Does Speed Craft Work?

I can say with absolute certainty that Speed Craft worked/works for me, which is why I’m taking the time to share the information.

I’m hoping Speed Craft will be completely different and/or a lot more in-depth than anything you’ve seen before. There may be many different reactions to it, ranging from “what the hell is this Zen crap” to “ah ha, now I understand.” Either way, it’s free (and worth every penny I might add), so why not give it a try?

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless and add what is specifically your own.
– Bruce Lee

Success Stories

I did not have much opportunity to test my ideas on other drivers, but when I did, the results were encouraging.

I’ve only had the opportunity to ‘coach’ three drivers; all were formula ford drivers competing in the Skip Barber series in the mid 90s. All of them had been stranded on the learning spiral and had not progressed appreciably for several race weekends (two races per weekend). I met two of the drivers when I competed in a Barber race at Thunderhill Raceway (Willows, CA) to test my training methods. At that race, they both were 10+ seconds off of the winning / lap record pace.

I worked with the two of them for maybe six weeks (the amount of time until the next Barber race). They lived in the same general area (around Sacramento, CA) and a couple of hours from me, so we primarily communicated via email. I sent them information (basically covering the Sensation of Speed ideas in the Spiral to Speed) and the related Imagery Training for Racers and Race Walking information. We met at least once (maybe twice – can’t remember for sure) at a kart track near Sacramento and I let them drive my kart. During the karting day, we talked about the next two levels of the Spiral to Speed (Increasing Sensitivity — to energy, loads, traction and forces and Tire-related stuff – my 3D traction circle, ‘getting the tires on a plane’ etc.) Really, that was pretty much it, so here’s what happened:

At the next Barber race (on a different track – Sears Point, CA) they both broke through the Sensation of Speed imposed learning plateau and ended up a little less than 6 seconds off the pace; so they had cut their speed deficit by 4+ seconds (or 40%). They were pretty excited and encouraged.

Also, at that same Sears Point race, the instructors knew I was doing research for my book, so a sympathetic instructor invited me to go observe a session at Turn 2. When we got there, we found a driver watching. The instructor told me I should see if I could help the driver because he just couldn’t seem to get up to speed. He had been stuck about 6 seconds off the pace for 4 race weekends. We talked for less than 10 minutes. He told me he couldn’t understand how he could feel like he was at the limit, but the fast guys would drive buy him on the outside of turns. I gave him a brief explanation of how tires work (and more importantly how they feel) when they are being used in a way that produces an effective amount of slip angle and traction. To help him understand/imagine how tires feel at the limit, I showed him my 3D traction circle illustrations, which also showed him that if he went over what he thought as the black/white limit of adhesion, there was still plenty of traction past the ‘optimum’ slip angle that was available to recover control.

During his next session, he did have a quick spin, but he didn’t seem to mind because he also had taken over 2 seconds off his long-standing previous best time. I did not have the opportunity to work with this driver other than our brief meeting, but if I had, I’m confident we would have found more speed by digging into the lessons hidden in his spin.

After that race one of the original drivers I had been working with decided to take a break from racing. I continued to coach the remaining driver via email and phone in the few weeks between the Sears Point race and the next Barber series round.

After the next round, he called me to let me know he had accomplished a podium finish (3^rd) during one of the races. Sure, he was still 1.5-2.0 seconds off the pace of the fastest drivers, but the “fast guys” were REALLY fast, many of them went on to run in the front of the Barber Dodge, Star Mazda, and FF2000 series. So, in two races he had gone from being 10+ seconds off the pace to being 1.5-2.0 seconds off, with plenty still to learn. Unfortunately, after that race, he had to stop racing due to business commitments.

Driving Advice and Article Feedback

Back in 1995, I’d been working on the Speed Craft ideas and how to present them for 10+ years. At that point I was still planning to make Speed Craft a book, but I decided to test the waters (see if my ideas were too crazy or not) by posting some driving technique information on a kart racing forum, and later a car racing email list. Some of that information became an article called ‘Speed Craft — Driving and your brain,’ which was basically an early version of the information in this website’s Learning section and the Concentration for Racers / Staying in the Zone pages.’ It was written stream-of-thought, and I never had time to go back through it and edit it, so it included many spelling and grammatical errors. Also, it was far more complicated than it needed to be. Even so, I received quite a bit of positive feedback during the timeframe from the mid 90s to the early 2000s, which made me feel I was on the right track; for example:

• “Absolutely the best information I have ever seen about the fundamentals of how your brain works during racing. I have been driving Karts (world championship 1986), FF 1600, and touring cars for the last 16 years and thinking and researching the subject of how the brain works during racing. Nowhere have I found anything that even comes close to your comprehensive explanation of this process. Keep up the good work.”
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• ”Thanks Warren. Great advice and great information. I read your articles on mental imagery last year and thought they were extremely helpful. I’ve tried to put as much of it into practice as I could and I believe it has helped me a lot this year. I raced at two tracks this year where I had never raced before. Using your advice enabled me to qualify third and finish second at both tracks.”
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• ”Warren Chamberlain’s article is the very advance state of the art; recognized by very few kart racers at this date. His type of training in making the mental imagery a part of your racing prep, will one day be considered as important to your results as a well set-up racing kart. Thank you Warren for the very detailed article; it will be used! ”
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• ”Warren, almost everything you say seems to make more sense to me than a lot of the coaching/instruction I’ve received.”
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• ”How did you do it? You looked inside my head. You have explained what I have been feeling for several years!!”
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• ”I’m always impressed with your advice and how easy it is to understand.”
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• ”Warren, I am going to be the first to go out on a limb and say you have really defined what I feel during a race. Really interesting stuff! (to me anyway). You have explained how we get to THE ZONE.”
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• ”I am impressed beyond words. I shared it with my certified genius husband. He is still chewing on it (savoring it is more like it.)”
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• ”I cannot emphasize enough how impressed I was with this article. Congratulations.”
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• ”Thanks for articulating some things I’ve been thinking/wondering about for years.”
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• ”I read the “Speed Craft – Driving and your brain” article. It really made a difference to me, both in my comfort level at speed, and on the stopwatch. I highly recommend it, and I recall reading it twice to really get it.”
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• “I appreciate the time you spend to write and then post your articles. You have been a great help to myself and a few friends that I know of.”