Experience Your Fastest Reality
I would consider my most powerful asset as a driver to be my creativity. While baseline analytical skills and data can give you a more straightforward path to getting faster, they are somewhat boring and limiting for drivers who want to achieve the “impossible”. I always tell myself I’ll use data when I can’t think of anything else I can do to get faster. Andretti and Senna never had data acquisition systems during the majority of their driving careers, yet they got faster using their abilities to observe what was happening from their own perspective, in the cockpit. Data doesn’t lie and I am sure that every driver could benefit from using it but there is something more to be had. Having a “driver’s mind” is more than just a requirement for racing success; it is THE make-or-break criterium.
Over my thousand hours of simulator time and some amount of real-life seat time, I have tried a million different physical and mental strategies to make myself faster around the whole track, not just one single turn. I would try a certain approach or technique for a whole lap and if I was faster after a few laps then I could dig deeper and reinforce this technique. Some examples of this would be moving my body slower(physical), rotating the car earlier in the corner(physical), driving with more intensity(mental), and visualizing how I am going to take the next corner before I do so(mental and physical). Over time I would try all sorts of different strategies and approaches to driving in the hope that one of them would just “click”; I wanted to drop a few seconds off of my lap time all at once because who doesn’t want that? This “click” is what I also call an “aha” moment. Because most of my driving has consisted of hunting for “aha” moments, I tried so many different techniques and “interpretations” of driving, rather than focusing on perfecting one corner at a time. Even though I wasn’t aware of this in the beginning, I was programming myself to do all of these different mental and physical techniques when driving. Now, I find myself doing these things subconsciously, often all at once.
Just to be clear, this applies just as much to the mental side of driving. If you want yourself to think a certain way in the car, practice it. Now, I have built up a plethora of different techniques that all happen on their own. The more of these techniques and strategies that you practice, the more tools in your driving toolkit, and the more adaptive your skillset will be for different conditions, corners, tracks, cars, and so on. After all, we practice and refine our different techniques so that we can do them ALL well when it is time to just drive the car as fast as we can. What I was doing was actually what most other drivers and athletes do, practicing the different components of their craft separately, to mix them all together during competition and ultimately perform at a higher level. The difference for me was that I was not directly practicing the classically taught driving techniques like trail braking or throttle application. I spent a lot of time practicing the basics and then I got bored of them. I was practicing what I call “interpretations” of driving. My definition of a driving “interpretation” is essentially perceiving the experience of driving under a different light or from a new perspective. Some examples of this are: feeling the car as if it is floating along the pavement, perceiving the car as slower, feeling the car carving or swooping through a corner, feeling as if every input or movement in the suspension felt really good, or feeling as if the car was leaning into the corner. What is happening is, you are tricking your senses into thinking that the experience your having is happening differently. When you perceive reality differently, you interact with it differently. Therefore, I use these interpretations to mold my driving style into something better and faster. You CAN choose your driving style… the fastest driving style. It just takes practice to take that driving style that you can see in your head and do it in real life.
Now I will explain how my driving is physically impacted when I used these interpretations during my driving. After all, the goal is to physically go faster than you previously had, at any given point in the lap. When I perceived the car “floating” along the pavement, I seemed to be smoother and eased the car onto the limit, sliding through the corners more than gripping. This sense of the car “floating” made me feel as if the suspension was plusher and more supple. The car felt much better and I had more confidence even though I had made no setup changes. The beauty of these interpretations is that they affect every part of the lap. You can reap the benefits throughout the whole lap, throughout every corner, and drop more time off of your lap, just making one single change to your driving. You should still work on all of the other stuff like line choice, braking points, and so on, but using different interpretations can often make you naturally improve on those things without having to rationalize so much. Driving also feels better, when you use the type of “interpretations” that work for you.
On the physical level, you go as fast as you do because of the way you use the pedals, the wheel, and maybe the shifter. What we are doing is changing what is happening inside of your head so that you interact with the controls of the car in a way that makes the car go faster and faster.
There are some important concepts to keep in mind when working on these different perceptions. The first one is you probably already do this with your driving, just on a subconscious level. I am sure that when you are driving poorly, you perceive the car as boaty and rolly, maybe too loose or skittish. When you are really switched on, everything you do in the car feels amazing and you can feel your rhythm and flow on a deep level. The car just feels solid and capable. You have to practice the good feelings and be aware to catch yourself when you start to experience bad feelings. Remember, it's all about how you perceive reality. One time, I practiced just letting my hands and feet do whatever they wanted to. My inputs were fully dictated by what felt good and I invited myself to make errors. I ended up going faster because I was having more fun and I guess I just got distracted by how good it all felt. “AHA” moment!
Another thing to remember is that some of these altered perceptions might not work the first time you try them and some might actually make you slower in the beginning. It is important to stick with the ones that you believe have potential and give each new strategy a few laps to get used to them. It is almost never the training program’s fault. You have to make the program work for you! When I wanted to be able to visualize what I was about to do in the car, on the spot, it was uncomfortable at first. I really wanted this strategy to work but I was going slower. After practicing this technique, I finally found myself lost in the experience. Believing in your ideas will make them work, even if they logically shouldn't.
A third thing to know is that you can’t put pressure on yourself to come up with these new perceptions of your driving. I hope you will find yourself randomly in deep thought but it doesn’t always happen on command. It takes practice to remember how you previously found good ideas. Daydreaming is where all of the best ideas come from. That, and maybe psychedelic drugs but that’s like cheating.
Write all of your driving ideas down virtually or on paper. Keep track of them and come back to the ones that didn’t work. Practice the ideas that you want to implement into your driving. If you have a new brilliant idea while you are driving, store it in your mental archives or write it down if you can afford to stop your session. Just remember that you have to let go of your thoughts when it is time to show up for race day. “Don’t think, just drive” -Me.
Have fun with it! This is all going to be so miserable if you are forcing yourself to come up with new interpretations or perceptions. Get into a creative mental space. Go into your own world, free of all the bad stuff; only curiosity. If you don’t enjoy the process of brainstorming then you need to learn to enjoy it. You don’t need to think too hard, or even be able to explain your ideas. You are going to become an experimenter and you should tell yourself that. From now on, you are doing things your way! Don’t get caught up in the fine details, just go and do SOMETHING.
BONUS:
One way that you can use these “interpretations” is by using them in your mental imagery. If you aren’t familiar with mental imagery, go learn about it because it’s a great way to get faster and all of the fastest racers are using it to train themselves. The beauty of mental imagery is that you can imagine whatever you want and manipulate the world you are imagining in your mind. Classically, you would want to experience a world as close to real as possible during your mental imagery session but we will go against this rule for the purpose of experimenting. Think about the example I used previously where you perceive the car as if it is leaning INTO the corner. In real life, some of the car’s weight will be transferred to the outside tires when you turn into a corner and the outside suspension will compress during cornering. This is also called body roll. Remember this: if two of the exact same cars are cornering with all four tires at the limit of grip, the car with less body roll will be going faster. You can visualize what that looks like if that helps you to understand. Now, in your mental imagery, you want to imagine the inside of the chassis actually getting lower than the outside, during cornering. This is not physically possible in the real world but stay with me. The body roll is happening in the opposite direction than physics would cause in the real world, but this is mental imagery. Experiencing this feeling in your mental imagery might feel weird at first. Take some time to practice “opposite body roll” or “negative body roll” in your mental imagery. This exercise makes you pay attention to the amount of body roll during cornering, but more importantly, you get used to the feeling of “negative body roll”. During this mental imagery, you have told your brain that you want the inside of the car to be tucked down low during cornering. When you drive in real life, you will go around a corner and experience body roll. Your brain will say, “that body roll feels bad”. Your brain naturally wants to feel that “negative body roll” that you practiced. While this is not physically possible, your brain will do whatever it can to get as close as possible to zero body roll when you drive in real life. Even F1 cars and karts have body roll because the tires do a lot of suspension work. I know that was a lot to take in, but give it a try. Mental imagery is great because you just have to imagine what you want and your body does its best to replicate that image without you having to understand the how or why questions(even though it might be good to know the answers).
