Author Archives: Will@FluxAuto

Left Foot Braking – Chris Harris

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Left foot braking is a pretty simple driving technique that you can use to help control front and all wheel drive cars through turns. It’s useful for a few reasons:

I would say the most important reason is to control the car’s balance. When you brake, the weight of the car shifts towards the front wheels. Purposely shifting the weight forward in a turn will give the front wheels some extra traction to dig the car out of the exit. Applying the brake against the throttle allows you to get the proper weight shift without over-braking and slowing the car too much.

The second reason that left foot braking is faster for front wheel drive cars is because it helps the differential. It’s easy for a car to lift its inside front wheel while trying to accelerate out of a turn. Reduced resistance on the lifted wheel will cause the differential to send more power to it which generally results in your engine power doing a one wheel burnout if you’re really trying to drive fast. Left foot braking prevents the lifted inside wheel from spinning too much so a higher percentage of the engine power goes to the outside front wheel to pull you out of the corner.

Chris Harris demonstrates the technique and talks about these benefits in this vintage AutoCar video:

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Drift Lessons From The King – Jay Leno

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Here’s another installment from Jay Leno’s first trip to Japan. Here he’s getting drifting lessons from The Drift King, Keiichi Tsuchiya. Even though Leno is probably the most famous car nut in the world, he sucks at drifting. The result is a pretty entertaining video. Jay almost puts the Toyota GT-86 into the wall twice. Keiichi has to pull the hand brake from the passenger seat at the end to purposely spin the car instead of crumpling it into a concrete wall.


Source: Jay Leno’s Garage on YouTube

Gradient Sun – NASA

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“The lines between art and science can sometimes blur.” This video from NASA will probably be the most astonishing thing you see today. Scientists are trying to study a phenomenon on our sun known as coronal loops. The footage from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory was run through a gradient filter to highlight the contrast of the fine structures of the coronal loops which would have otherwise been lost in background noise. You can only describe the result as a work of art.


Source: NASA Goddard on YouTube

6 Hours of Spa Francorchamps in a Ford Falcon – Chris Harris

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Chris Harris brings us along for a second attempt at finishing the 6 hour vintage race car endurance race at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium with his mates. They weren’t able to finish last year because of a mechanical failure on their Ford Falcon race car. This year the team upgraded the engine and overhauled the suspension setup. The tuning netted around 15 seconds a lap improvement over last year’s times. Will this year be the year the Falcon finally finishes the entire 6 hours? Watch and find out.


Source: DRIVE on YouTube