Let’s suppose that you want to become
your own track coach. You shouldn’t
expect to learn any new skills, right?
Wrong. Driving coach E. Paul
Dickinson explains how you can still monitor and
critique your own driving using your built-in data
acquisition device–your brain. In the end, you’ll be
lapping faster and safer than ever.
I think I've already mastered the driving self-critique: "Cheebus, I suck."
Might I add mental flow to the list? This has been the single biggest factor in driving for me. When I am tapped into my mental flow I feel invincible because I am in principle. It causes me to perform at my best
I may never be class champion, but you know what? I've yet to not enjoy myself on track. Those first couple laps, I tend to look like a puppy on hardwood floors trying to chase a toy. Composed, my driving is not. Once I calm down a bit, and start to realize how much was too much (we're not talking track "offs" here, just exceeding the grip levels a bit and pushing off line or drifting a bit), then I focus and start shaving seconds off my runs.
Looking ahead, and focusing on being smooth have always helped me out.
I think this is overwhelmingly what I enjoyed most about One lap. It's so easy to fall into those traps of not mentally preparing, not analyzing, not pushing yourself when you are at a track you've been on dozens of times.
Knowing you'll only get 6 laps around a unfamiliar place and every one of them counting means you have to really hone in on mental preparation, analyzing morning runs to find time in the afternoon runs etc.
After returning from OLOA I focused on doing some of the same things at my home tracks and was surprised how much faster I was able to go than previously.
Running a familiar track that was damp convinced me. Going really slow and smooth only took a second or two off of my lap times, after that I just reduced the slow and kept the smooth, BAM four second reduction.
On being in the zone, at Lemons races there are times when you run for 30 to 60 minutes with little or no action, just clean track time. At times I will lose several laps and wonder how long I have been driving, only to find later that I completed a whole pile of consistent and on pace laps. Not asleep, just not trying too hard and in a nice flow. That is also when I start paying focusing on one corner at a time to improve on while ignoring the others.
Trying to fix it all at once doesn't work for me.
It's an interesting challenge running a good lap, before we even talk about racing. It is your own, fragile body out there. It's mainly about finding out how to keep the power on, so learn a track by trying to late-apex everything. Relax and be receptive of information and don't try to hurry until you know what you're doing, meaning that at every point on the track, you know what comes next.
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