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Sci Tech
Going round the bend
A GOOD memory and careful posture are the key to powering around bends at 200 kilometres per hour, a study of a racing driver has revealed, according to a report in New Scientist.
When negotiating a bend, ordinary drivers fix their eyes on the continuously moving "tangent point" where the inside curve of the road disappears, says Mike Land of the University of Sussex near Brighton. This allows them to adjust their steering correctly. Land wondered if the same would be true for racing drivers, who drive 2 or 3 times faster.
To find out, he mounted cameras on the helmet of Tomas Scheckter, a Formula Three driver being groomed for Formula One.
The camera measured the direction of his gaze, the orientation of his head and the scene in front of him as he raced round six laps of the Mallory Park circuit in Leicestershire.
Scheckter also used the tangent point. But unlike ordinary drivers, he also turned his head slightly before hitting each bend, Land reports in the Current Biology.
The amount he turned his head was proportional to the rate at which the car was rounding the bend one second later.
Land believes racing drivers angle their heads so that they will be looking directly at the essential tangent point when it appears a moment later.
He thinks they can do this only because they've memorised the track.
Land says his findings may help Formula One drivers perform better, although he is not yet sure how.
The camera might be a good way to spot lapses of concentration, for example.
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