Senna and Schumacher: Where Does Our Speed Come From?

As drivers, we have all have different experiences, perspectives, identities, cultural backgrounds, and personality traits. Naturally, we are unique individuals in the collective that one might call motorsport. Because of this, nobody drives the exact same way. Even if you and I ran the same lap time, I am sure that our laps would feel different and we would gain time or lose time in different corners. This phenomenon is the result of a million factors that come down to our experiences living through the human condition combined with our natural ways of behaving which are different. You should believe that you can control how you think and act, or else you better be a lucky fool.

I usually think about two very special drivers among the tons of racecar drivers in history: Senna and Schumacher. They were both extremely fast and approached driving from two very different, yet successful, perspectives. Senna was a Brazilian explosion of pure intensity and fury. He was a man of spirituality, religion, and belief. Senna was always trying to push himself farther than the rest and he wasn’t afraid to take big risks that other drivers wouldn’t want to. Schumacher was more of a to-the-point, rationalizing person who was known to be level-headed. They both were very fast but I believe that their mental processes were near opposites. From the spectator’s perspective, the German Schumacher seemed to rely more on technical knowledge and commonly taught textbook driving techniques. Senna was really fast because he was able to get onto a mental level that allowed him to push do remarkable things and exploit the limits of the car. Schumacher was definitely able to push his mental limits as well but relied more on his ways of driving by the book, working to drive precisely on the limit in a straightforward and already-proven way.

Schumacher was faster than the rest of the pack because he was able to carry more speed through the apex, during the mid-corner phase of a turn. Most drivers were fast into the corner and fast out of the corner, but sacrificed their speed through the middle of the corner. Schumacher was able to go just as fast (if not faster) in and out of the corner but carried significantly more speed in the middle. He didn’t slow the car down as much with the brakes and he picked up the throttle, starting from a higher speed. He was the smoothest of the smooth because his footwork was extremely calculated and delicate, while his gentle hands just had to keep the car on his desired line. I have heard that he sometimes held the wheel so lightly that only his fingers lightly caressed the steering wheel. His steering traces revealed how he is constantly making tiny adjustments with the wheel, correcting for ever so slight understeer or oversteer. His smoothness allowed him to spend as much time as possible at the ideal slip angle, not overdriving or underdriving as much as other drivers. The smoother and slower a driver makes an input, the smoother and slower the car reacts which makes it easier to anticipate and react to what is about to happen in the car. His footwork allowed him to control the exact speed and pitch of the car, increasing or decreasing pedal pressures gradually and making few abrupt pedal motions. He could pitch the car in a way that allowed all 4 tires to slide at the ideal slip angle, causing neutral steer, as opposed to under or oversteer. The more weight transfer that occurs, the slower the car will go when the tires are at the limit of grip and Schumacher’s level of smoothness and finesse caused less weight transfer than the others. Schumacher’s approach to driving was to balance the car as delicately as he could and therefore forge a higher limit for the car’s cornering speed. Schumacher was known as the calm guy, holding a significantly lower heart rate than Senna, making fewer errors, and not getting too sweaty or tired in the car.

It is important to remember that Schumacher started driving in F1 in a slightly later time period when Senna was a veteran driver. The cars were more advanced and most would argue that Schumacher’s technique catered to the newer tires that had different characteristics at the limit. The newer F1 tires rewarded smoother driving and less sliding because they required more tire conservation and a certain way of underdriving the car depending on the race strategy. Much more of Senna’s race time was spent driving flat out with much less tire conservation if any at all, driving on older slicks that had less grip and rewarded more slippage. A racecar driver should know the general rule that tires with less grip require more sliding to drive as fast as possible.

Senna and Schumacher both were some of the first drivers to truly incorporate the mental side of driving into their regiment and driving, but they did this in different ways. I believe that Schumacher would not have been so successful without working on his mental game, but Senna’s mental game was damn near magical. They both used mental imagery to train themselves to drive exactly how they saw their own “perfect lap” and were able to manage their minds to improve their own performance in the cars. Improving your mental game as a driver is often the best way to shave lap time because you do not even have to try braking later, or being smoother, or taking new lines. The laps will suddenly just get better and better. In their time as drivers, they could induce a good performance and get 100% out of themselves consistently. Other drivers were not nearly as aware of the mental side of driving and relied too much on coincidentally waking up on the right side of the bed.

Senna was more of an intense driver with a different type of track presence than Schumacher. He was known for winning a lot and crashing more than most. There was no compromise for him. It was win or bust and I doubt he would have won so much without this no-compromise philosophy. He believed that it was his God-given right to win and there was nothing that could stop him from winning. Perhaps this belief was the core to his mental game, and therefore his success. The Brazilian appeared to do things more based on his intuition and “feel”. He found his speed through pushing his limits mentally and working his way deeper and deeper into “the zone”, otherwise known as the flow state. There has been a lot of research behind the flow state and I recommend that you read about it to get a better sense of what it is really about. The flow requires that an individual is being challenged to the point that their skill level is just high enough to complete the task every time. If he was driving 10/10ths and pushed himself hard enough, he had no choice but to stay focused and get lost in his drive. One time when he was racing, he suddenly ascended into a tunnel of speed, driving faster and faster. He qualified a second and a half faster than the next guy and he did not want to drive for the rest of the day for his own self-preservation. To put this into perspective, Schumacher’s way of qualifying seconds faster was to have better technique and perfect his craft through analysis and dedicated practice. Senna once mentioned that he could drive on a level where he was mentally ahead of himself. In other words, his body and car might physically be at the turn-in point, but mentally he felt as if he was already at the apex because he knew what was about to happen in the next instant. My point is that Senna was able to achieve some sort of spiritual, extraordinary, supernatural type of mental space that allowed him to drive faster than people thought was possible. This is something that he actively practiced and worked on throughout his driving career. He definitely looked at all of the fine details of driving and he was a perfectionist when it came to his craft, but his mental game was his crown jewel. I recommend watching some of Senna’s speeches and quotes on YouTube to understand his way. Schumacher’s way was to simply do the basics better than everyone else.

The most notable thing about Senna’s driving was his throttle technique, which none of the competitors were able to successfully replicate. From his days in karting, his throttle inputs would be constant blips, usually following a certain rhythm that was audible from the exhaust note. Each blip, Senna would apply more throttle than the last one, completely lifting off of the throttle in between. The important part of this is that he did this all subconsciously and just by feeling the car and the tires. Almost every driving coach or track enthusiast would say this is a bad technique because it is not smooth and it would cause too much weight transfer, doing big lifts and then putting down the throttle so fast. Over his life of driving, he practiced this technique and he could not explain it in an interview. I believe Senna just did not want his competitors to understand why this technique was so effective at balancing the car. When Senna blips the throttle, the rear wheels accelerate the car. This causes some rearward weight transfer but because he is so fast to lift off of the throttle in-between blips, there is not enough time spent on the throttle for the weight to fully transferring to the rear. Because less weight is transferring in the car, the limit of grip is higher because the load is spread out more evenly among the four tires. Because the weight is more even front to back, he could also have more weight on the front tires to turn the car while accelerating.

The main thing that Schumacher and Senna had in common is that they were able to balance their cars better than the rest of the pack and therefore carry more speed through the corner. Make the best of this information that I have rationalized for some time now. I definitely went quite far down the rabbit hole but now it is time for you to pick and choose how you can use this to your advantage as a driver.