Driving as an engineer

So, remember the title of this Blog - "Engineer in Hell". Yeah, I'm an engineer. According to the school I attended, I'm an Electrical Engineer Damnit!

And don't you forget it.

Anyway - all those years of schoolin' has made me a data junkie. The more the better - I mean, how can I be expected to learn and improve if I don't have some metrics to measure by?

So - this transitions nicely back into the car thing...

A couple of entries ago I talked about the hot lap system that I had installed in my car prior to the June 22 DE. This system tracks your lap times and stores them in a head unit ('computer') for later retrieval. It's a VERY simple device, but cleverly implemented and...ahem...nicely packaged. It consists of two units in the car - one, an IR (infa-red for those not so technical) receiver (basically just like what you aim your TV remote at to get the thing to change channels) and a display unit/timer which keeps track of lap number and times. Every time the receiver 'sees' a beam from a transmitter, it increments the lap count and restarts the timer.

Simple. Effective. Reliable... Just like me.

So, I keep track of my session times - and make it a point NOT to try and look at the unit while driving.

Below you will find three of the four sessions that I ran (the second sessions results were seized by the FBI for reasons unknown. Or perhaps it was a bit of operator error on my part...)


Session 1 (with Carl):

1. 1:45.6
2. 1:42.45
3. 1:41.62
4. 1:52.62
5. 1:38.11
6. 1:39.05

Session 3 (Solo):

1. 1:38.32
2. 1:37.20
3. 2:00.09
4. 1:34.87
5. 1:45.14
6. 1:35.50
7. 1:49.26
8. 1:32.46
9. 1:36.61
10. 1:37.91
11. 1:42.86
12. 1:36.17

Session 4 (Solo - long wait on off-track 350Z - they "Orange Balled" the entire field for about 10 minutes):

1. 1:44.35
2. 1:38.48
3. 1:37.62
4. 1:39.62
5. 1:37.69
6. 1:38.12
7. 1:37.61
8. 1:37.59
9. 1:37.34
10. 1:36.66

Wow - aren't those interesting?

But wait a minute - it gets better! If I apply some basic statistical analysis on these numbers, we can start to see something interesting.

Session 1:
Average Lap time : 1:42.18
Median Lap time : 1:42.035
Standard Deviation : 2.7 seconds

Session 3:
Average Lap time : 1:39.58
Median Lap time : 1:38.12
Standard Deviation : 4.7 seconds

Session 4:
Average Lap time : 1:38.01
Median Lap time : 1:37.66
Standard Deviation : 0.74 seconds

Fascinating, huh?

Well (bear with me here), actually it is. What these numbers are telling me (in ascending order of importance) is that:

a) I'm getting progressively faster every session out (as told by average and median numbers)
b) I'm getting much more consistent every session out (as told by standard deviation numbers)

Note to math geeks everywhere (and I mean you, oh brother-of-mine), yes I realize that I don't have a really solid sample size to make blanket statements on my improvement - but I think the trend is obvious - and that's what I'm talking about here, not the actual magnitude of the numbers. Oh - and before you go 'checking my math' and calling me a cheat and liar, I've thrown out the two boundary numbers (slowest and fastest lap times) for each session - just to be fair. With that, I lost my best time of 1:32 - alas.

So, to try and explain this in a bit more 'real-world' terms: my first session I was averaging about a 1:42 lap - but my lap times would vary (on average) by well over 2 seconds. My third session (remember, the FBI stole my second session lap times) my average went down (woohoo!) to about 1:39 per lap (an 'improvement' of about three seconds), but my consistency (lap to lap times) starting varying by over four seconds a lap (Boooooo!). During the final session, my average again improved - this time by about one second, down to 1:38 per lap - but (and here's the exciting part! Wait for it.....wait for it....) My lap-to-lap variance (ok, ok - standard deviation) went down to under a second! 750 milliseconds actually. Stated another way, this means that I'm hitting the lap times consistently each time around to within three quarters of a second!

As an aside - because people tend to ask questions like "how fast did you go?" and don't seem to like answers like "Oh, I was hitting consistent 1:39 lap times," we can quickly determine that my average speeds were (Blackhawk raceway is 1.95 miles in length):

Session 1: 68.7 MPH
Session 2: xx.x MPH
Session 3: 70.5 MPH
Session 4: 71.6 MPH

Keep in mind this isn't a drag race - this course has turns-n-stuff! Take a look.

So, over the course of a day I improved my lap times by over four seconds (on average), course speed by about 3MPH, and my lap time consistency by 2-3 seconds.

Oh, and I didn't make my instructor puke, or drive my car off the track.

Well, it made me feel happy.