Over the years, one thing that has always highlight a drivers natural ability or more accurately the strength and robustness of their Method is their ability to learn completely new circuits… rapidly.
Learning new tracks compared to driving known tracks – When you are driving a track that you are really familiar with only requires you to run on an already programmed autopilot, with the conscious brain just observing and occasionally intervening . Whereas, learning a new track demands 100% of your conscious attention as everything is unfamiliar and unpractised… it really examines your core Method. Mistakes that you make will highlight areas of your Method that are not robust and/or are insufficiently understood or practiced. This is why learning new tracks as a training Drill is very valuable.
The following are a series of steps that you can take to optimise the process of learning a new circuit and they apply to whether you are learning a track on your simulator, or if you don’t have one, driving it for the first time in real life. To start with there are a number of things you need to prepare:
1. On-Boards Videos – These can give a lot of valuable information but be careful as good drivers don’t always like to share their best laps and it is easy to end up with videos of dubious quality and accuracy on YouTube.
2. Print off a circuit Map:
· Learn corner names/numbers – This ensures that from the start you can reference corner feedback accurately with your engineer and coach without any confusion over which corner it is. If your team use corner numbers – Turn 1, Turn 2 etc. make sure that you know which number relates to which corners as some teams include kinks as corners and some don’t, otherwise this can be potentially confusing.
· Note gears – These should be available from your team or other drivers.
· Kerbs to use and to avoid – You can get this from the on-board videos, your team or other drivers.
· Grip calibration – Identify corners where it is safe to push entries to calibrate yourself to the track’s grip level.
· Wet driving – Print off a separate map for the wet to include the following:
- Where you need to brake off line and how much (car’s width or half car width).
- Where do you need to take a wet line and what is it.
- What kerbs to use and which to avoid (Apex and Exit).
3. Data (if available) – If your team have data this can be valuable when you get to the circuit refinement phase.
Armed with this information you are ready to take to your simulator or the track for your first run:
1. Ask for a safer setup on your car – Its more difficult to learn a circuit with a nervous car.
2. Decide on the number of laps for the first session – Something in the region of twelve laps should be sufficient.
3. Set a lower (learning) level of intention with no outcome - Learning a new track will require all of your conscious processing power so if you are going to learn fast you must make sure you don’t over-load it, as this will obviously lead to mistakes and frustration, be kind to yourself or more accurately be ‘Logical’ in what you are trying to achieve.
4. Turn off lap times and Delta – This ensures that you remove any temptation to be outcome focus.
5. Focus on vision – For those of you who have trained on our Chicanes Track, the non-negotiable goal is to score 10 for your entry vision and exit vision, the same applies when track learning, drive at a pace that ensures you are scoring 10 for entry and exit vision – learn the track on a full beam not a dipped beam.
6. Make every apex and no exceeding track limits – This is also a non-negotiable goal for the first 12 laps. If you are missing apexes/track limits, SLOW down further.
7. The importance of momentum - Very often, drivers who try and brake late when learning a circuit often over-brake and over-slow the corner. It is momentum that gives you a feel for the correct line, if a corner is over-slowed you can take a multitude of different lines but as you carry more momentum, one line, the racing line, becomes obvious.
8. Brake early but at half pressure – This gives you time to correctly assess the shape of the corner and allows you the opportunity to modify the brake pressure – increasing it if it looks like you are going too quick or reducing it if you are over-slowing the car. Taking a higher gear for the slower corners on the initial laps can also help keep up the momentum of the car and reduce the risk of running out of road if you ‘guess’ the power.
9. Effective Noting – Next to your focus on vision, effective noting is essential if you are going to learn fast.
10. Let the time come to you – After about six or seven laps the track will start to become more familiar and it is at this point that drivers think ‘this is easy’ let’s start to push’ and 9 times out of ten they will start to over-drive and stall the rate of learning. Stick with your vision and noting and time will come to you naturally – what happens here is that you start using less conscious control as the autopilot starts to take over.
11. Subsequent runs – After the initial run you can turn on the delta and lap times and run your standard consistency drills.
12. Find the limit (calibrating the grip level) – As we have discussed before, the only way to know that you are on the limit on the entry to a corner is to keep increasing the energy of the car until you are just starting to miss the apexes.
13. Visualisation – If you have learnt the track on your simulator its always good to finish off watching on-boards and visualizing laps to bring the real world of how the track looks to your training.
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