Why I think a Double Apex 83.67 Mile Per Hour Corner Is The Perfect Corner.

I've always made no secret about my A.D.D and so at any given moment there may well be 30 random thoughts bouncing around in my head.

This weekend I will be instructing at a PCA event but I am not being the Datsun. This got me thinking that I will miss driving but really one corner in particular.

That corner is Spring Mountain Motorsports turn 8 on the Charleston Peak course. It's a double apex sweeper that, according to my gearing chart, is taken at 83.67 mph. 

So why do I think it's perfect?

83 mph is just fast enough to get a good sensation of speed yet slow enough that you can drive with abandon. The double apex further adds to the perfection because the level of finesse needed to throttle steer a car through the corner. 

So what's your perfect corner? 

Is that the corner that's the copy of Moss corner at Mosport? I know there's one at Spring Mountain. 

I think my favorite corner right now is turns 8 and 8a (the esses) at Sears Point/Sonoma.  More like 95 mph than 83, at least in my M3, but tons of fun when you line them up right.

Keith Tanner said:

Is that the corner that's the copy of Moss corner at Mosport? I know there's one at Spring Mountain. 

I think the one you are talking about is on the original lower track; note I love that one to but at Spring Mtn. the Moss replica is about a 45-50mph corner.

If you go to minute 4:21 of this video you can see the turn.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=awKP3BlGer8&pp=ygUOU2N1ZGVyaWEgcG9rZXk%3D

Turn 14/ Bishop's Bend at Sebring. Double apex that leads into a short brake zone. 100+ mph is no problem if your car can get up there coming out of 13.

My favorite corner is the next on.  Ok ya that is the non answer that sounds cool. 
 

I was a huge fan of Bridghampton.  There are several corners there that were absolutely not safe.  But they were absolutely fantastic.  The whole track was so interconnected that to me it was not about the one corner but getting the perfect lap. 
 

If I ever came to have the resources I would bring that track back from its slumber as a golf course.  

I like most of the corners at Nelson ledges.  Fast enough to get your attention.  Slow enough to not be necessarily life threatening.

If there's a single corner that stand out to me it's probably T1 at Sebring. Super fun in everything from 100hp to 700hp. It scales very well for different cars.

Aside from that it's really sequences that turn me on. Stuff where you have to execute several inputs in the right order at the right time to succeed. Like T14-15-16 at Sebring, or T1-2 at NCM or T1-2-3 at Road Atlanta, or the Fuchsrohe-Adenaur Forst section of the Nordschleife. Places where making one mistake ruins several corners and you have to stew over it until you get back around to try again. I just love the idea that my exit speed from one numbered corner can be affected by my entry speed to a corner that is two numbers below it.

Also: 

The whole forest section of Pacific Raceways (criminally underrated track IMO)

Corkscrew-Rainey section of Laguna

3-4-(bypass)5 section of Thunderhill

VIR esses

Turn 8 and 9 at Palmer Motorsports Park ALWAYS leaves me with a giggle.  High speed turn 8 into a tight dowble apex with decent track camber and an elevation dip of about 60' vertically.  It feels like you're in a roller coaster, and you can take so many different effective lines, my favorite of which is to take it deep and turn it into a hard single apex, and use the elevation and banking to make your speed back up on the back half of the corner.  It really is super unique. 

Edit:  The 8/9 sequence starts around 1:05 in this video- 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=8oqQ-on37OY

Turns 4,5,6 at Pacific (what JG called the forest section, although I've never heard it called that before), and turns 10, 11 and 12 at PIR (Portland).

Pacific Raceways is a fantastic track, although it is pretty unforgiving. Turn 1 can be a real thrill, especially in the rain in a fast car (top speed of car flat out kind to the right, but the track drops away at the apex, and just after the apex you have to brake downhill for the next turn). If you get turn 1 wrong it can be very scary!

RacerBoy75 said:

Turns 4,5,6 at Pacific (what JG called the forest section, although I've never heard it called that before),

Yeah I wasn't actually sure what numbers they were I just knew they were in a forest :)

And, yeah, that it a rad track. Drove it many years ago at a Michelin thing and was like HOW DID I NOT KNOW HOW AWESOME THIS WAS ALL THIS TIME?!?!?!

T14-15-16 at Sebring, or T1-2 at NCM or T1-2-3 at Road Atlanta, T1 at Sebring!

I agree with JG on all these.  Nothing like going through T1 at Road Atlanta flat (~115),  

Turns 7, 8, and 9 at Texas World Speedway.  T7 was flatout, thanks to it being banked and uphill on the exit.  But you could quickly run out of track on drivers right if you got the apex wrong.  The exit wasn't straight at all, and you couldn't see the off-camber T8 until you crested the hill, making it sort of a tightening double-apex left-hander.  Depending on the car, you had to start braking either before or after the crest.

T9 was a very slightly banked right hander that sent you back across the oval backstretch and into the infield section.  You had to get 8 perfect to carry speed through 9, because 10 was a fairly hard braking zone with a long 180 degree turn.  The rise going over the backstretch made the braking zone for ten important.  You braked after coming back down on the bump stops in pretty much everything, so you wanted to carry as much speed out of nine as possible.

TWS was a great driving track.  Lots of places that required commitment for a quick lap.  T1 especially.  It lacked as a 'racing' track though.  Not many hard braking zones with tight corners following.  But I still wish it was around.

I'm a hack and so don't have corners I where I get rewarded for finesse or skill, but I have loved the Ring's Karussell and its Mini-Me at Summit Point Shenendoah.

Fun to dice your way into it and have to choose banking vs top. Get it right, drop in, and add gas until you pop out on the exit. Or get it wrong and hate life for a while.

In reply to paddygarcia :

I feel this way about Phil Hill at Buttonwillow; the rapid elevation change is fun.

Corners 1 through 5 at Mosport, perfection.

Corner 2 (Clayton Corner) is similar to the OP's corner, 2 apexes but a bit faster and some serious elevation change, oh and it's a blind entry like most corners there. Lightly drag the brakes over the top getting the car turned in, as you go by the first apex the car is light and you're going too fast so the car transitions into a four wheel drift, just as you might get a little anxious the weight of the car starts to get pushed into the ground hard and all of a sudden you wished you could've carried just a bit more speed over the top and like that you rocket out of the corner on your way towards 3.

The run-off is mostly paved now which lowers the risk in the corner from how it was before (off camber grass down to a tire wall!) but it's still a thrill every lap pushing through there. 

Oh man I miss Bridgehampton. It was pretty forgiving in spite of the appearance. I ventured off at serious speed in the late Don49's Turner between 3 and 4... hurt the car... A little slower cresting the hill at 6 driver's left spinning in the Shannon CSR. That hurt the car quite a bit, but a team could easily have run it the next day. Dean1984 here got it completely though, it had a flow like nowhere else I have driven.

adam525i said:

Corners 1 through 5 at Mosport, perfection.

Agreed! I was going to say corners 1-4 at Tremblant. Love it 🥰