Back to Dirtfish for the 3-day AWD Advanced course. Incredible stuff, as always. Wonderful instructors, a great curriculum that teaches you skills that feel impossible on Day 1, and are intuitive on Day 3. (Apologies to friends in the area, this was a trip without much wiggle room, and all the evenings during the courseI needed for extra sleep, since I’ve been sleeping terribly.)

For me, I had some learnings I wanted to make a note about, mostly so I remember for the future:

One of the things I totally understand intellectually, but took forever to reacquire a “feel” for is the brakes in the car, and how you use the brakes to steer.

When you want to slow the car, you brake hard in a straight line. As hard as you can without locking up. When you want to turn, you have to turn the wheel AND modulate the pressure on the brakes. If you don’t release the brakes a little, the car will not turn, because you’re asking for 100% of the available traction to stop the car, and another percentage of traction to turn, which is unavailable.

The feel is the weird bit, because it feels totally different than doing this on track, even though you’re doing the exact same thing.

You brake hard to slow the car. Then as you turn in, you release pressure on the brakes. Or you can turn the wheel if you want earlier – sometimes much earlier. But you don’t get the traction back you need to turn until you release the brakes.

So you’re not initiating the steer with the wheel. As the instructors say, you’re suggesting a direction. But then you turn the car by modulating brake pressure, which is essentially modulating front bite and rear grip.

What’s really weird about this is that you’re effectively doing the same thing you do in like, an F1 car that has a lot of downforce. You brake hard when you have aero downforce, and as your speed bleeds off, you have to release the brakes or you’ll lock up, because your grip disappears as you slow down (since you’re no longer forcing the car’s wings into the ground).

The big difference between track and dirt driving, though, is that in loose surface, you never get fully off the brakes. If you do, the car levels out, you lose all your front-end grip, and you understeer. On track, you want to commit 100% of the traction of the tires to turning, which means the best way to go fast is to completely release the brakes as you turn.

So on dirt, it’s always juggling brakes, steering and throttle – usually in that order of importance. Initiate with the wheel, turn with the brakes, adjust with throttle. On track, you brake, then turn, then accelerate, and ne’er the twain shall meet if you’re doing it right.

Interestingly, getting the AWD technique right does reflect in Assetto Corsa Rally. Braking hard then turning is no bueno. Releasing brake pressure in a turn is no bueno. You have to brake hard to kill speed, then stay on the brakes to steer, but you can get closer to that “zero steer” style where the wheel almost doesn’t move and toss the car around with just brakes & throttle.

The problem is that the game lacks most of the physical feedback that really makes this all work IRL. You don’t get that “weight up” sensation as the car’s leaning on one side. You don’t get the springy “pop” when you release it – you get the same rotation, and the car does the same things, you just don’t feel it.

So in some ways it’s helpful, because the right technique is rewarded. But in other ways it’s not helpful, because without the feedback, it’s almost completely an intellectual exercise to remember what you should be feeling.

I felt like D3 at Dirtfish, despite obviously not being a competent rally driver, I knew what I needed to do in almost all the situations we were put in. Car feels like this, do this. The thing I didn’t do well was gas instead of countersteering (one of the biggest differences between AWD (gas to squat the rear, car will go straight) and RWD (countersteer to straighten the car’s momentum. Gas will spin you out.) – fortunately countersteering in AWD works, it’s just not ideal.

But cut all the physical feedback out except the steering wheel torque, and the tools we’re using to understand those situations disappears. And you have to replace that with something – which is “brain”. And yet, when you’re actually doing the driving, “brain” is the last state you want to be in.