by Ross Bentley
ULTIMATE
SPEEDSECRETS
THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO HIGH-PERFORMANCE AND RACE DRIVING
“I’ve used the Speed Secrets books since I was a kid just learning to drive racing go-karts, and I continue to use the “secrets” to this day. There are so many great tips, techniques, and secrets in this book that if you apply the things you read you can become faster and more complete as a driver!”
—Colin Braun, NASCAR and Grand-Am race winner
ROSS BENTLEY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you. It’s people like you who read my books that drives me to share what I’ve learned about driving and racing.
Of course, without all the drivers I’ve raced against, taught, coached, and studied, I never could have written this book. I also want to acknowledge all of the mechanics, engineers, team owners, team members, marketing and PR people, race series and track personnel, sponsors, instructors, coaches, car club members, friends, fans, and anyone else I’ve come across through the years I’ve been in motorsports.
Thanks to MBI Publishing for helping me share my Speed Secrets with the world.
As always, thanks to my family for letting me do what I love. I’m a lucky guy to have you.
—Ross Bentley
CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
1. Behind the Wheel
2. The Controls
3. Shifting
4. Chassis and Suspension Basics
5. Race Car Dynamics
6. Driving the Limit
7. Fancy Footwork
8. Cornering Technique
9. The Line
10. Prioritizing Corners
11. Different Corners, Different Lines
12. Learning the Track
13. The Exit Phase
14. The Entry Phase
15. The Midcorner Phase
16. Vision
17. Racing in the Rain
18. Racecraft
19. Different Cars, Different Techniques
20. How the Driver’s Mind Works
21. Brain Integration
22. Sensory Input
23. Mental Programming
24. State of Mind
25. Decision Making
26. Focus
27. Behavioral Traits
28. Belief System
29. The Inner Game of Racing
30. Managing Errors
31. Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
32. Using Your Strengths
33. Learning
34. Adaptability
35. Oval Track
36. The Unknown Corner
37. Car Control
38. The Limit
39. Going Faster
40. Practice and Testing
41. Qualifying
42. The Race
43. The Complete Race Driver
44. Engineering Feedback
45. Team Dynamics
46. Data Acquisition
47. Communications and Records
48. Safety
49. Driver as Athlete
50. Flags and Officials
51. The Business of Racing
52. The Perfect Driver
53. The Real Winner
Appendix A: Resources
Appendix B: Self Coaching Questions
About the Author
Index
PREFACE
It’s a rewarding experience when someone tells me how much they’ve learned from my Speed Secrets books. But when the idea of combining Speed Secrets 1 through 6 into just one book first came up, my thought was, “Why would I want to do that?” The more I thought about, though, the more it appealed to me. After all, when I wrote my first Speed Secrets book, I didn’t plan to write any of the others, and I’ve learned a lot since then. Writing Ultimate Speed Secrets allows me to do what I would have done in the beginning—almost 15 years ago—if I’d known then what I know now.
Of course, I couldn‘t have written this book 15 years ago because I didn‘t have the knowledge or experience to write it. Now I do. Does that mean that everything you‘ll ever need is in this one book? I can only wish. I’m still learning.
In writing Ultimate Speed Secrets I’ve tried to do more than just make a “Best of . . .” album. I’ve attempted to combine my books in a way that would be most efficient for drivers and readers. My hope is that Ultimate Speed Secrets will be more than all my books simply put together. By combining them, rewriting sections, and putting them in the order that I would have wanted from the beginning (if I’d known I was going to write them all), I can do more. I can make this one book more concise, clarify some things that I’ve received feedback on, and add a little more of what I’ve learned through the years. I’ve also written new material, clarified some old material, and bridged old and new (and even old and old) in a way that I think will help you.
Who is this book written for? Primarily drivers of all levels, aspirations, and goals. Amateurs and professionals. Young and old. Track-day drivers, club racers, Indy car and NASCAR drivers. Road racers and oval racers. Even rally drivers, autocrossers, drifters, drag racers, and motorcycle racers. While there are differences between these various motorsport disciplines, they have more in common than you might think.
I said the book was written for drivers, primarily, but there are other people who can learn from the information in this book: engineers, parents of drivers, team managers, instructors, mechanics, sponsors, and fans—anyone who wants to know more about how to drive a car at speed and how to race. Some of the book applies to driving better on the street (but I must emphasize right now that I do not recommend breaking any laws to test out what I say in this book).
INTRODUCTION
Driving a race car is not something you can do “by the book.” You have to learn mostly through hands-on experience, but you can learn many of the basics by reading and studying a book. In fact, this may allow you to learn more quickly once you’re behind the wheel. If you understand the theory (and can picture it clearly in your head before you start to drive), you will be more sensitive and able to relate to the experience. That means you will learn to drive at the limit much sooner. You may save years of trial and error learning by simply reading and understanding this book.
For the beginner, I hope this book serves as a reference for a long time. Some of the information may not make sense until you’ve gone past the basics and begun working on fine-tuning your techniques. But I hope it will help you start on the right foot and that you can refer to it again later.
For the experienced driver, there may be a lot of information you already know. You may be using some of that information, and you may not even understand why you are using some of it. I suggest you read it again and really think it through. It’s surprising how a fresh approach can sometimes make it all click for you, resulting in a dramatic increase in speed.
So this book is written for both the novice racer and the experienced driver, particularly if you’ve reached either a plateau or a point where you can’t seem to go any faster. My hope for this book is it will do more than just teach you the basics of how to drive a racetrack quickly. I want to give you the tools or background to continue to analyze how to go faster at all times. And not only how to drive fast, but more important, how to be a winner in any class or level of racing and have a successful and enjoyable career.
Parts of Ultimate Speed Secrets are written with one focus: driving a car at the limit, getting the maximum speed out of it, no matter what the surface or layout of road or track in front of you. Another part of the book is written in the pursuit of winning races. No matter how fast you are, there comes a time in racing where the wheel-to-wheel competition, or racecraft,
takes precedence. It’s one thing to drive fast and another entirely to out-race the competition. And because some people either want to make a living racing professionally, or at least want someone else to offset their expenses, I touch on what it takes to be a professional racer, from career moves to sponsorship.
There’s often been an argument about how much of driving is mental and how much is physical. I’ve even instigated the argument more than once. It’s a silly discussion, because your body doesn’t do anything without your brain telling it to, so I can argue that driving is 100 percent mental. At the same time, it’s physically challenging. And that’s why I write about both the mental and physical skills in Ultimate Speed Secrets.
And that’s where writing a book like this gets challenging. Driving, racing, mental skills, physical skills, techniques, learning. It doesn’t happen sequentially. It doesn’t happen one after another. To learn a relatively advanced topic, you need to know the basics, and then you need other basics that have nothing to do with that particular topic before we can come back to the topic again. For that reason, I will be juggling multiple topics and often come back to repeat and enhance what I’ve written about earlier in the book.
I’ve been fortunate to learn from many incredibly smart, talented, dedicated, knowledgeable, experienced, and interesting people. I can’t claim to have developed every piece of information in this book. Far from it, in fact! But over the past 40 years or so, I’ve been able to study driving from many perspectives: from behind the wheel, racing against some of the best in the world; from an engineering viewpoint; from the sides of thousands of tracks; from the passenger seat; and from video, data acquisition, and television. I’ve studied coaching techniques from every angle, how humans learn, sports psychology, kinesiology, performance, vehicle dynamics and engineering, and just about every other angle that I think might give me or you an advantage in driving and racing. It helps to be a learning addict, because I can’t stand a day that I don’t learn something. I hope to share my learning with you in this book.
Over the years I’ve had hundreds, maybe thousands of drivers tell me that they take their Speed Secrets books to the track with them and use them as reminders. That’s the reason I place the key messages, the Speed Secret Tips, throughout the text. That way, you can flip open to most pages and pick up something that’s meaningful and helpful to you. The one thing I know for sure is that if you don’t use what I write about in this book, it won’t help you at all. It’s one thing to read a book, and it’s an entirely other matter to actually put it into practice. This is not a book to read once and place on a shelf. My hope is that you’ll refer to it regularly, keeping it nearby, at home and at the track.
While what I write is accurate to the best of my knowledge, there will be some topics, such as vehicle dynamics and chassis setup issues that might be explained in a slightly different way if you were to talk with an engineer. I’m not an engineer and may not use the same technical language they might. What I will do is explain it in language that you can understand and use when driving a car. My goal is to make everything in this book useable for you.
During some of my driving career (which I hope never ends!), I drove cars that were less competitive than others, usually due to a lack of financial support. I look at that now as one of the best things that ever happened to me. It made me work harder to figure out ways of getting an edge on my competitors without spending money. Without that drive, I suspect I would not have learned enough to have written this book.
I’ve also had the pleasure of coaching thousands of drivers, many of whom have gone on to great levels in professional racing. I’ve learned just as much from coaching an older, amateur track-day driver as I have from a NASCAR or Indy-car driver. And because I’ve taught and coached motorcycle racers, rally drivers, firefighters, police and military drivers, teens, and just about every other type of driver you can mention, in about a dozen countries around the world, the varied knowledge and experience I’ve gained has contributed to information I’ll be sharing with you in this book.
Every time I think I’ve got a handle on what driving is really all about, I realize I don’t. It’s much like what my wife said to me one day about parenting, “The more I learn, the less I know for sure.” I suppose that is why I love doing what I do.
I hear it all the time: “All I need is a little more seat time and then I’ll be really fast. I just need a bit more time to develop the feel and skills to drive consistently at the limit.” Sure, there is some truth in this statement. But to simply “sit around” (in the driver’s seat) and wait for the seat time to give you the feel and the skills is time wasted. Call me impatient, but I don’t like to wait for things to happen. I like to make things happen, and that includes developing skills. I would rather use strategies to develop these skills in a big hurry.
Perhaps the one thing that has made me more successful as a driver coach is my approach. There are a lot of instructors who teach drivers where the apex of a corner is, will advise where the line is or where to brake and get on the throttle, or even how to set up the car’s handling. But adding the mental game of driving, and most important, practice strategies, is what has worked for me. And it’s what I’ve included in this book.
Many drivers, once they’ve been taught the basics, believe that all that separates them from a world championship is more seat time, more practice. Oh, and the best car. But a message you’ll hear from me a lot throughout this book is that practicing the same thing over and over doesn’t guarantee success. As Albert Einstein once said, “A sure sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something to change.” But, that’s what drivers do all the time. They drive around and around, getting seat time, and expecting to improve. The fact that they sometimes do improve is more luck than anything else. It’s also why many drivers do not improve as much as they could, and in some cases actually get worse. In fact, practicing the wrong thing will only make you better at doing the wrong thing. And driving around a racetrack like you’re racing is not an effective practice strategy.
If football and basketball teams practiced like race drivers, they would show up and play a game each time. But they don’t, do they? Instead, their coaches break the game down into deliberate practice exercises, called drills, and only every now and then do they play a scrimmage game. This book is meant to help you do that same thing with your driving. It’s meant to break the act of driving down into deliberate practice strategies, and then when you put these drills together in a race or lapping session, you’ll perform better.
I use examples from real racing life as often as possible in this book, picking on the styles and techniques of some of the world’s great drivers—and some not so great—to demonstrate what works and what doesn’t when it comes to driving race cars fast and winning races. But because time doesn’t stop, some drivers I refer to will either be less successful or no longer driving by the time you read this. That’s okay. There’s still something to be learned from them, even if they are now very old.
Even if you are a beginner, reading and using the information in this book may help you develop your basic skills without acquiring any bad habits. That will give you an edge on your competition, who often spend more time dealing with their bad habits than working on improving.
As an example, a funny thing has happened with a number of road racers I have coached through the years: They have become very, very good oval racers. Why? Without trying to sound as though I’m blowing my own horn, the reason was me. To be truthful, it could have been any good coach. Many drivers I coach have some experience on road courses and little to none on ovals. So I spend a great deal of time correcting bad road-racing habits. The first time they ever drive an oval, I’m there to help them learn the basics and develop the right habits. They literally have no bad habits, and so learn quickly to be great oval racers. That’s what this book may do for you; it may help you improve without developing bad habits along the way.
My main goal is to help you learn more in a shorter period of time. Left on your own, you will gain experience and improve your abilities. My hope is that this book will speed up that process, so that you can learn in one season what would have taken four or five on your own.
I’m frustrated by drivers who would rather spend thousands of dollars on making their cars faster than they would on themselves, on their own driving. When I see drivers who will spend $2,000 on a set of tires to shave off half a second from their best lap time, rather than spend half that much to gain a second in lap time through developing their driving, I can’t help but shake my head. Tires have a limited life, but the improvement a driver makes will last a lifetime.
I suppose I’m preaching to the converted here, since you probably wouldn’t be reading this book if you didn’t think there was something more to be gained from improving your driving. For that, I congratulate you, and I strongly encourage you to never lose that mindset, that there is always more to learn, always more to improve in your driving, and always more speed and fun to be had.
If I could wish one thing for you, it would be have fast fun!
Being comfortable in the car is critical. If you’re not comfortable, it will take more physical energy to drive and affect you mentally. A painful body will reduce your concentration level.
If you want to drive a race car well, whether to win an IndyCar, Formula One, or NASCAR race, or just have fun competing in the middle of the pack in an amateur race, you must be seated properly in the car. If you are uncomfortable, it will be overly tiring and difficult to concentrate. Many races have been lost simply because a driver lost concentration due to discomfort from a poorly fitting seat.
Top drivers in IndyCars, Formula One, sports cars, and NASCAR will spend dozens of hours working to make their seat fit just right, and then fine-tune it all year long. When I first started racing, I was told a seat that fits well could be worth half a second per lap. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve proven that to be true over the years. I recall two races in my career where I lost positions simply due to a seat that caused me so much pain I could not drive effectively. The first was a Trans-Am race in Portland, Oregon, where the seat bracket broke, allowing the seat to flex and move. I had to use so much effort and energy just trying to keep my body stable that I couldn’t concentrate on what I was doing. The second time was in an IndyCar race at Long Beach in 1993. We hadn’t yet been able to build a seat that gave my lower back and hips enough support; by 30 laps into the race I had pinched a nerve in my hip, causing my right leg to go entirely numb.
