Q: “I am wondering if I need a psychologist or what to get past the high-speed turn issue. I am killing it all the way around on overlays with the pro driver/coach I have, but braking, turn-ins, I cannot stay flat at moments I need to and I don’t tolerate this in myself.”
A: Staying flat through fast corners is not easy for anyone. When Fernando Alonso went to drive the Indy 500 he talked a lot about how difficult it was for him to take Turn 1 flat. Yes, that Alonso. He said, “At the beginning I have to be honest, the right foot, how do you say, had a mind of its own and was not connected with my brain, so I wanted to be flat out, but the right foot has its own life.”
You do what you do because you’re programmed to do so, and you don’t do what you want sometimes because you don’t have the right mental programming yet. So, you need to program your mind to take those fast corners flat. Using mental imagery is the best way to build that programming. In my experience, a psychologist would not help you. A good coach could, but a lot of the work is something you need to do away from the track — programming your mind with mental imagery (what many people call visualization. To understand the difference, download the free Mental Imagery for Drivers eBook on my SpeedSecrets.com website).
It’s one thing for a pro driver or someone calling themselves a “coach” to lay down a fast lap for you to copy from their data, but it’s a whole other thing to have a coach who can provide the specific practice strategies to help you gradually step up to being able to take those fast corners flat. Driving fast, and even telling you what they do is a very different skill than coaching a driver to do things they didn’t know they could do.
A big part of being able to drive fast corners is believing you can — being confident. In your email, you say “I can’t…”, and that tells me you don’t believe you can. Which comes first, the self-belief that you can do something, or the ability to actually do that thing? How can you do something if you don’t believe you can? Changing your beliefs is part of the process, and again, you can use mental imagery to help that process.
I suggest you start by changing your mindset to one that looks at this as a fun learning challenge, then spend a lot of time doing mental imagery of being fast in fast corners, and truly believing that. It’s a process, and the learning from it should be the objective. It’s okay to want to improve, but be tolerant of how difficult this is. The more you try to force it, the worse it gets. Relax, enjoy the learning challenge, and know that if you work at it, you will improve.
Now, one super-important technique tip: Lift early. What? Yes, as you try to get closer and closer to taking a fast corner flat, it’s likely you’re doing what most drivers do, and that’s lifting as you turn into the corner — or in the corner. Think about what’s happening with the car’s balance at that moment. The weight is transferring forward, giving the front tires more grip, but taking grip away from the rears. And that means that, overall, your car has less grip than it would if it was balanced with the weight equally distributed over all four tires. Just when you need grip the most, you actually take a bit of it away by causing some weight transfer to happen.
So, as you approach the fast corner, breathe (ease) out of the throttle well before the turn-in, and then squeeze back to full throttle by the time you turn in. Now the car will be balanced, it’ll have maximum grip, and you’ll be building the mental program — the habit — of being at full throttle in the corner.
Then, as you feel comfortable, make the breathing of the throttle smaller and shorter with each lap. You may find yourself taking the corner at full throttle sooner than you expected — and feeling comfortable doing so.
Of course, this assumes that your car is capable of being driven through this fast corner at full throttle. But even if it’s a corner that requires a very small lift, this process — this coaching strategy — will help you get there.