In the last post, I showed you how to create a maths channel. The one that I chose was mph per 1000rpm. Now it’s worth looking at what that channel can show you.

The first screenshot shows a nice controlled car with no identifiable problems. The trace highlighted in the blue circles is the inevitable effects of changing gear. It is never synchronised perfectly so small spikes here cannot be avoided. Bigger disturbances here would indicate poor driving technique that would need to be discussed.

The area in the red ellipse shows the speed and the engine rpm increasing and reducing as the driver negotiates the series of bends at the end of the main straight but the mph/1000rpm trace remains constant because the driver stays in the same gear and so the ratio that you calculated remains the same.

You can also see what gears were used simply by counting them. Without knowing the gearing, we can assume that the driver was in top gear and went down two gears for Turns 1 2 and 3. One more up-shift dealt with the long sweeping bend and another downshift was made for Turn 5.

A better way of visualising what gear the driver is using is with the track report function. Get at this via the menu (VIEW  -  TRACK REPORT). The default set up shows rpm so you will need to use the settings button to show the dialogue box. Select only the mph/1000rpm channel in all of the places where you get the choice and also do not ask for any extra information to be shown.

You may also have to fiddle with the slider bar shown in the red ellipse to get the map to look reasonable, but it is easy enough to do. The end product looks like this

You can clearly see where each gear was used on the circuit.

Finally, this screenshot shows a much more powerful car. The speed and mph are shown in the top half of the screen and the rpm in the bottom half. In addition there is the throttle trace so that you can see what the driver is doing.

The trace in the blue circle has been magnified slightly and it shows that the mph/1000rpm ratio is decreasing. It is not the nice controlled trace of the first set of data. This car is much more powerful and wheelspin is abit of a problem. The fact that the trace is not horizontal, but falling away indicates shows wheelspin. This is confirmed if you look at the throttle trace (Orange, along the bottom of the screenshot) and you can see that the driver is having to be careful with the gas and in fact backs out towards the end of the bend. A close look at the other two slow corners shows similar, but milder symptoms. Some work here for the engineers!