What are the outstanding drivers like with data and can you copy them?

This week I went down a rabbit hole with a bit of data, trying to figure out how my driver found 2 tenths in one corner. I didn’t buy into it, I used video to try to verify it, exported the data to other software, and even started digging into the raw data to see if it was a GPS error.

I’m not obsessed with data, but I am obsessed with going faster - and this mysterious 2 tenths had to be explained so the driver can repeat it - or identified as an error in the data and therefore ignored.

That took me 4 or 5 hours to figure out. How valuable that time investment was I do not know - but that’s obsession for you. It never really makes sense.

For me, I had to know if the data was lying or if that time can be found on track again. Without knowing that I cannot sleep.

For the outstanding drivers I’ve worked with, the obsession is that they must get that tenth or two that the data says is there. Often regardless of whether its actually a data error or not!

So I can think of two right now, Will Dendy and Olly Myers. Both are still in the racing business, Will as a GT driver here and there, Olly runs his own driver training centre in Australia.

If they saw on the data either at the track or doing a deep dive later, that there was a tenth left on the table, then they had to know how to find it.

That 2 tenths would haunt them. I mean literally haunt them, make them irritable, make them phone you up, make them wake up in the night. I mean it had a possibly unhealthy physical effect!

I should think it still does, and I would bet that if I brought up a tenth that was missing from a practice midweek test day at Whilton Mill from 2009, they would remember it. And remembering it would start to torture them today!!

That’s how nuts they are.

Performance debt

You know how it feels when someone owes you a tenner? Even if its a small amount it bugs you. That’s how you should feel about a missing tenth.

The tenth is there, it is OWED to you. You can see it, the evidence is there. Are you just going to leave it?!?

Some drivers, well the majority, do walk away and leave it - Why?

They are comfortable that the potential is there, and they feel they achieved it and that’s enough. A bit like if you lend money, you know its there in the form of debt that you can cash in.

Here’s how it goes when I’m working with a driver.

• They qualified 12th

• Lap 5 was the fastest lap, but on lap 4 they actually found 2 tenths through the first sector, but made a mistake later in the lap.

• If they had done that on lap 5 the lap would have been 2 tenths faster.

• Quick maths says - YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN P2!

For all drivers that’s a confidence boost. You have the performance to be on the front row no problem.

However, you can’t just bank that and be happy. It should also be like a knife in the heart, and it should torment you in your sleep!

The Process to Getting Obsessed and Going Faster