his war stories... Best money/performance spent on the car so far. If this sounds like a commercial, so be it. The bottom line is that, unless you're Michael Schumacher, it makes an enourmous amount of sense to spend $100 on a couple on books to unlock driver performance rather than buying that nice anodized alloy performance item to gain laptime... Top marks!
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34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Manual of a Beginning Competition Driver, February 20, 2005
This review is from: Going Faster! Mastering the Art of Race Driving (Paperback)
I couldn't "swallow" this book at once, it took me three sessions during a couple of months to figure out that amongst the good books on motor sports this one serves the role of a guidebook, of a manual of a beginning competition driver, best of all.
What do I mean by "good books"? Competition Driving by Alain Prost, The Technique of Motor Racing by Piero Taruffi, Driving in Competition by Alan Johnson, Sports Car and Competition Driving by Paul Frere, to name a few. All of them are wise and not overcomplicated, and have no buzz about the success stories of champions, the buzz which is useless for the reader interested in driving techniques.
I've found out that the definition of oversteer and understeer here is the most complete and most correct amongst the books that I've listed, yet without the formulas that may frighten somebody. It took the author 17 pages full of illustrations to explain these modes of car behaviour. This is the first big advantage of this book.
Another major advantage of this book is the serious attention of the author to the role of hardware, which is sometimes overlooked by the other writers, who claim that hardware is important, but do not write in-depth chapters about it. The book has may illustrations and explanations how the center of gravity, wheel base, and the suspension elements like springs, shock absorbers and the roll bars affect longitudal and lateral load transfer speed and motion, which occurs during acceleration, braking and cornering; how various adjustment affect the weight applied to each of the wheels, and how this affects car behaviour. He is the only author to mention the effect of download on coefficient of friction of the wheel, and why the total friction of the wheels is at its highest level when the download on each wheel is the same, i.e. the car is balanced. The other writers in this case did only mention that to keep the car balanced is important without a sound explanation.
The book has an appendix with the listing of racing resources, it has a good bibliography and a useful glossary and an index.
I highly recommend this book, although sometimes I had a feeling that more humour and liveliness would have made it even better. Please also consider buying "Skip Barber - Going Faster" DVD in addition to this book.
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39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Perfection of a Genre, December 9, 1999
The term Ruthian, in honor of Babe Ruth, is a metaphor frequently used in sports to describe an accomplishment that doesn't merely break a record but so far exceeds anything that occurred previously that it deserves this ultimate superlative. On the subject of learning how to drive a race car, Carl Lopez' book, "Going Faster" is Ruthian. A road-racing fan for many years, I had always wanted to take up amateur, SCCA racing but had difficulty developing a budget for it. Now that I can afford it, I wanted to find a way to make up for lost time in learning driving techniques. Although a lot of progressive, in-car experience is a necessity, Going Faster prepares you for learning by its incredible detail and brilliant illustrations, presented in down to earth fashion, used to describe virtually every aspect of the interaction of vehicle dynamics, race course variation, and proper driver reaction. If you have a library of other books on the subject, donate them to a thrift store and buy this book. Even if you never race, reading a book that covers a subject brilliantly is a pleasure.
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