If you race enough, you lot volition eventually find yourself racing in the pelting. But with a piffling noesis, the art of rain racing can chop-chop plow into a science

Indeed, information technology was a stunning 2018 National Championship Runoffs at Sonoma Raceway, with racers witnessing just the lightest of drizzles. Merely in render for such a imperial calendar week, Mother Nature decided to soak several early on rounds of the 2019 Hoosier Super Tour and U.S. Majors Tour, pounding the events with unrelenting rain. For these southern racers, many were left holding the umbrella in their paddock space and sporting a dislocated await – how do you race in the rain? Allow'south answer their quandary.

Prototype by Jay Bonvouloir

"Depending on the conditions, if I need to, I really like using good old Dawn dish washing soap," says multi-time Runoffs winner and SCCA Pro Racing Trans Am racer Lawrence Loshak. Over the years, Loshak has certainly seen his fair share of agin weather, with peradventure his rainy swan vocal coming in the 2013 Formula 1000 Runoffs race where he started final in a rain-soaked race at Route America and passed everyone at least once to have the National Title.

"But like you lot are waxing a motorcar," Loshak continues with his dish lather trick, "inside of the windshield, you buff information technology in. You don't want to completely remove it. Information technology will leave a lilliputian haze, but a little haze is a lot ameliorate than fog and non beingness able to run across annihilation."

Image by Philip Royle

While the layer of soap helps combat windshield fogging, keeping things dry, and moving air across the surface, is besides useful. "In the Trans Am car, we do run blowers," says Loshak. "But the almost important thing in a GT car is sealing up the cockpit. Once again, information technology's moisture – y'all don't want any water getting into the cockpit. Seal the firewall and all of the torso panels so when you go through a puddle no water gets into the auto. The better y'all do with that, the less fogging you lot'll accept. Blowers to blow on the windshield help, of course, but no blowers in the world volition help yous if yous don't seal up the motorcar and put Dawn on the windshield."

If you're racing an open cockpit car, the recipe is a little different. While you lot can treat your visor to the aforementioned anti-fog formula as a windshield, managing other aspects can exist more difficult. "You absolutely want to go along your helmet dry – dry out, and already acclimated to the temperature that you'll be racing in, because the shock in temperature modify and moisture is what contributes to fogging up the visor," Loshak notes. "Yous accept to keep your pilus dry out – putting a dry helmet on your wet caput doesn't work. Obviously, yous sweat but the helmet warms upward with y'all."

Paradigm by Richard Colburn

Blowers aren't typically an option in an open up-top racecar, then yous accept to use what you've got. "Once you're racing, the air is your friend," Loshak points out. "A lot of water doesn't really arrive your helmet; it volition get on the visor, but it won't arrive the helmet. If you accept a little apportionment going through by the visor, that's usually more acceptable."

Car setup is some other claiming, as near racers don't go the opportunity to test and perfect a moisture setup. "When we set up our racecars, how we cull the bound rates and shock valving, what we are doing is controlling the platform for the amount of grip that we found at the tire," says Loshak. "The more grip you have, the more interruption command yous need. When we are going to race in the pelting, we are going to have less grip, and so, ultimately, the suspension setup for the dry out is going to be style also stiff to allow for any kind of weight transfer, or to let the suspension to do anything. We desire to take the car motility around like it did in the dry. Generally, information technology doesn't need to have a bound change – obviously that helps if you take time – but the like shooting fish in a barrel affair to do is to soften up the compression and rebound on the shocks and softening or disconnecting swaybars."

It goes without saying that tire selection plays a huge role in your success on a moisture rail, both in the tire that you lot pick and the tire pressures you set. According to Tim Gilvin, Hoosier Racing Tire's Excursion Racing Product Manager, if you see the cars on runway throwing up any water spray, its time to put on wet tires.

If your form allows it, you tin as well give yourself a leg up by changing tire sizes when you brand the movement to wets. "Narrow is the way to go," says Gilvin. "Less footprint equals more weight-per-square-inch on the ground."

Image by Jeff Loewe

Because of the loads, the speeds, and the fact that you're splashing through absurd puddles, the temperatures the tires see in the wet are going to be less than in the dry; consequently, y'all need to compensate for that by starting with increased tire pressures. "For cars, it is around 3psi more than than your normal dry starting [tire pressure]; open wheel cars should start near one.5psi more than," advises Gilvin.

Some road racing classes offering more liberal rules when it comes to tires, and this is another place you may detect an reward. "As much equally Gild racers hate to spend the money on another ready of tires and wheels, intermediates are worth their weight in aureate," says Loshak. "For my 2013 Runoffs championship, it was a gamble to go out on intermediates – which is essentially a hand-grooved softer dry tire. I had to be very cautious during the start few laps, only as the track dried, I could drive a lot more aggressively while the other guys were babysitting their tires.

"Intermediate wet tires are perfect for times when it rained before the session, or information technology rained all nighttime long, and you lot are the first session out," Loshak adds. "You are much better off, and safer, to go out on an intermediate tire than chancing it on a full slick."

With your car sorted, you now have to find your mode around the racetrack – a runway that's of a sudden fighting you every pace of the way. "Simply the manner y'all tin read 100 books on suspension tuning but yet have no idea what to conform on your car, the same can exist said with finding the rain line," says Loshak. "But you definitely need to read about the pelting line and learn what the pelting line is, and what makes the dry line bad. The dry line gets polished, it gets rubber down, and at that place's some oil – it's the stickiest office when information technology'southward dry out, but it's the slickest function when its wet."

Prototype past D.E. Baer

While it should be easy plenty to move over a few feet and find some unpolished pavement on corner entry, the challenge comes when y'all cross the dry line. "The traditional line is really basic to empathise, only you are going to cross the dry line multiple times, so yous take to have a plan for your path," says Loshak. "You will get a little bit of slip when you cross the dry line, and information technology's very important that yous don't panic – just drive straight by the line. When y'all get to the outside of the line, where you will have grip, you lot turn the machine. And then you want to come back to the middle so you can put power down."

Finding the wet line isn't always equally elementary every bit just staying off the dry line, notwithstanding. "Finding the moisture line on any racetrack is different because there are a lot of tracks that have corners that piece of work into corners, or chicanes, or esses, and things like that; you have to experiment," says Loshak. "You're always searching for grip. The grip will drift back to the normal line as the rails dries, so yous always need to nip at information technology to see what you can become away with. There are sure corners where there is no rain line, then you kind of have to exercise the dry line, but I would always keep the machine toward the eye of the runway equally I'one thousand looking for additional grip."

To that end, keeping track of how the racecar is reacting, and what the rain on your windshield is telling you, will help yield the best results. "Make a mental note of what the car did, and the side by side lap improve upon that," Loshak says. "If the motorcar reacts good or bad or indifferent, you can make a program of how you are going to go through or improve that corner the next time. That goes though my head every lap, wet or dry."

This featured appeared in the May 2019 issue of SportsCar magazine.