by Ross Bentley
For example, I have had the unenviable experience of coaching a driver who had a crew chief who would often say something along the lines of “Don’t crash the car this time” or “Don’t worry, if you crash I can fix the car.” He would say this to him just before driving out of pit lane! Now, I know that this seems like an extreme example, but this happens more than you can imagine. In this case, what do you suppose the driver’s brain was focused on? Crashing, right?
ILLUSTRATION 26-1 You need a strategy, or program, to not think about “elephants” while driving. Develop and program a preplanned thought, something that you can quickly trigger and focus on at any time while driving.
Obviously, it would be ideal if everyone around your driver could be aware that what they say can affect the driver’s performance, but that is not always practical. Your driver must have a plan or strategy to manage whatever anyone says or does.
In the case of not not thinking about something someone says, the strategy is fairly simple. To demonstrate, imagine a blue elephant. Whenever anyone says “pink elephant,” imagine a blue elephant. What you have done is developed a preplanned thought. Now, when I say, “Don’t think about a pink elephant,” what do you think about? I hope you thought of a blue elephant. If you didn’t, you need to practice this some more.
The point is you must have a preplanned thought ready and willing to take on any unwanted thoughts thrown at you, either intentionally or not. You need to develop a Preplanned Thought (PPT), and practice using it. Perhaps your PPT could be similar to mine. I use “car dancing.” Whenever anyone says anything that could distract my focus, or get me focusing on something I don’t want, I simply say “car dancing” to myself. When I say that phrase, I immediately conjure up an image of driving a car at the limit on a wet track (which I just happen to love doing). Through years of practice, this image is a strong and vivid one for me, one that will take the place of practically anything anyone says or does.
SPEED SECRET
Develop and use a Preplanned Thought (PPT).
By the way, the more meaning the PPT has for you, the more effective it will be. That is why “car dancing” works so well for me but may not for you. To me, “car dancing” provides me with the image of me and the car smoothly and precisely flowing through the turns on a racetrack, dancing with the car.
This same theory can be applied to where you look when driving. Particularly if you’re driving on an oval or street course track, thinking to yourself not to look or think about the walls lining the track will not do any good. When you say, “Don’t think about the walls” to yourself, your mind only really registers the “walls” part of the message. And the amazing thing about the mind is that if you put an image or thought into it, it will find some way of making it happen. Even if that means driving into the wall.
So instead of thinking, “Don’t look at the wall,” you should think, “Look at the line I want the car to follow.” The only way of not thinking or looking at what you don’t want to think or look at is to think or look at what you do want. I know that is a mouthful, but it is completely true. Go back and read it again.
CONCENTRATION
Concentration is the key to consistency. When you lose concentration, your lap times begin to vary. In my early years especially, I would always check my lap times after a race to see how much they varied. If I could run an entire Formula Ford race with each lap within half a second, I was happy with my concentration level.
When you physically tire, your concentration level suffers. If you notice your lap times have slowed and become erratic near the end of a race, it may be that you became physically tired and began to lose concentration. Many drivers blame the car at this point, claiming the tires “went off,” when in fact it was their concentration level that went off.
Running alone, just trying to make it to the finish, is a time in a race when many drivers lose concentration. That is when it is most important to concentrate. Often, at that point in a race, I find it best to talk myself around the track. What I’m actually doing is reprogramming my mind again. Usually after a couple of laps of talking myself around, I’m back to driving subconsciously.
Using my PPT really helps my concentration too.
There is a limit to how much a driver can concentrate on, though. You can easily spend too much concentration on one particular area when you really need to spread it over two or three areas. But when trying to go faster, work on one concentration area at a time. Don’t go out on the track and try to “go faster everywhere.” Your brain cannot handle everything at once. Instead, decide on two or three areas at most—two or three of the most important things that will make you faster—and work on them.
It takes more concentration to keep something from happening than it does to make something happen. Don’t be concerned with making a error. You should be willing to make errors (not wanting to, though). The more you concentrate on resisting them (such as keeping the car away from a wall or the edge of the track at the exit of a corner), the more likely it is you will make them. Relax!
Don’t let a mistake take your concentration away. Everyone makes mistakes. Learn from them, then forget them. It’s important when you make an error on the track to quickly understand why it happened, so you can ensure it doesn’t happen again and then concentrate on what’s happening next.
In fact, sometimes, just go and drive without thinking about going faster or worrying about making mistakes. Relax and just “let it flow.”
They say you should treat everyone as equals. I disagree. The reason I disagree is that everyone is not the same. Now, I know what is meant by the saying, and actually I do agree that everyone has the same potential. However, everyone is different and therefore should be communicated with and managed differently. The reason is that everyone has different personality traits.
There are a number of personality trait profiling methods; the most popular ones being PDP (Professional DynaMetric Programs), Performax, Birkman, and Meyers-Briggs. Each of these have been used and fine-tuned by millions of people, making them extremely accurate in providing a personality profile of the individual. Although each method may use a slightly different set of traits, all of them provide a similar result.
When it comes to race drivers, one of the most useful personality trait profiling methods breaks the person’s personality into four categories:
• Dominance: This is a measure of how dominant a person is or isn’t, on a scale from not very dominant to very dominant.
• Extroversion: The measure of how outgoing or how much of a “people person” someone is, from being very introverted to very extroverted.
• Pace/Patience: The measure of what pace a person prefers to work at, or how patient they are, from very impatient to very patient.
• Conformity: The measure of how one conforms to doing things “by the book.” In the case of race drivers, this relates more to whether the person tends to follow the “rules” or how detail-oriented they are, from not very detail-oriented to very detail-oriented.
As an exercise, ask yourself where on each scale you would like to be. Do you want to be very dominant, or not so? Do you want to be extroverted or introverted? Patient or impatient? Do you want to be detail-oriented or not?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? If you’re very dominant, especially if you’re also low on the patience scale, you may crash a lot since you will tend to be very aggressive and try to force your position. On the other hand, if you’re not dominant enough, you may not win many races since you will tend to let other drivers push you around. You may want to be extroverted to make yourself loved by the media and provide the maximum exposure for your sponsors. But one of the traits of a very extroverted person is that they love to be loved and hate to be hated. If you’re too extroverted you may be a little too nice to your competitors on the track, in fear that they will not like you.
ILLUSTRATION 27-1 The higher on the personality trait scale, the more intensity of the trait. He
re are two examples: The “black diamond” driver is a dominant, extroverted person with little patience; this driver’s conformity level or attention to detail is middle of the road. The second, “white circle” driver is much less dominant, is introverted, patient, and is more likely to pay attention to detail.
Obviously, if you’re too patient you will not win often, and if you’re not patient enough you will crash too often. And what about your level of attention to detail? If you’re not detail-oriented at all you will not make a good test driver, nor will you be consistent. If you pay too much attention to the details, however, you will most likely be slow. Some drivers are so concerned about making sure every line they drive through a corner is perfect within a fraction of an inch, even if that means scrubbing off speed to make sure it is.
Actually, the perfect race driver is one who can adapt, who can be dominant one second and less dominant the next, one who knows when the time is right to close the door on the competition and show who’s boss, or to back off and wait for a better opportunity. The perfect race driver can be extroverted when it is time for the media and sponsors, and introverted and self-centered when behind the wheel. The perfect race driver is patient when the situation suggests that would be best and has a sense of urgency when that is needed. The perfect race driver also pays attention to details to a certain point and knows when to let go of them and get on with the job at hand.
You see, the perfect race driver is like a chameleon. He or she adapts to the situation. If you look at the real great champions, you see that they did that. Was Rick Mears dominant or not? Was he extroverted or not? Was he patient or not? Was he detail-oriented or not? How about Ayrton Senna? Al Unser? Dale Earnhardt? Michael Schumacher? Dario Franchitti? Jimmie Johnson?
In fact, Earnhardt Sr. may have learned to adapt better than anyone. At one time, early in his career, he was simply dominant, introverted, and impatient. With experience he learned to adapt. He learned to dial down his level of dominance, turn up his extroversion (when it was time for a media interview or sponsor function), and dial up his patience. That is one of the reasons he was the great driver that he was. He could adapt his personality to suit the situation.
You must learn to do the same. I recommend using mental imagery to change your mental programming, which is where your behavioral traits lie. They are part of your programming. However, your programming can be changed. In fact, your programming can be that your programming can change. In other words, part of your programming can be that you can adapt your personality traits. If you imagine having four knobs on your chest, one marked D (for Dominance), one E (Extroversion), one P (Pace/Patience), and one C (Conformity), and then when the situation in your mind requires being more dominant, you just reach up and crank up your D. Or, if the situation dictates being more extroverted, you dial up the E, and so on.
For many drivers, learning to adapt their behavioral traits is the key to being a champion race driver. This only occurs as a result of reprogramming by way of mental imagery.
The single biggest limitation to your performance is what you believe about yourself. What a driver believes about himself or herself—the deep-seated, inner confidence—will have more of a bearing on performance than just about anything else. The bottom line is, if you do not believe you’re quick, you will not be quick.
SPEED SECRET
What you believe is what you get.
Our world, especially the world of sports, has countless examples of the power of the belief system. At one time, scientists, researchers, and therefore athletes thought that if someone were to run the mile in less than four minutes, they would practically drop dead. Then along came Roger Bannister in 1954, who didn’t believe these “laws of physics,” and who ran the first sub-four-minute mile. Within the following 12 months, four other runners ran a sub-four-minute mile, a limit that for decades had seemed impossible. Once armed with the knowledge, and the belief, that it could be done, it was relatively easy.
Watching any world champion, you can’t help but be impressed with more than their skills. It is the strength of their belief system, on a consistent basis, that is most impressive. That is what makes them as successful as they are.
If a driver honestly believes, deep down inside, that he or she has a special knack for avoiding trouble, odds are the driver will. The reverse is true as well. It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe even by fluke, a driver gets caught up in another car’s crash. Then, a while later, it happens again. Now the driver begins to think, “Why does this always happen to me?” The driver begins to believe that whenever and wherever there is a problem, he or she will find a way of getting involved in it.
Another driver may have a similar situation occur and be almost lucky to avoid it. That driver begins to think that maybe he or she is good at avoiding trouble. Then another car crashes in front of the driver and the driver avoids it. Now the driver knows he or she is good at missing other cars’ problems. And because of that, the driver is.
A driver’s belief system, what the believes about himself or herself, plays a critical role in racing.
When I witness the amazing power of a person’s belief system, I sometimes wonder whether a driver’s inner force can actually overpower the real limits of physics as it applies to a race car. Can a driver believe so strongly in his abilities that he can make his race car perform beyond what physics tells us is possible?
A perfect example of this was Ayrton Senna at the 1993 European GP at Donnington. If you were unfortunate enough to have missed it, here’s what happened. This was one of those rare times when the McLaren he was driving was rather uncompetitive, and he had qualified fifth. It was raining hard for the start of the race, but Senna literally drove around Michael Schumacher, Karl Wendlinger, Damon Hill, and Alain Prost on the outside of corners on the first lap. He went on to a victory that is part of Grand Prix folklore. Physics told me, and everyone else watching, that he couldn’t do that, that he was driving beyond the limit. It was obvious that no one bothered to tell Senna about these laws. It was as if he just willed the car to do things that were otherwise impossible. He believed it could be done, so it could.
Can a driver’s belief system overpower the laws of physics? I don’t think so; however, do we know what all the real limits of physics are? When you start to look at what quantum physicists are studying today, you begin to understand just how little we really know. Already some things that Einstein “proved” are being shot down; just as some of the laws of physics Sir Isaac Newton proved hundreds of years earlier were.
Sometimes, being a little “ignorant” can be a good thing. Knowledge can sometimes lead to limitations. If you believe the limit of the car is at some specific point, or certain lap time, what are the chances of you ever exceeding that? Slim to none.
Maybe a driver’s belief system cannot overpower the laws of physics, but it can overpower what we think are the laws of physics today. The one thing I do know for sure is this: The number one thing that limits a driver’s performance is his beliefs about himself.
Nigel Roebuck, in his Fifth Column in Autosport (June 8, 2000) made some observations about David Coulthard, in particular his fresh approach to driving during the 2000 season.
In January, speaking of the season to come, he said he had concluded it was time to shed the “nice guy” image, to put on a low light anything other than his focus on the world championship. Undoubtedly there was a feeling that he needed to deliver more consistently if he were to keep his McLaren drive beyond 2000, but I wondered at the wisdom of trying to reinvent himself.
In fact, I don’t think he has. If anything, he seems to me more relaxed, more at peace with himself than at any time before, and this in spite of the awful events at Lyons airport just before the Spanish GP (walking away from a plane crash that killed the pilot and co-pilot).
To come through an experience of that kind has to change your perspective on life, to define very sharply what matters, and what does not. I cou
ld be wrong, but my impression is that DC has actually been less intense about his motor racing of late and that his driving, his whole approach to the job, has benefited. There is a formidably insouciant quality about him now, which was never there before. Schumacher’s words he should flick from his sleeve.
I believe what Roebuck, and others, observed in Coulthard was a change in his belief system. This was particularly noticeable throughout the first half of the 2000 season, when his teammate, Mika Hakkinen, was slightly off form. A driver’s beliefs in himself are developed through a variety of ways. Sometimes, as I see was the case with Coulthard, it was a combination of some deliberate work (mental programming) and a “happening” (Hakkinen’s slightly reduced performance level). Often times, the happening is strictly a random, lucky occurrence. Other times it is a happening made to happen. In fact, a happening made to happen is very common. In other words, did Coulthard’s improvement contribute to Hakkinen’s problems?
The other thing that Roebuck noticed and wrote about Coulthard was his relaxed demeanor. It is not coincidence that most athletes have that appearance when performing at their best. Rarely does anyone, let alone a race driver, perform at his or her best when “trying.” Trying is a conscious act, not one that leads to maximum performance.
Tony Dodgins, in his Prix Conceptions column in On Track (June 8, 2000), quotes Frank Williams and Patrick Head talking about Ralf Schumacher:
The Williams team likes tough drivers—men like Alan Jones and Nigel Mansell. Schumacher fits the bill perfectly. Ask Williams what he considers to be Ralf’s main strengths, and the response is instant.
“It’s that very word—strength,” Williams explains. “Great physical strength. And great mental strength too. Ralf’s very tough in the head. Like Jacques (Villeneuve). He fears no one. Without being conceited, he doesn’t believe he’s second to anyone. He automatically thinks he’s the best in the world, but he doesn’t carry himself like that. He’s intelligent and usefully experienced as well now. And blindingly quick.”
