This weeks Featured Articles is from Neil Roberts, author of "Think Fast." Neil has experience in Indycar and has worked on many Swift racecars. I think you'll find this excerpt from his book very interesting. While not "data rich," it's information based on data is very valuable in our driving.

The secret to winning is well known: Don’t slow down! Well OK, at least try to minimize the amount of non-speed that you generate while braking.

Learning how to use all of the braking capability of your car is hard to do. It is a scary, high g event that starts when you are going as fast as you will ever go. If your car produces a significant amount of aerodynamic downforce, it is even harder because the maximum potential braking rate at the beginning is very high and falls off rapidly as the downforce and drag disappear. Even without downforce, the range of tire slip velocity that you have to maintain is very narrow and there are some harsh penalties for exceeding that slip velocity range: flat spotted tires, sliding off the line, getting passed, or a high speed spin.

In his second Featured Article for TrailBrake, Peter Krause shares with us his knowledge on a popular item – Video Integration. This is a great article detailing the many possibilities in taking your data and putting it on top of your videos. There are a lot of gems of knowledge in here….

Of all the advances that have been made in "consumer level" data acquisition over the last five years, few have been as powerful and more useful than integrating the use of video into the analysis process.

Shifting technique can make a big difference in lap times. I’ve seen bad shifts take as much as 1.2 seconds on an old H box. Good shifts in a new BMW - .4 seconds! The delta of .8 seconds is time that you are not accelerating and maybe even decelerating. A good working transmission and tight shift linkage can make a big difference to quick laps times.

For all the folks that use Aim's Race Studio 2, did you know about the delta hotkey? When on the measures graph, a quick hit of the D key, then select your first point, then the second point. A look above the lap segments at the numbers in parenthesis will give you the time and distance difference in the two selected points. It's a great way to see the difference in two braking points, differences in lines, etc.

Are there other hot keys you use? Please share them in the comments!

We all know that we’re supposed to go from throttle to brake quickly, but many times this doesn’t happen. And we are not talking about the a high speed corner with a lift, we’re talking about an end of the straight hairpin or other medium to low speed corner. This is when the little bits of coasting can cost us lots of time.