High Performance & Race Driving Tips

Practice how you plan to race, and then you’ll race as you practiced. That’s the key to winning more races.

We all know looking way ahead is critical to driving fast. To do that you need to turn your head, not just hold it in one position.

Want to get lucky? Then mentally program being lucky. Yes, you can actually improve your chances of things going your way by changing your belief system through mentally imagery.

Driving fast requires the use of both sides of your brain, and there are “exercises” you can do to help integrate it.

Getting a great race start is more about your mindset than it is any specific technique, as I explain in this tip. You can be a hero or a zero at the start – your choice.

The speed at which you turn the steering wheel should be different, depending on the corner you’re navigating. You can progressively, linearly, or digressively turn the wheel.

Turning the steering wheel is a terrible thing to do to a car. It slows it down – and who wants to do that?! The less you turn the steering wheel, the faster you will go.

The most important corner on a track is NOT necessarily the one leading onto the longest straight, despite so many people saying it is. That’s “lazy thinking,” because most tracks have a more important corner.

Your job as a driver is not to tell the engineer what to change on the car. Your job is to report what the car is doing and what you’d like it to do. Too many drivers try to engineer the car themselves. Do your job and let your engineer do his.

Data acquisition is an extremely powerful self-coaching tool… but only if you synchronize it with your driving. What do I mean by that?

The first time I was paid to drive a race car I literally laughed in my helmet…

Squirting out of the 120-degree right-hander, I stretch second gear to redline, accelerating hard, flicking the shifter up to third, foot buried to the floor, and catch fourth gear just before my reference point, the change in pavement surface: A good corner exit.

The moral of the story is to not immediately write off an approach to a new driving technique or a chassis setup. Sometimes you just need to alter and fine-tune how you use it.

I’m often asked by young drivers how best to market themselves, to sell sponsorship. My response is always the same: surround yourself with the right people.

My advice to you is to drive as many different types of cars as you possibly can, and even look for ways to drive where you wouldn’t normally. For example, if you’re a road racer, try ovals, rallying or drifting. All will make you a better road racer. Variety is the spice of life, right?

So, when you hear the advice, “Look where you want to go,” apply it to your thinking as well. Think where you want to go. Focus your mind on where you want to go.

Some very basic “rules” for track walks: Walk with no more than 2 other people, and stay focused on the track. Don’t make it a social event. Get down, get dirty. Even if it means sitting on the track surface to get the same view you’ll have behind the wheel, do it…

What I learned was that if I entered each turn just a little faster than the grip level
 dictated (even just half a MPH too fast), I was ready for what the car was going to do. In fact, I made the car do what I wanted it to do. I was proactive.

Do you sense the limits by feedback through the steering wheel? Yep. Do you feel the g-forces build, and then begin to reduce as the tires slides too much? Uh-huh. Does the car communicate its limit to you through your sense of balance? Absolutely.

In-car video, data acquisition / telemetry, track maps, notes, debrief forms, other drivers and engineers, instructors and coaches, observation from a corner, stopwatch / timer, track walks, TV coverage… All of these are the tools can be used to improve your driving.