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

It’s not just running around with my hair on fire all the time (it’s not on fire, is it?). My opinion is that merely running laps is not necessarily going to help you, unless you are doing them the right way. If your driving is basically flawed, you will repeat the errors over and over and this in turn will be your training. When called upon in the heat of a race, you will respond the way you trained. With errors. So maybe I run 10 laps trying to understand and execute the old “Slow in-Fast Out” theorem, looking for the correct apex and then judging what the line is, then where the turn in is, then where the braking zone must be, and so on. I study racing and how to do the things I need to do on the track. I try not to even think about times, about Hot Laps. That’s not what I am here for on this day and time. This is practice for practice’s sake.

So, practice will help you program your mind so that you don’t have to think so much, right? Well, yes and no. It will make the basic driving tasks a subconscious thing rather than a conscious thing and give your conscious mind the freedom to see the bigger picture and manage yourself more effectively. This is thought management.

Once you are able to reduce the amount of thinking you do just to drive the car, the next step is to is find and keep the positive thoughts, get rid of the negative ones.

Drive smoooothhh! would be fine, whereas Oh my God don’t crash!! would not.

Drive smooth, jerk!

Simple as that, right? No, of course not. Difficult as you might imagine would be more like it. I still haven’t completed this mind sweeping, but the broom is engaged and the dust is in the air.

I have found that I cannot just say to myself Do think that or don’t think this. But trying to maintain a positive mental attitude is a great step in the right direction. And what helps me do that is focusing on success, finding things I am doing right while allowing myself to do some things wrong, to make errors without jumping on my own backside and hitting myself with pencils.

I try to remind myself that I am here to have fun, to learn and improve, and also that I am human, which simply means I’m going to screw up now and then. And that’s OK. Just learn from the mistakes and go on.

Here’s a real life golf example, one of my own, that happened just last week. We had made the turn onto the back nine, I was doing alright, but I felt like my wheels were wobbling, that I was not really with it. However, on the 10th hole, I made birdie. That felt good! The next hole, I was only an eight foot putt away from a second birdie in a row. I missed that one, but still, it was par and that was good. Another par followed that one.

But (yep, you guessed it), trouble was waiting for me, on number 13 of all places. I hit a decent drive, had 100 yards and a light 9 iron to get on the green. All was well, I thought, but what happened was I skulled the ball, it rolled flat on the ground and “wormburned” into the bunker in front of the green. Mistake! I was hitting my third shot on a par 4 hole with about 50 yards to go.

Upset with myself, I tried to calm down, forget and forgive the mistake, and make a good swing. But what happened was I picked the ball too cleanly from the sand and blasted it up and over the green by a good 50 yards or so. Now I had to setup to hit my fourth shot, and I’m in back of the green by as much as I was in front of it just a moment ago. Another wedge shot hit the green, but rolled all the way down to the front fringe.

Back and forth, forth and back.

Mentally, I was fuming. I managed a three-putt from there (a miracle actually), and claimed my 7, triple-bogey.

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