This book teaches you a lot of good techniques in motorsport.
But one thing that I dont like from this book is that it's little bit harder to read than other books I have read.

I am not an autocross expert, but I purchased this book as a gift for someone who is an award winning autocross racer. He told me that this is the best book he's ever read on the sport and that it provides extremely practical and useful advice.

There are not many books for autocross racers on the market but the valuable tips in this book make up for that. I would say that if someone who is already successful on the amateur autocross racing circuit feels the book is helpful, it is a good buy(and trust me, this guy is not easily impressed!).

First off, racing is door to door and wheel to wheel. Solo or autocrossing is not racing. Fun with cars, yes. But not racing.

This booklet is a waste of paper. It's for the guy who wants to talk about autocrossing to other people who've never done it and never will. No organization, stick figure drawings, stuffed full of "job descriptions" for working at an autocross with no usefulness except upping the page count. The "modifications" section is worthless.

He talks of "weight transfer" when he really means inertia loading. He attributes cornering forces to the mythical "centrifugal force" and talks of your body being forced outward, when it's the car accelerating towards the center of the circle.

The first chapter of Skip Barber's "Faster" has more useful information than this entire book.

Oh yes, no "secrets" are revealed.

When I first started out autocrossing and doing high performance driving events (HPDEs), I read this book and found the driving techniques discussed to be very helpful and written in a manner I could understand. Even after obtaining additional experience, I found myself going back to this resource and picking-up new things. While the book I've written "Go Ahead - Take the Wheel" discusses the steps necessary to start autocrossing, HPDEs, and wheel-to-wheel racing, this book does a great job of explaining the other side: driving techniques. This book is well worth reading.

This is the only publication available that gives a comprehensive overview into the sport, and somewhat eases the frustration of what to expect during the course of a day's event that goes beyond just racing. My driving skills are improving & I'm even thinking of moving up to road racing in Club Racing, or Spec Racing.

Great book, I just wish they would have had a diagram of a full course and how to run it. They showed one turn, with a late apex. made sense! They showed linking turns with early apex, into late apex. Made sense! But then when I got to the course for the first time, and it was like 75 linking turns? YIKES!

Still, this book taught me A LOT...

Awesome book! Tons of great knowledge and advice for beginners to experts.

There are a lot better books on driving then "Secrets of Solo Racing". Frankly if you have much autocross experience at all I wouldn't bother with this one. If you're just starting out, you may get something out it if, but not much.

Try the Speed Secrets books first.

Also I found the book to be very difficult to read, for many reasons:

- The author has a very choppy writing style, and I found myself having to re-read many passages to properly understand the meaning.

- Production quality / design is horrible. Many of the diagrams are worthless, with arrows pointing at the wrong things. Diagrams should be used to clarify words, not make it more confusing. The quality of the diagrams and are are poor--most are low resolution, and were drawn by an amatuer in Microsoft Paint

- I found the author skipped around a bit, and the book lacked a sense of flow

- Typeface is very difficult to read. You wouldn't think it would be that important, but I realize now one of the reasons I really dislike this book: the choice of typeface. I'm not sure what font they used, but it is a very slow and ungraceful. You wouldn't think something like that would matter until you read a book with a poor typeface.

This book was the first I ever read on racing technique. This book is so good, that every time I read any other instructional books on racing my expectations are far higher than they can deliver. I read this book as a beginner, and I think that is who will benefit most from reading it, though all levels will learn from it. It lays out all the relevant information in simple language (once you pick up the necessary driving vernacular) and includes simple but very effective diagrams to help explain points. Far better than much more expensive books (and I've bought a lot of them) with fancier photographs and pro racer forwards and such.

The author briefly and concisely covers every aspect of racing in general and solo in particular: the friction circle, correct line in turns, late apexes weight distribution and suspension compression in turns, acceleration and braking, optimizing the slip angle, left foot braking, trail braking, heel-and-toe with double declutch, and so on.

How to prepare yourself and your car for solo racing, as well as the basic rules, are covered here.

Hand position on the steering wheel here is explained better than in most books on competition driving. The author has devoted 9 pages to it, and exposed the "Shifty-Hand" and "Zaccone" methods.

The author writes that on higher-speed slaloms (series of pylons set in a line), you may need to be lifting the throttle or tapping brakes bit to get the car to do what you want it to do. I fully agree with the author. Someone can argue that constant throttle application is better to not upset the car. Throttle lift during slaloms is tricky to coordinate and will require practice to become expert. When you've found the limit with constant throttle application and cannot go faster, the throttle lift will give some additional mphs. For example, for a straight line of pylons at the distance of 25m (82 ft) the maximum speed of a FWD stock 1500 kg (3306 lb) car with constant throttle application is about 65 km/h (40 mph) and is around 80 km/h (49 mph) when using throttle lift. That's a big difference. When the car is at its speed limit, with constant throttle application, the front wheels tend to scrub, the car tends to understeer. With throttle lift, the rear wheels are sliding all the way around the slalom, but the grip of the front wheels are perfect, they always point to the direction of travel, that is what we need, the car overseers here, but it is OK.

Another important advise that the author gave is to hit the apexes. "Even if you are sure that the car will not go to the apex, turn in and hit the apex".

This is a very good book. It has a glossary, a bibliography and an index.

I would also recommend "The Front-Wheel Driving High Performance Advantage" by Jack Doo, Carroll Shelby in addition to this book.

The author briefly and concisely covers every aspect of racing in general and solo in particular: the friction circle, correct line in turns, late apexes weight distribution and suspension compression in turns, acceleration and braking, optimizing the slip angle, left foot braking, trail braking, heel-and-toe with double declutch, and so on.

How to prepare yourself and your car for solo racing, as well as the basic rules, are covered here.

Hand position on the steering wheel here is explained better than in most books on competition driving. The author has devoted 9 pages to it, and exposed the "Shifty-Hand" and "Zaccone" methods.

The author writes that on higher-speed slaloms (series of pylons set in a line), you may need to be lifting the throttle or tapping brakes bit to get the car to do what you want it to do. I fully agree with the author. Someone can argue that constant throttle application is better to not upset the car. Throttle lift during slaloms is tricky to coordinate and will require practice to become expert. When you've found the limit with constant throttle application and cannot go faster, the throttle lift will give some additional mphs. For example, for a straight line of pylons at the distance of 25m (82 ft) the maximum speed of a FWD stock 1500 kg (3306 lb) car with constant throttle application is about 65 km/h (40 mph) and is around 80 km/h (49 mph) when using throttle lift. That's a big difference. When the car is at its speed limit, with constant throttle application, the front wheels tend to scrub, the car tends to understeer. With throttle lift, the rear wheels are sliding all the way around the slalom, but the grip of the front wheels are perfect, they always point to the direction of travel, that is what we need, the car overseers here, but it is OK.

Another important advise that the author gave is to hit the apexes. "Even if you are sure that the car will not go to the apex, turn in and hit the apex".

This is a very good book. It has a glossary, a bibliography and an index.

I would also recommend "The Front-Wheel Driving High Performance Advantage" by Jack Doo, Carroll Shelby in addition to this book.

Although the book deals with both autocross and time trails, my experience is solely with autocrossing. For a beginner in this sport (like myself), I find it useful to re-read this book regularly. Initially, I focused on just getting around the course. However, as I become more comfortable on the track, I tend to remember more "technique" and tips from a re-read. Definitely a valuable resource, and highly recommended.

This book is good for all. It is easy to understand, goes over basics, goes over the more detailed stuff. As a novice to autocrossing, I found it very helpful to learn all the basics in one book. Anything anyone has told you about the basics out on the track has been listed here. Not a substitute for track time, and some of the autocross wizards have pearls but they might be jumping over the basics. An excellent read.

I've been competing in time trial events for about a year now, and bought this book to improve my driving. I found the information on how to drive faster extremely useful, and several ideas were introduced to me that I had not thought of before. The chapter on evaluating the course as a whole was also very useful and taught me how to evaluate a track - to know which sections are the most crucial. The discussion of suspension and car setup is good, but another reference will probably be needed for the serious chassis tuner.

I gave the book 4 stars because there are several chapters devoted to the process of autocrossing and time trialing (e.g. signing in, scutineering, etc) which I found less useful as it is something one picks up at your very first event anyway.

I highly recommend this book if you have any intention of being competitive in autocross driving. In fact, I would recommend it even for casual racers. Tons of great information on driving technique, the fast line, tire adhesion, preparation of the car and driver, and more. This book should be required reading for anyone who wants to drive fast.

I have just begun autocrossing this year. A fellow autcrosser reccemended this book. I was very pleased with the information. There are many diagrams to explain concepts and ideas. I was able to drop 1 second off my time in under a month. The only thing that I didn't like was that I drive a FWD vehicle. There was a very limited amount of information on these vehicles. But the few things that where there were very helpful. I applied the phyics to my driving, just not the chassis set-up advice. Otherwise a great book.

First, let me say that I am an accomplished race car driver, with several national championship road racing wins. My own driving style is smooth and efficient, with no wasted motion, and an emphasis on looking and thinking ahead.

Hank Watts' "Secrets of Solo Racing" is the first book that I've ever seen that teaches the style of driving that has made me a successful racer. Like the driving style, the prose is smooth and efficient, with no wasted words. It is simple and clear, and best of all, it can make you a better driver. While some parts of the book are specific to SCCA Solo racing, the driving skills you improve will help you on the road course or the street.