Originally published May 26, 2022. Last updated January 13, 2025.

When you first start participating in HPDE events, you’ll discover what may seem like a new language. Like many things, motorsports has its own lingo. This handy motorsports glossary of terms will help you learn key definitions as you get started and advance in HPDE. Plus, you can always refer back to it later when needed.

How to Learn Motorsports Terminology

Learning what seems like a new language for HPDE can be tricky, but there are ways to make learning new motorsports terms easier and more fun for yourself:

  • Realize that you’ll be hearing lots of new and unfamiliar words, phrase and acronyms that may or may not make sense to you. This is okay.
  • Try to avoid making assumptions about the definitions of terms. Just because someone said so or it seems logical, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Make sure to verify it.
  • If you’re not sure what is meant by a particular HPDE term, ask about it. Questions are always welcome in HPDE!
  • Remember that no one will ever look down on you for not knowing something because you’re a beginner trying something new. Everyone was new once.
  • Realize that the instructors and other drivers were all in your shoes once and had to ask what is meant by different words, phrases and acronyms, too.

Learning the lingo can take time. Some words and phrases you’ll hear almost immediately from HPDE instructors and other drivers. Other terms are more advanced, so you’ll hear them more as you continue to be involved in motorsports.

Glossary of Motorsports Terms

Alignment

Alignment is a set of adjustment settings for a vehicle’s suspension, determining how the vehicle’s wheels and tires are positioned relative to each other and the chassis. Individual adjustment settings such as camber, caster and toe are used to tweak the alignment, improving performance and handling and reducing tire wear.

Anti-roll bar

The anti-roll bar (also called an anti-sway or stabilizer bar) is a part of the suspension system that makes it easier to adjust a car’s balance. Thanks to its design, the anti-roll bar can increase stiffness in a vehicle’s rotational roll, without impacting its ride.

Apex

The apex can be thought of as the central portion of a corner, though it may not be located exactly in the middle. Think of it as the point in a corner where you are no longer entering the turn, but transitioning to exit it. Physically, it’s the place where the car clips the furthest most inside point or area of the corner. An apex can be right in the middle of the corner (geometric apex), earlier than that (early apex), or after that (late apex). The apex is also called the clipping point.

Autocross

Autocross is sometimes thought of as a type of HPDE event, but in reality, it is a separate type of motorsports event. As far as similarities to HPDE, autocross is accessible to motorsports beginners in street-legal vehicles while still being fun and challenging for more advanced participants driving dedicated track cars. However, there are key differences. Autocross events are timed, with participants taking turns one at a time through a designated, non-track course that is usually marked with cones. Unlike HPDE, many autocross organizers look for large open areas of pavement to hold events, such as closed off parking lots or unused airport runways. These areas are closed to outside use during events for safety. The challenge of autocross comes from completing the course in the shortest possible time, without knocking over cones. It’s also a great way to test the capabilities and handling of a car and the skill of a driver. Best of all, autocross doesn’t require much to get started.

Brake bias

Brake bias is an adjustment setting that refers to how much of the total braking power goes to the front brakes. It’s given as a percentage. For example, a brake bias of 52% means that the front brakes receive 52% of the braking power while the rear brakes get 48%.

Bump steer

Bump steer (or roll steer) is the tendency of the tires of a car to steer themselves without input from the wheel when they encounter a bump in the road and move through the suspension stroke. The right suspension and steering linkage setup can help minimize undesirable bump steer.

Bump stop

Aftermarket bump stops (or bump rubbers) are cone-shaped pieces of polyurethane placed on the damper to prevent the springs from compressing too far, which can cause the suspension to bottom out and get damaged.

Camber

Camber is one of the key suspension alignment adjustments. When viewed from the front or back of the car, camber is the tilt of the tires away from vertical, given in positive or negative degrees. If the top of the tires tilt inward toward the center of the car, the car is said to have a negative camber. If the top of the tires tilt outwards away from the center of the car, this is called positive camber.

Caster

Caster is another key suspension alignment adjustment. When viewed from the side of the car, caster is the tilt of the steering tires away from vertical at the upper and lower steering pivot points. If the top of the tire tilts toward the front of the car, it’s said to have a negative caster. If the top of the tire tilts toward the back of the car, this is positive caster.

Center of gravity

Every object has a center of gravity, and a track car is no different. For a car, the center of gravity is found at the intersection of three axes — pitch, roll and yaw. Your car’s center of gravity is not always in the middle of the car. It can be a point lower or higher or more forward or backward, depending on weight distribution.

Chicane

A chicane is an s-shaped or serpentine-like curve often incorporated in the design of a track. A chicane has one turn in one direction followed by another turn in the opposite direction. You may also hear chicanes referred to as “esses.”

Coast-down test

A coast-down test is a vehicle performance test that’s very common in the automotive and racing industries. It’s used to measure the overall drag forces acting on a car, including its aerodynamic resistance and mechanical resistance, such as driveline friction and tire rolling resistance. It’s performed by bringing the car up to a certain constant speed then engaging the clutch or shifting into neutral and documenting key figures, such as the reduction in speed over a set amount of time or the time it takes to reach a specific lower speed. The test is ideally performed on the same straight patch of pavement in both directions several times for greater accuracy. The data is plugged into a formula to calculate pounds of drag force. After finding a car’s baseline, drivers can try different modifications to improve the car’s drag coefficient.

Contact patch

Whether sitting still or moving, a relatively small amount of each tire’s rubber is in contact with the track surface at any one moment. It’s this part of the tire that is referred to as the contact patch. If you push down on a tire harder, putting more weight on it, its contact patch grows larger. Generally, the larger the contact patch, the more grip or traction the tire has with the track surface.

Corner references

Corner references are physical locations found in and around a corner that serve as reference points for the driver when they are negotiating a turn. In some cases, a corner reference will be fixed at a particular spot, while others may adjust to suit variables such as the weather conditions or the current state of the vehicle. There are three main corner references: the turn-in, the apex and the exit or track-out point. These corner references are used to define the line you drive through a corner.

Curb

Curbs are an integral part of race track design, just like they are on many roads and highways. These safety features are painted in bright colors, often red and white stripes, and are found along the edge of the track at key locations, making the apexes of corners and outside areas highly visible. They are usually made of heavy metal and covered in non-slip paint. A number of different curb designs can be found on a track from low-profile inclines to tall and aggressive barriers. The safety of coming into contact with a track curb varies by type, but even minimal curbing can slow a car and impact its handling.

Damper

The damper is a key part of your suspension with which you’re probably very familiar — it’s also called a shock absorber. Shocks minimize the effect of oscillations from the road surface and driver’s input on the car’s movement. Performance race dampers can be highly fine-tuned, with separate adjustments for compression and rebound and fast and slow suspension movement.

Double apex

A double apex refers to a section of track where one turn is quickly followed by another, but unlike a chicane, both of these turns are made in the same direction.

Downforce

Downforce is one of the aerodynamic forces acting on your car as it moves through the air. As the term implies, downforce puts a downward force on the car. One advantage of this is that it makes for better grip, meaning you can travel through corners faster than would otherwise be possible.

Drafting

Tailgating is usually a bad thing, but it serves a purpose in certain track situations. When two or more vehicles follow each other closely on the track, it’s called “drafting” or “slipstreaming.” This technique takes advantage of the lead car’s air flow, reducing aerodynamic drag for the cars behind.

Exit

The exit is a term used to define the point where the car comes out to the edge of the track at the end of the corner. The exit is also very commonly referred to as the “track-out point.”

Flat spot

A flat spot is a defect in a tire. When a tire locks up under braking, it can wear away tread leaving a flat spot. Flat spots aren’t only a problem for traction, they also produce excess vibration you can feel in the car.

Hairpin

A hairpin is a very sharp turn in a track. In technical terms, a hairpin turn will have an acute inner angle that will require the car to turn 180° or more to continue down the track.

Karting

Karting or kart racing is a type of motorsports event involving go karts. Go karts vehicles are scaled-down, low-profile, open-wheel vehicles that share a lot of the basics with the common car, including an engine, four wheels and tires, brake and throttle pedals and a steering wheel. Kart events are often held on scaled-down circuits, though some are held on full-scale motorsports tracks. With less vehicle complexity and typically lower speeds, karting is often many young drivers’ first taste of motorsports and HPDE. However, karting isn’t just for kids. Many adults also enjoy the sport, with some more advanced karts capable of speeds over 100 mph.

Line

The line is the pathway that is driven to minimize the overall amount of time it takes to complete a lap of a track, from the start/finish line and back to it again. The line through an individual corner is one that results in the fastest lap time around the entire track, and not just the fastest through that one single corner. There are ways to drive through a corner that will get you through it in less time than from driving a different line, but if it doesn’t help you tackle what comes after that corner (usually a straightaway), it often results in a slower overall lap time around the track. Driving a perfect line is a fun but challenging pursuit that drivers can spend many years perfecting.

Mechanical trail

With a positive caster, you will create a mechanical trail between the vertical point of contact between the tire and the ground and the steering axis of the wheel. More caster means a larger mechanical trail. The effect of a mechanical trail is increased torque on the steering system that will help to unwind and center the steering wheel during a turn.

Oversteer

Oversteer is a situation in which the rear tires have less traction than the front tires do, and the car turns more than you’d like — it’s loose, and has the effect of having the rear slide out and making the car almost spin out. Taken to the extreme, the car will spin. If you’ve ever played around in a snow-covered parking lot in a rear-wheel-drive car, you’ve likely experienced oversteer. But that was mostly “power oversteer,” where you kicked the rear-end of the car sideways with the use of excessive throttle, breaking traction at the rear tires and causing those rear tires to have less grip than the front tires. This power oversteer is different from regular oversteer that is mostly caused by how you’re driving and how your car handles.

Paddock

A paddock is a special kind of enclosure located next to a race track that serves as a staging area for event participants and their cars. Usually, a paddock is a long rectangle of pavement. Some are quite fancy, with roof coverings, electrical hookups and more, though most are more basic. The paddock is generally the first place you’ll go after arriving and checking in to an HPDE event. It’s where you’ll park your trailer, unload your track car, perform simple, last-minute maintenance on your vehicle and socialize with other drivers. Amenities and setups vary widely from track to track, but information about each circuit’s paddock can usually be found on its website.

Passing Zone

A passing zone is a specific area of the track where you are allowed to pass a slower moving vehicle. Generally, a passing zone is an area where the risk from performing a passing maneuver is considered to be lower. For example, long straightaways are commonly designated as passing zones, as there is more room to position your car next to another. In most HPDE events, the organizers will designate allowed passing zones. These are the only areas on the track where passing is allowed.

Pitch

Pitch is one of the three axes your car’s center of gravity can rotate around. An easy way to think of pitch is when the front of your car goes down, as it does when you brake hard, the back of your car will pitch up. If you accelerate quickly, the back will pitch down and the front will pitch up.

Point-by

A point-by is a hand signal you’ll become very familiar with in HPDE. As an HPDE driver, you give a point-by signal to tell a following driver in a faster car on which side you’d liked to be passed. In most HPDE events, point-bys are mandatory, meaning a pass cannot be made by the faster car behind unless a point-by is given by the slower car in front. If you want the faster car to pass you on the left, you would point to the left out your open driver’s side window. If you want it to pass on the right, you would either put your arm out of the window and point over the roof of the car to the right or point to the right inside of your car. A following driver may be unable to see your hand and arm inside the car if there is glare on the rear window, which is why pointing out of the window is more common. While hand signals are employed frequently, some HPDE events have drivers use their turn signals, either putting on the turn signal on the side you want to be passed on or on the side you’re going to stay on. Be sure to double-check the rules for events you’re participating in.

Rake

The angle that a car chassis has to the ground from the front to the back is called the rake. When the lowest point at the front of the car is lower than the lowest point at the rear, this is called positive rake. When the front is higher than the back, this is negative rake.

Ride

The term ride is used to describe a key aspect of a vehicle’s handling. Everyone has heard a car salesman talk about a new model’s “smooth ride,” but what you may not know is that this is a fairly technical term. Ride (sometimes called heave) is the up and down movement of the entire chassis in relation to the tires. Ride is the response of the chassis to the car’s movement on the track and the forces acting on the tires and suspension.

Ride height

Ride height is the measurement of the lowest point of the car chassis in relation to the ground. Ride height can be important if there is concern that the chassis could make contact with the ground.

Roll

Roll is another axis a car can rotate around, this time from side to side. Roll is the effect you experience where the force of taking a corner quickly has your passenger reaching for a strap or armrest to hang on. Not only occupants experience roll — the chassis of your car will roll in the opposite direction of a turn.

Sim racing

Sim racing is short for simulated racing and involves using computer software to accurately simulate driving on a track. While racing video games may be intended for entertainment purposes, many of today’s computer racing simulators are in a different category altogether. They can realistically model tire grip, traction, suspension geometry and engine response with digital tracks created by scanning real-world tracks with lasers within an inch of perfect accuracy. Sim racing is valuable for drivers who may only get to participate in a few real-world events per season and for those who want to keep their skills and reflexes sharp during the off-season. Sim racing is also a safe environment in which to learn a new track or practice new driving techniques, all of which may help to minimize accidents at the track.

Skidpad

A skidpad (or skidpan) is a circular area of flat pavement used to test a car’s handling, such as testing its lateral acceleration. Many tracks have a dedicated skidpad, but any flat pavement area that’s big enough will work.

Slick

A slick is special type of tire with a perfectly smooth tread used in some track situations. The reason slicks are used is grip. Our typical grooved tire tread only really offers an advantage on wet or loose ground. On a dry, solid track, a smooth tread provides a bigger contact patch for maximum traction.

Slip angle

Under cornering conditions, there will be a difference between the direction a rolling wheel is pointed and the direction it is actually traveling. The difference between these two lines is called the slip angle. The forces a car undergoes during a turn means that all rubber tires will distort and have a slip angle on the track. Slip angle can cause the rear tires to have sideways motion during a fast turn, even without losing full traction.

Spring rate

The springs in your suspension require a certain amount of weight to compress them a certain distance. This number is called the spring rate. A higher spring rate means a stiffer spring; a lower rate means a spring has more give.

Telemetry

In motorsports, telemetry or telemetrics refers to the practice of collecting, recording and analyzing data from a vehicle received during a driving test or racing performance scenario. Many new to motorsports may be surprised that such data plays an important role in the modern sport, with the top racing teams poring over data and making adjustments to optimize performance on the track. However, even regular HPDE drivers can benefit from basic telemetry apps. Many parameters can be measured, including G forces, wheel speed, suspension travel and vehicle component temperatures. Driver inputs can also be collected and analyzed, helping drivers adjust and improve their performance based on solid data.

Threshold braking

Threshold breaking refers to the technique of braking with the tires at their limit, or threshold, of traction. Any additional pressure on the brake pedal would either result in the activation of the Anti-lock Braking System (ABS), or a locked-up and skidding tire (in a car without ABS). Threshold braking results in stopping or slowing in the shortest distance (although some cars with super-high-end ABS can match it).

Throttle

The throttle is a technical term used in motorsports for the gas pedal or the application of the gas pedal. Applying more or less throttle translates to applying more or less pressure on the gas pedal.

Toe

The toe refers to another common vehicle alignment setting. A person can stand with their toes pointing outward or inward, and so can a car, so to speak. This is called toe angle. The angle of the tires when viewed from above can either point inward (positive toe in), converging at some imaginary line in front of the car, or they can point outward (negative toe out), with the lines diverging.

Turn-in

As the name suggests, a turn-in is the point at which you initiate the turn into a corner. A driver’s choice of turn-in point dictates much of what happens through the rest of the corner, making it a term that you will hear discussed quite a lot by HPDE instructors and other drivers.

Trail braking

The term for combining steering with braking is called trail braking. Trail braking at the entrance of a turn can optimize the entry path by reducing the radius and speed at the same time.

Understeer

Understeer is when the front tires have less traction than the rear tires, and the car does not turn as much as you’d like, pushing the car onto a larger radius than desired. In other words, it understeers, not turning or steering as much as you’d like. Another way to think about it is this: the rear tires are driving your car straight ahead; the front tires are trying to change its direction; the rear tires win — they drive the car straighter than you’d like.

Unwind

The term unwind refers to the act of straightening the steering wheel as you exit a corner on a progressively larger radius. Your in-car instructor may remind you to unwind coming out of a corner. This means to straighten the steering.

Weight transfer (or load transfer)

Weight transfer refers to a phenomenon that happens to a car as you are driving. Every time you brake, corner or accelerate, you cause weight (or load) transfer from front to back or side to side. Weight transfer is tied closely to the three axes of your car’s center of gravity. When you apply the brakes, your car nose dives with the front pitching down. That’s because a percentage of the weight of your car has transferred forward, compressing the front suspension. It also puts more load or weight on the front tires. When you accelerate, weight transfers to the rear, causing the rear suspension to compress, and the back of your car to squat. When you go around a corner, weight rolls and yaws to the outside and back, causing the suspension on the outside of the turn (the left side tires when going around a right-hand corner) to compress.

Wheelspin

Wheelspin is the name for a tire that begins to spin too fast because of the high amount of power applied. Wheelspin can negatively impact your acceleration.

Yaw

Yaw is the third axis your car’s center of gravity can rotate around. Yaw rotation can be as simple as turning the car left or right. But there are also other forms of yaw. A car that is spinning out is also experiencing changing yaw, even if it’s still sliding in a particular direction down the track.

 

Conclusion

It’s a lot of fun learning the motorsports terms as you get more and more into HPDE. You can help make HPDE more enjoyable by making sure your car will be insured for damages while it’s on the track. Most auto insurance policies limit coverage for HPDE. Here’s how to check yours.

If your insurance does have exclusions, not to worry. We offer HPDE Insurance to protect your car from damage when you’re participating in HPDE, track day or time trial events.