SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: My Mind's Racing

Ross Bentley, talking about auto racing: “It’s amazing how often an error in a driver’s mental visualization of a lap actually happens. So visualize yourself doing it right!”

To summarize where we are:

too many race thoughts is not a good thing
negative race thoughts are likewise not good
KISS is good (naturally)
positive race thoughts are good things

OK. How do we make the good things happen while keeping the not good things not happening?

Wish I knew, I’d make a lot of money helping distressed professional golfers with their yips.

No, I’m just teasing. Sorta. I’ve got some ideas, some suggestions I’ve gleaned from reading and researching and thinking about things other than who took my pencils.

First, we have to practice.

I know, I know. I can hear your thoughts screaming at me, "Practice? You made me read through this just to tell me I need more practice? Aughhhhhhhhhh!"

Easy there, there’s method in my simple-minded madness. Especially when you are on the newer side of the racing experience spectrum, part of the reason why you may be thinking too much while racing is simply that you don’t yet have the amount of repetitions necessary to program your brain just to react and not think every action through. Maybe lots of laps.

There is no substitute for experience, as Chunx so aptly points out in his recent Sim Racing Tips Part III article, Optimizing The Driver.

After a while many of your driving actions and reactions are in your subconscious and do not require your active concentration to perform. Just like driving your own real life car. You don’t think about all that you’re doing as you drive, you just do it. And that in turn frees your mind up for other things, like reading newspapers, making cell phone calls, staring at the pretty girls, or wondering to yourself about that lunatic screaming something about pencils on a downtown street corner.

Will you guys in the back please all shut up now!

I got a real life sample of this a couple weeks ago when I decided to try left-foot braking in my real world truck. Whoa! Different, very different, everything from the effort it took to move my foot (the right one just seems to react when called upon) to modulating the pedal pressure to make a smooth stop to taking my foot back off the pedal. I had to concentrate on every single part of the process.

Here are some of Ross Bentley’s thoughts on this (if you’re thinking at this point that you need his book, you’re right, you do).

“It’s not possible to drive a race car effectively (read: fast, at the limit) by consciously thinking about each movement, maneuver, and technique. A race car is much too fast to allow you the time to think through each and every function. Your conscious mind cannot react and respond quickly enough to operate the controls of a race car at speed. It must be a subconscious act."

"To do this, you have to program your mind, just like a computer. How? By practicing, both mentally and physically… When you drive at a subconscious level, it allows your conscious mind to “watch” what you are doing — to see if there is anything you can do to improve your technique, or sense what the car is doing in terms of handling.”

Logical, well thought out. Nice plan. Problem is execution of the plan. I just don’t have much time. So when I do, I choose shorter tracks, like Toban Short in rFactor, and run laps. Shorter the track, the more laps I can turn in a given amount of time. I also look for a track with a good variety of features, uphill/downhill, fast turns and slow turns, right and left, etc. No ovals, not that there’s anything wrong with them.

And while repetitions, laps, are important, they need to done correctly, with good racing form.

Well, we're lost! Why won't you just stop and ask someone for directions?

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