Ultimate Speed Secrets

by Ross Bentley

  You see, it is not a matter of making less errors, it is simply managing them. Once you realize this, you will undoubtedly make fewer of them. Why? Because, in most cases, you will stop trying to avoid making them. Trying not to make an error is a sure-fire way of ensuring you make them. When you buy into the idea that your job is simply to minimize the effects of them, life gets much easier.

  Great race drivers know that driving at the limit requires driving over the limit at times. As I mentioned earlier in the book, it’s a matter of driving a little over, under, over, under, over, until you average out being right at the very knife-edge of the limit. Sure you need to be smooth and tidy, but there are times when you can take that approach a little too far. If you ever feel like the car is great—it’s well balanced, not excessively understeering or oversteering—then maybe you just need to push the limit a bit more. Make the car show its weakness. If you drive right at the limit, or just that tiniest fraction below the limit, the car will often feel well balanced. You may not know what its weakness is. That’s the signal for you to drive the car a little more assertively.

  If you think the elite-level drivers never get crossed up, never make mistakes, and never over-drive the car, you’re wrong. Champions do all of these things and more, but are able to make the most of the situation. In fact, what separates them from others is their ability to over-drive, make mistakes, get way crossed up and have big moments and still make it look easy and tidy.

  If you’ve ever spent much time watching an in-car video of Formula One, Indy Car, NASCAR, sports cars, or any other driver at the limit, you know that the drivers are constantly on the verge of crashing. It’s like driving at the limit is a series of near misses. Even the very best, in any discipline of the sport, constantly is making mistake after mistake. They are constantly catching one minor error after another. Some of these errors are visible, and many are not, no matter how close you watch. If a driver never makes an error, I’ll guarantee he or she will be slow.

  SPEED SECRET

  Make the car show its weakness.

  I’ve talked a lot throughout this book about how driving at the limit is meant to be a bit ragged, over the top, on the edge. The mental image I want you to have is of being slightly uncomfortable. But, and this is important, you need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Some drivers understand that they need to be uncomfortable, but they are not comfortable with that. It’s like they know they need to be on that ragged edge, but they don’t feel at home that way.

  For other drivers, they are so uncomfortable with being uncomfortable, they don’t drive the limit. They have a mental image of what driving at the limit is, and it’s not the right one. Their mental image is one of driving comfortably, and it’s not fast.

  The mental image you need in order to be fast is one of being comfortable being uncomfortable.

  SPEED SECRET

  Be comfortable being uncomfortable.

  Use mental imagery of other situations where you’ve not felt comfortable in the past. Anything that felt uncomfortable in the past, replay it, and feel your comfort level matching it. Then see your comfort “envelope” stretching, with everything you did feeling more and more comfortable. But, and this is very important, see yourself craving a little bit of discomfort. Feel your body tingle with that uncomfortable feeling, but still breathe normally and getting a big kick out of the feeling.

  Part of being comfortable is being prepared and ready, and that applies to any condition or situation. For many drivers, the sight of rain clouds sends them into a fit of nervousness and undermines their confidence. They “know” they are not good in the rain, and therefore they are not good in the rain. And yet other drivers get a big grin at even the thought of it beginning to rain. It’s related to being comfortable being uncomfortable, but part of it is just feeling ready, which is another thing that you can use mental imagery for.

  See, feel, and hear yourself being fast in all the tough stuff that other drivers don’t like as much. Build a program for feeling comfortable when you’re uncomfortable, and know that when you’re uncomfortable, other drivers are also uncomfortable. The difference is they are not ready for it. They haven’t prepared for it, and therefore they are not comfortable being uncomfortable.

  The best drivers love any condition or situation. It’s as if they get better when the conditions are worse. The tougher and more demanding they are, the more at home they are. You want to be comfortable being uncomfortable, with the car dancing on that ragged edge.

  It’s almost funny the way some drivers are really strong for the first few laps of a race, and then fade, while others only really get started once they get to a certain point in the race. Obviously, the perfect race driver is fast at the beginning of a race and stays that way throughout. From my observations, more drivers struggle with making a fast start and then get going, rather than the other way around. But there are many drivers who do fade as a race unfolds.

  Earlier in the book, I talked about a season where I was extremely successful over the first lap or two, gaining at least three or four positions on the first lap of every race. As that season wore on I developed a strong belief that I was the fastest starter, but then I began to doubt my abilities to continue to be fast throughout the race. It’s odd how we humans think: If someone is exceptional at one thing, they can’t be exceptional at something else. Sure, there are exceptions to that rule in the form of superstars who seem to be great at everything, but they are rare. For most people, they think that if they are good at something, such as the start of a race, they might not be good at something else, like the end of a race.

  This kind of thinking goes on in every sport. Have you ever noticed how bicycle racers are either climbers or sprinters (unless you’re Lance Armstrong), basketball players are either great at offense or defense but not both, and some business people are great in marketing and not great in finance, while others are the opposite? Well, I started to go there myself. I started to wonder how I could be good throughout a race if I was that good at the start.

  The good thing about racing is that we can look at data, either from a data-acquisition system or just from a lap timer. During my season in question, I looked at my lap times from the first lap to the last for every race and felt a lot better. My first laps were within a half second of my qualifying lap, and they stayed at that speed throughout the race. Many of my competitors that year took a few laps to get that close to their qualifying laps. So it wasn’t me slowing down; it was my competitors taking a few laps to get up to full speed. Therefore, I was able to manage my belief or confidence in my ability to maintain consistent laps throughout a race.

  I once coached a driver who was confident and quick over the first lap or two of a race, but with each lap he lost confidence. Unfortunately, his lap times matched his confidence. As his confidence or belief in himself faded, so did his lap times. When I first coached him, I felt the reason for this was simple. I thought it was just that he was so busy racing over the first lap or two that he didn’t have time to lose confidence. But as the racing began to settle down and he had time to think, he realized what was going on and figured he didn’t deserve to be as fast as he was. While I was right about his mind being so busy that he didn’t have time to realize that he shouldn’t be confident, the cure was not just telling him to stop thinking that way.

  Telling a race driver who is not confident to be more confident is like telling a depressed person to be happy. That just doesn’t work. Until a person changes his or her mental programming, the kind of change this driver needed wasn’t going to happen.

  Ultimately, helping him was actually fairly simple, because the cure to his problem was right in front of him. Because he knew he was good over the first lap, I suggested he just drive a series of “first laps.” As simple as that sounds, it had never occurred to him that that was all that any race is: a race-length number of first laps. Just saying that to a driver who is 100 percent confident in his or her abilities at
the beginning of a race, you can see a sense of relief on that driver’s face.

  This driver’s mental programming consisted of driving hundreds of “first laps” over and over again. He saw, felt, and heard every detail of driving the first lap of a race. He felt the emotions of driving the first lap of a race. He could feel his state of mind when driving the first lap of a race. He drove the first lap of a race like it was the last first lap he would ever drive, and he loved it. He loved the feeling he got from dragging every last ounce out of the car right from the start of the first lap, to the end of the first lap. And he did it over and over again in his mind. With each first lap he drove in his mind, the better he could see, feel, and hear himself driving hundreds, or even thousands, of first laps at the ragged edge, at the limit. He felt more than confident. He owned the first lap, no matter how many first laps he drove.

  Over the next three weeks, this driver would spend a minimum of 20 minutes a day driving “first laps” in his mind. And every single time he passed the start or finish line in his mind he said, “First lap.” He built a trigger to launch his first-lap program, and then he just let it go once he got on the track.

  An almost amazing thing happened when this driver drove his next race. Not only did he drive every single lap of the race within a couple of tenths of each other, his real first lap was more than a half second faster than he had qualified. And since every lap was within a couple of tenths of that first lap, every lap of his race was faster than he had qualified at. So, guess what he did in his next mental imaging session? You’re right, he began programming his qualifying laps as if they were “first laps,” and at the next race he took his first pole position.

  SPEED SECRET

  Use your strengths to help you program over a weakness.

  If you had to choose just one thing that separated the real superstars of any sport from the rest, what would it be? Superior eye-hand coordination? Desire to win? Work ethic? Natural talent?

  While all of these traits, and many more, are factors, the one thing that truly separates the greats from not-so-greats is the ability to learn. In my opinion, the superstars of any sport are not necessarily born with any more natural talent than anyone else. It is what they do with that natural talent that really makes them great.

  Rather than just assuming that you have so much talent in your mind or body, why not learn more; why not develop your talents? This chapter is all about learning how drivers learn.

  If asked what the main objective is when heading onto a racetrack, most drivers will respond with, “to go faster,” “to win,” “to develop the car,” or something similar. Obviously these are all appropriate objectives. However, I believe there is a more important objective, one single one that will ultimately lead to achieving all other objectives. That objective is to learn. If you continue to learn, becoming a faster, better race driver comes naturally.

  When you learn, you will continue to improve your performance. By improving your performance, you increase the chances of developing the car, going faster, and winning.

  THE LEARNING FORMULA

  Perhaps the most important thing that I have learned personally is what I call the Learning Formula. It may just be the single most valuable piece of information in this book, if you use it.

  The Learning Formula is this: MI + A = G.

  MI represents Mental Image, A represents Awareness, and G is your Goal (what you are trying to learn). If you use the Learning Formula every time you are trying to improve upon something (which should be at least every time you head onto the track, if not every moment of every day), you will be amazed at your ability to learn and improve.

  A few years ago I was coaching a young driver during his first experience on an oval track. One of the big challenges every driver goes through when driving an oval for at least the first time is allowing the car to run close to the walls at the exit of the corners. If you don’t unwind the steering and let the car run close to the walls, at best you will be scrubbing speed, and at worst you will spin the car. So, over the course of a couple of hours of on-track practice, I continually reminded and told him over the radio to get closer to the wall exiting the turns.

  None of my telling and reminding did any good. He never got within 4 feet of the wall.

  Then it dawned on me. I asked him where he needed the car to be exiting Turn 4. He said, “About 1 foot from the wall.” I asked him to get a clear mental image of what that would look like from the cockpit. Because it was a private test day, we took the opportunity to walk out onto the track and physically get a picture of what that would look like. He then spent about 10 minutes relaxing, closing his eyes, and mentally “seeing” his car exiting Turn 4 just 1 foot from the wall, over and over again. He developed a “mental image.”

  For years I have used and taught other drivers to use visualization to learn and improve a variety of techniques. It works. Using visualization greatly increases the ability and the speed at which learning took place. That is why athletes in every sport rely on the technique. I knew that this mental programming can take some time. I had begun to get impatient. I wanted him to drive the car close to the wall, now.

  Around this time I had begun to truly understand the value of awareness in the learning process. So I decided to add this to the mix. I asked my driver to go back onto the track after developing his mental image, and simply become aware, without trying to do anything else, including trying to drive near the wall. Each time he exited Turn 4, I asked him to radio to me with the distance his car was from the wall. Basically, I was forcing him to become aware, to add his A to the equation.

  On his first lap, he came on the radio and said, “4 feet.” On the second lap he once again said, “4 feet.” Then, on the third lap he said, “2 feet.” And on the fourth lap he came on the radio and said, “1 foot.” In four laps he had made the change we had been working on for 50 or 60 laps. In a matter of minutes he cured the problem that I had been telling him to fix for more than two hours. All by adding MI to A, he had reached his goal, his G. He never again had to work at allowing the car to run close to the wall.

  As you can imagine, I jumped on this technique and have used it extensively in coaching ever since and with myself. Whenever I want to make a change to my driving technique, I use visualization to develop a clear MI, and then I go onto the track and simply become aware. I build my A, mostly by asking myself questions.

  These awareness-building questions are things like, “Can I carry more speed into the turn?” or “How assertive am I?” I might ask myself, “How far from the end of the curbing am I turning in?” or “How far into the turn am I at full throttle?” When used along with the appropriate MI, these A-building questions help me achieve my goal, quickly, efficiently, safely, and enjoyably.

  I don’t know of a faster way of learning anything than with the Learning Formula. Practice using it both on and off the track.

  Here’s another example of how it works: Let’s say you’re consistently over-slowing the car when entering a particular corner. You could just tell yourself over and over to “carry more speed into the turn.” Will that work? Not likely. You could do some mental imagery—visualizing or mental programming—of braking a little lighter, not taking as much speed off, and entering the Turn 2 or 3 miles per hour quicker. Will that work? Most likely, but it will take a while.

  The reason it could take some time to take effect is that you may only have the mental image of what you want to do. You may not have any awareness of what speed you are currently carrying into the turn. So rate your corner-entry speed on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the ragged edge, the limit, 10 tenths. Then, go back onto the track and ask yourself how close to a 10 you are each lap, how close to the mental image of his goal you are. By combining the mental image with awareness, you will begin to carry more speed into the corner before you know it.

  Again, if a driver has a clear mental image, and an awareness of what he or she is doing right now, the driver’s mind
will bring the two together. You may be surprised at how rare it is for a driver to have both of these components. Some may have a clear mental image of what they want to accomplish, but have no awareness of what they are currently doing. Others do not have a mental image of what they want, mostly because they are overly aware of what they are currently doing. They are so focused on what they are doing wrong, they can’t get the mental image of what they want.

  SELF-COACHING

  I wish that every time you went onto a racetrack that you had a qualified coach to work with you to continually improve your performance. I hope you wish for that as well. However, it is doubtful that will be the case, either due to financial restraints or the fact that there are probably not enough qualified coaches in existence to cover every driver. Therefore, you need to learn to coach yourself.

  Self-coaching is the technique of guiding yourself toward maximizing your performance and improvement in everything you do.

  Part of self-coaching is debriefing with yourself. The primary objective of debriefing yourself is to increase your awareness, for without awareness, you will have a difficult time knowing what you should work to improve. Nor will you make any improvement, or be aware of any progress.

  One of the best ways I know of to increase your awareness level is by asking yourself questions, and rating your performance and abilities in a variety of areas. For example, I like to use a 1-to-10 scale to rate my overall performance, smoothness, level of intensity, how close to the limit I am, etc. To help facilitate that I use a debrief form like the one in Illustration 33-2.

  The idea of the debrief form is to rate how close you have the tires to their very limit. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the very ragged edge of the traction limit and 1 being a long ways from that, rate each section of the track. Do this for the braking zone, the entry one-third of the corner, the middle third, and the exit third of the corner.