How can I make my car faster?

Fast doesn’t come cheap and, in general, the way to make your car go faster for track day racing or rallying is to spend more money on it than the next person.

But if you’re on a tight budget, that’s not so easy, and being fast runs much deeper than that anyway.

My first forays into being fast was rallying a Holden Gemini. To save money, I bought second-hand tyres from one of my competitors – Col Fletcher. While the other competitors were protesting me and trying to psychologically bully me into not beating them, he would sell me his second-hand tyres and let me do new cuts in the tread using his tyre cutter. I’ll never forget his generosity.

The bullying didn’t work; I destroyed the competition. The guy who came closest told me he never spent so much money on a car to not win. Being a cheapskate, I didn’t spend any money, I just learnt to drive faster.

That in a nutshell, is the first lesson. Learn to drive faster.

Working on yourself will give you a more lasting sense of confidence than spending money on your car or anything else for that matter.

The rest of my advice on how to actually make your car faster comes down to this: accelerating, braking, and cornering. You want to make your car better at all three.

The easiest way to make your car better at all three is with tyres. Tyres are where the rubber meets the road, literally.

Quite a while after graduating from the Gemini, I competed a couple of times in the Alpine rally – one of the biggest classic gravel rallies in the southern hemisphere.

The Gemini had taught me the value of cutting the tyres, and I’d learnt that the Datto I would be driving (serendipitously a Datsun 1600 my dad had bought from that same legend Col) loved a set of Pirellis on the rear.

In a supply shortage, I bought as many new Pirellis as I could and loaded the trailer with used ones (with fresh cuts).

We nailed it. I led the rally all three times I competed in it before hitting trouble. Twice, gearbox, and the last time, diff trouble.

The same thing applies on tarmac. Gambling with Targa Tasmania long-range forecasts, I bet on the west coast stages being wet. We could only get hard or soft Dunlop R-Spec compounds in our tyre size.

Another legend, Russell Stuckey, gave me the confidence to roll the dice and try the softs for the first time in 2010. After babying the tyres on the dry east coast stages, the heavens opened and we went for it.

Winning Classic handicap, second outright classic and 18th fastest in a field of 211 Targa cars wasn’t bad for an old Volvo PV544 with original suspension.

The way to make your car faster-accelerating is by force and mass. Said differently, more power, less weight (faster gearshifts don’t hurt either).

More power comes down to more fuel being burnt efficiently, more often. That is, more air flowing through the engine (air filter, intake, porting, turbo/supercharging, exhaust), efficiently (engine fuel mapping/carburation, compression ratio, extractors, dry sump oil lubrication) and more often (higher revs).

Driveability plays a part, especially in the wet, with things like turbo lag, torque curves, engine balance and firing order.

Weight-wise, there is no rocket science. Remove anything you can (cheap) and replace everything else with lightweight materials like aluminium, titanium, perspex, and carbon-fibre (expensive).

Slowing down is part of going fast. Braking comes down to three Fs: front, feel and fade.

• Front is bias – more front, more better, to a point. Think of Marc Marquez balancing a MotoGP bike on the front tyre with the rear in the air – the front is doing most (all) of the work. A light rear also helps you pivot into the corner.
• Feel is modulation – a pedal box feels better than a booster (and allows you to adjust bias), four-pot callipers feel better than a sliding single pot or drums. Inconsistency, caused by booster vacuum and brake knockback is bad.
• Fade comes down to temperature and brake type. Cooling ducts, wishbone vanes, front floor diffusers, shark gills in the top of your wheel-arch all help keep the brakes cool. Bigger discs, and more expensive materials like carbon ceramic, can take more heat before tapping out.
• The fourth F can’t be printed, so let’s call it for what it is: ABS. Locking your brakes isn’t good for slowing down or your tyres.

Cornering fast is about having grippy tyres in contact with the ground at the optimal angle of the dangle (see our separate story on ‘How does suspension geometry work?’).

Tyre width and camber will make that happen. Some aero shoving your tyres into the pavement (or at least preventing lift) won’t hurt either. Little things like Gurneys make a big difference; wings and diffusers make a bigger difference.

But be careful with balance – aero goes exponential; you want aero balance to match weight distribution.

Hard makes your car more agile, responding more quickly to steering, throttle and braking inputs. It also helps keep a stable aero platform.

Soft is what you want in the wet. Soft dampers. Soft springs and bars if you can.

Damping (shocks) shouldn’t be stiff just for the sake of it. The aim of the game is to keep the wheels on the ground, not bouncing off it (see ‘What is the difference between ride and handling?’).

Making it all come together comes down to set-up. You want to set your car up to have stability, agility, and confidence.

• Stability: the car doesn’t feel like it wants to harm you. You can drive up to and over the limit without having a heart attack.
• Agility: the car quickly goes where you point it. You steer into the corner, it turns in. You tweak the throttle mid-corner, it changes stance.
• Confidence: the car communicates with you. It responds a little more than you ask it, you always feel like it has room to move, it does what you expect, and it telegraphs to you before something happens.

In essence, it all comes down to driving, physics and feel. You make your car fast with a combination of all three.