Dust Devil advanced tutorial

Dust Devil provides one of the most interesting combinations of corners and provides the perfect circuit to learn the main techniques you'll need to become a top Oval Racer. Each of the four corners needs it's own approach, master all of these and what you learn here will provide you with a large part of the skills you'll need to win on any of 'square' ovals.

Turn 1

How you handle this corner can depend on which car you're driving, let's go straight in at the deep end and learn how to drive it in the 'Tiger', the high powered low grip Elite car.

Coming off the start/finish straight you'll be heading into this corner fast, the main problem you need to avoid is running wide onto the grass before turn 2, if you do this it can seriously damage your line into turn 2 and lose a lot of time. For this you want to avoid turning in too early, an early turn in leaves a lot of the work still to do on exit, and you won't have time for that before you hit the grass.

However turning in too late isn't ideal either, opens you up to passes down the inside and ideally on the sort of pair of corners like turns 1 and 2 you want a line that's fast in, fast out, but not worrying too much about mid turn speed. For this the early turn in works well, so you need to find the right compromise. When you get it right you should find mid corner you need the full width of the track, but no more, just avoiding hitting the grass. In practice you want a bit of a safety margin, how much is down to how consistently you can drive the corner.

Overall you should find on turn in your running across a little bit of grass on the inside, sliding out to the full width of the track, with the car fully under control and able to turn into 2 without any compromise.

Now lets take a look at the difference in how you'd take this corner in the 'Dingo' the low powered high grip Racer class car. The big difference is of course in the balance of speed and grip, you'll be hitting the corner slower and with much more relative grip to get you round.

In this car you should find it easy to stay clear of the grass on the outside edge, so you can aim for a much earlier turn in, effectively straightlining the entry to the corner. Aim to cut across a big chunk of grass, starting to turn just before you reach the grass. Ideally you'll come off the grass sideways, get plenty of grip as you come back onto the track and find yourself setup perfectly to turn into turn 2.

Turn 2

The simplest on the track, you'll have scrubbed a lot of speed into turn 1 so a nice slow speed entry, your aim here is to get a nice smooth exit building as much as speed as possible onto the back straight. Try and keep as tight in as possible to the barrier on the inside, don't turn in too early, if you're struggling to straighten up on the exit then you've turned in too early, the exit should be nice and smooth, cleanly accelerating up to speed onto the straight.

Back straight

A straight can't be that hard can it? Just drive straight down the standard racing line on the outside ready for turn 3. That's if there's no one else about, if there's someone in front and you're catching them up here's where you need to plan your passing manoeuvre.

How you pass depends on where they are on the track, if they're near the outside edge just go for the inside line, even if you can only get a nose alongside still go for it, you should be able to nudge them out the way and have the inside line for turn 4 onto the start finish straight.

Be careful not to let them squeeze you onto the inside barrier, you shouldn't need to aggressively turn right into them, but you do want to apply less steering than you usually would as when they turn in they'll help push you into the apex, if you turn to much you're going to be hitting the inside barrier, which really isn't the fastest way around the corner.

If the car in front is near the inside you've got three choices, squeeze down the inside, but you'll have a bad line into the corner. Go down the outside, you definitely don't want to try and ride it out all the way around the outside here, it'll never work. If you go for this approach you want to cut in behind them after they turn into the corner, try and get inside line for turn 4, not the easiest of manoeuvres, but it can work. Keep an eye on your mirror though, this late turn in approach is just asking for someone to dive down your inside and take the place.

The third option is to simply ram them from behind, might not sound so clever at first but is often the best plan. It means the pair of you get down the straight and around the corner with as little hassle as possible, helping catch the cars in front, and get away from the cars behind, the overtake will simply have to wait for another corner or two.

Turn 3

This corner requires precision more than anything, you need to get a nice tight line in close to the barrier, a lot easier said than done. There's not really much more you can do about this corner other than practice, if you run wide clear of the barriers you'll lose time and provides an easy overtake for anyone behind, if you get it wrong and hit the barrier on the inside you'll be bounced out wide and lose even more time. Just keep practising until you can get your line as close to perfect as possible.

Turn 4

An interesting and important little corner leading onto the start finish straight. Exit speed is all important here, at first it appears that the barrier is tight in on the inside, but as the corner opens up on the exit the wide grass strip appears. Take a late turn in to this corner aiming to just miss the barrier and get your inside wheels well onto that grass strip.

It feels good when you get this line right, you'll know it when it happens, you'll find yourself getting a good clean run onto the straight building up speed nicely. If you find yourself running wide off the edge of the straight onto the grass you've got it wrong big time, make sure you stay off that outer grass strip or you'll lose grip right when you need it most to accelerate down the start finish straight.

Start finish straight

Like the back straight this is a time to make those passing moves, this time you don't really want to be going for the outside, you might get squeezed onto the grass, the inside line is much the preferred option here. Even if there's not too much room you've still got the wide open entry to turn 1 to help your turn in. Take plenty of grass here if you need to and just muscle your way through, you'll find it's way easier than trying to pass down the inside into turn 3.

Conclusion

And that folks is it, driving around an oval might be easy, turn left, turn left again, turn left again.... But winning on an oval requires a lot more than that, because it's so easy to get around it puts the emphasis on fine tuning your lines, every little hundredth of a second you save on a corner could easily be the difference between making the pass down the next straight or not, the points from that pass could easily be the difference between winning a championship or not.