Every driver should have their own racing lab at home.
Treat yourself as a living experiment to create the ultimate racing driver from home.
I used to work in a driver training place in Silverstone where we would put drivers through their paces in the gym and on the sims. Everything was state-of the-art and the coaches there were all top notch.
It was a lot of fun, and of course the drivers loved the simulators, but I could never really justify it all. Here's why:
A driver shouldn't need to go to a hi-tech facility when you can do most of the same work at home on your own! Therefore, I wanted to tell drivers to go home and sort themselves out, instead I left rather than upsetting the boss!
Here's what I believe:
If you want to maximise yourself as a racing driver you can start right now from home. You can create what is effectively a professional driver training center that you can use daily, and put yourself at the cutting edge of racing driver research.
How? Create your own racing driver laboratory.
I call it having your own racing driver laboratory, where you are both the scientist and the subject of the research. The aim of the research is simple, find your way to drive faster.
This will be the place you go to when you have an idea about driving to test it. It will be the place where you go that inspires ideas. It's where you go as a dedicated pro to craft yourself.
Here are the core components I recommend to create your own lab.
A simulator. That can be a posh home simulator or a PlayStation off eBay with Gran Turismo. Sometimes the more modest the system the better. It doesn’t matter about how realistic the tracks are, or if they are even real. The purpose of the simulator is to test your processes and monitor yourself as you drive something as fast possible.
An expensive sim is very nice, but the biggest advocate I know of sim racing realised his talents driving with a mouse and keyboard - I reckon the extra focus he developed doing that is a significant contributor to his current drive in a McLaren GT car - so spend big or spend small, I don’t care.
One thing - don’t just drive it and race online. Use it to diligently and obsessively study yourself!
A note pad and pen. Keep it beside your simulator. The number of thoughts you have when driving that are useful will astound you if you pause and write them down. For example:
The mistakes you make and why.
Little adjustments you make that improve your line.
Ways that you deviate from your plans before errors occur.
How your mood affects you.
I can go on forever, just pause the game and write them as they come to you - these notes will become a gold mine of strengths to exploit and weaknesses to fix that you would otherwise forget.
A video camera or phone. Use it to record and review yourself and take voice notes. Arrange the camera to record the screen and your driving, maybe just over your shoulder. You'll be able to review your actions and study anything you forgot or didn’t pause to note. You’ll often ask why the **** did I just do that?
Data logging software. Most pc driving games can be used with data logging software. This is the easiest way to learn the power of data logging and how to use it fast and effectively. It quickly becomes indispensable. Data can tell you how quick you can be and measure what works.
In other words it allows you to experiment with your driving and prove if your experiment worked, or not. If you are running something that can’t create data you can use replays to note apex speeds and exits speeds for every corner. That may be even better than proper data.
Heart rate monitor. Preferably one that records and produces graphs. Heart rate monitors are the closest thing we've got to measure your physiological state. You might also have a heart rate at which you perform at your best, most athletes do. If you do find a heart rate where you drive fastest then you've got a target for real world driving. Your heart rate is a window into your subconscious so you should be studying it.
Other things to add to the lab - just about anything you are curious about!
Above are all core components I think you should have as a minimum to get started experimenting on yourself. But you should try just about anything you can get your hands on. For example I got hold of a cheap brain wave device; a headset that measures brain activity. It’s supposed to help you meditate and get all zen which sounded relevant to racing for me.
Anyway, I found that I could not meditate at all except under one condition.
I had to be driving a qualifying sessions on Assetto Corsa! Not practice or racing. Weird but interesting.
If you can correlate brain wave activity with being quick then maybe you can get into that state on demand. Is that scientific, probably not but who cares? I found it interesting and more important it was stimulating.
In summary
I don't have any specific instructions on exactly how you should use all this…. Do what you want with it, the idea is that you get obsessed with studying and improving your own process. That’s what greats do and why I think Max Verstappen has a sim installed in his private jet - obsession.
Until next time
Terence