Q: “At the age of 47, I’ve just gotten into endurance racing (24 hours of Lemons). So far, I’m quickest on the team over a single lap, but my stint time is among the shortest because I get car sick while driving. This first happened at an open lapping day while riding passenger in a friend’s car. I got sick almost immediately. That was the first time I’d had motion sickness of any kind in decades. Later that day, it happened while I was driving for the first time ever. Fast forward to the race and I was only able to push to a 90-minute stint, but not longer. During that 90 minutes I had the patches on behind my ears, the pressure point bands on my wrists, and had taken some ginger prior to getting in the car. I wasn’t going to do Dramamine or anything like that for fear of drowsiness and other side effects. Is this common? Any thoughts or tips on how I can deal with this in the future?”
A: You’re not alone, as I’ve heard from some other drivers who get motion sickness. The first time I raced the Daytona 24-Hour race, one of my co-drivers got motion sick to the point of, well, you guessed it. That made it very unpleasant to be the next driver in line after him! I’ve also heard from quite a few instructors who get motion sickness when riding in the passenger seat.
Beyond what you’ve already done, here are a few things you might try/add:
- The further ahead you look, the less likely the motion will impact you. I’ve only felt motion sickness twice in my life while riding in the passenger seat on a track, and each time I realized that I’d been very focused on just in front of the car to check on the line my student was driving. As soon as I realized this, I deliberately looked further ahead, and the feeling went away.
- To the “look further ahead” advice, I also added a technique from martial arts called “centering,” where you touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth (up in the part where peanut butter sticks). There’s an acupressure point there that triggers balance in our bodies (which is why it’s used in martial arts), and that can help with motion sickness.
- Breathe. Deliberately breathe deeper and longer. Sometimes motion sickness is triggered by restricted breathing.
- Build up a tolerance. This will be difficult for you to fit into your race event schedule, but in the ideal world you’d drive for long enough (just before your equilibrium is knocked out of balance and you begin to feel motion sickness), and stop. After a few hours (or maybe even a day, and especially after laying down for a while), you’d go back out and drive for about 5 to 10 minutes longer than you did the first time, and repeat the break routine; then do it again and drive for another 5 to 10 minutes longer; and so on, until you’ve built up a tolerance for the motion.
I recommend that you combine all of these, where you can. Focusing on looking further ahead, while centering (tongue touching the roof of your mouth) and breathing are easy to combine, and I suspect that will help. If you were able to work in a routine of building up a tolerance while doing all of these, too, that would help even more.
For sure, the worst thing you can do is try to drive through motion sickness, because it only gets worse and reinforces the belief and mental programming that this is going to happen. I really think that if you focus on your vision, centering, and breathing, it will help.
I feel your pain! I guess everyone is different but if there’s anything in my story that might help you…
I have long suffered motion sickness in motor vehicles: put me in a bus or the back of a car where line of sight (LoS) is limited and even on normal roads it’s a problem. I “discovered” front seat car sickness first more or less right after I started going to the track. First real issue for me was at Barber Motorsports Park…T12, 13, 14, 15, 16 a few times was enough to send my ears into confusion. I believe the problem there is that LoS is by turns blind, deceptive, limited and tilted. For me this means in certain places on tracks, no amount of looking ahead, visualizing what’s coming or the like will help. I do think the remembering to breath normally and acupressure things do help though…just not enough for me…those just slow the progression towards the inevitable.
I concluded, for me, that medication countermeasures are definitely needed. Of the non-drowsy OTC drugs, Bonine was the best for me but didn’t last very long.
In the end I went to the Scopolamine patch…kind of the nuclear option. Yes, there’s dry mouth to deal with (good excuse to keep popping gin-gin candies all day which I like anyway), but it completely quells the motion sickness for me. The one thing I discovered in learning to use these is that you have to put it on well in advance of getting in the car or it doesn’t work…or more exactly my ears reach their limit before the medication starts working if I try and put it on “last minute”. For a 3-day weekend I put the patch on the night before the first on track time and let it set to work overnight. From there one patch lasts the whole weekend.
Seems like what works for individuals varies a lot but most people do eventually seem to learn a way to beat the problem with enough experimentation. Meanwhile, it sucks, believe me I know. I wish you luck conquering the problem!
If driving in small circles it’s easy to find a “magic point” you should look at.
Too close – you can get motion sickness and it’s just wrong.
Too far – you not able to position your car precisely.
Looking at “magic point” – you can drive in circles very long. Till oil pressure lamp turned on:)
Sitting in the right seat and looking at student behind the wheel (during driving in circles), it is easy to see that most often they look not just “too close”, but in the wrong direction. They look “straight”.
Another suggestion – don’t focus your vision on any one spot for too long. If you let your eyes “micro-wander” and keep changing where you are looking, this seems to help keep the brain busy fixating on the next object.
I get motion sickness when instructing as I’m not only looking far ahead, but watching my student’s head/eyes/pedals/hands while taking high-G turns, and that is an instant trigger for sickness.