Motor racing is a very complex sport and there are many areas that you can work on that can increase your performance (for example improving your vision), and there are also areas that make little or no difference at all (e.g. biceps curls). This complexity means that often it can be difficult to choose what to focus on, so asking yourself the question “Does It Make The Car Go Faster” is a good way to ensure that you are expending energy and effort in the right areas.
Adding further complexity to making the right choice is human nature – evolution has biased us to taking the comfortable, easy route, and we will always choose pleasure over pain. Added to this, is that our egos will be putting in a powerful lobby to ensure that whatever we do, we look good at it. So for us as racing drivers the only way to make the car go faster is to make the right and sometimes difficult choices.
How do we make decisions?
In its simplest sense, decision-making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action or two or more possible solutions to a problem. Decisions can be made by intuition, reasoning, logic, impulse and by listening to your motor racing conscience.
Intuition - Intuition is using your ‘gut feeling’ about possible courses of action. Although people talk about it as if it was a magical ‘sense’, intuition probably has its roots in a combination of past experience and your personal values.
Reasoning - Reasoning is using the facts and figures in front of you to make decisions. Reasoning has its roots in the here-and-now, and in facts.
Logic – No reasoning or calculating required here (this is where you need Star Trek’s Spock) – when making decisions about your training - knowledge plus logic will make the car go faster. When you think about it Logic has its roots in the obvious!
Impulse – Impulsive decisions are generally emotionally driven and more often than not, don’t involve, intuition, and certainly not reasoning and logic.
Your motor racing conscience – By now you have trained enough to know deep down what decisions are best for you and you know when you are making choices for an easier life or to protect your ego. When all else fails your motor racing conscience is your last line of defense – it knows what you should be doing and it knows your character, tendencies and your weaknesses!
If you want to make the car go faster what are the key areas that influence its performance?
The technical skills of the driver – producing lap time
The mental strength of the driver – being able to deliver technical skill when it counts
The drivers physical fitness – staying physically and mentally sharp for prolonged periods
The drivers feedback and engineering knowledge – the ability to develop the car’s performance
What gains are we looking for?
Macro gains in performance - These really apply to drivers in the developmental stage of their careers, where there are still big gains to be had in the key areas described above.
Micro gains (also known as the aggregation of marginal gains): The term was coined by Dave Brailsford when he was the performance director of British Cycling - and as he explains “The whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by 1%, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together. When drivers have reached a high degree of skill in the key areas of performance the opportunities for big gains diminish, from here on in drivers will be looking for 1/100ths in each corner rather than 1/10ths.
So what do we base our decisions on to make the car go faster?
1. Know your performance goals
2. Reference your decisions against your goals
3. Know the values and ethos that champions live by
4. Managing and prioritising your time and resources
5. Prioritising your training
6. Know yourself
7. Making decisions in everyday life
8. Know your weaknesses and tendencies (what can hold you back)
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