Why did I Create Speed Craft?

I created Speed Craft for the following reasons:

To document my learning process (to understand why I got fast so quickly)
To understand the ‘altered state’ experiences I had when racing
To distill my experience into coherent information that other drivers might be able to use
To challenge some ‘common knowledge’ about learning to race that I think is flawed
To challenge the racing instruction status quo

The first three items are covered in painful detail throughout this website.

As for the fourth item above, here is some of the ‘common knowledge’ that I find particularly annoying (and harmful to new racers):

You either have IT (talent) or you don’t
You can only teach the basics; after that it’s up to the driver
All you need it experience (track time)

Common Knowledge

You Either Have ‘IT’ or You Don’t

I strongly disagree with those who believe “You either have it (and therefore don’t need to be taught it), or you don’t (in which case, no amount of school, books, track time, or anything else will help.)” However, I do understand why they might believe that.

But think about this; why does racing have to be a “you have it or you don’t” proposition? Ignorance about the mental and physical techniques of good racers is the only reason I can think of. Why can high-level computer programming, or music, or martial arts be taught, but racing can’t? I think it’s because the instructors for these other disciplines UNDERSTAND what it takes to do them well, and can communicate that information to students. So, a student that wants to put the effort in can LEARN the proper techniques and reach their potential.

Now, that doesn’t mean that just anyone can become a world-changing computer wizard, or a world-renowned musician, or Bruce Lee. Just as not everyone is going to be a champion driver; there are some gifted people with exceptional talent.

For racers, I believe that their level of “talent” may set the ceiling for how good they can become, but I firmly believe that few drivers actually reach their talent ceiling. Instead, I think most drivers plateau at some level below (often far below) their potential, because they simply cannot discover (or implement) the next lesson they must learn to progress up the learning spiral.

Let’s face it, when there are multiple drivers droning around (7+ seconds off the pace) at the back of a field filled with identical cars, then there is something more fundamentally wrong going on than they just ‘don’t have it.’ And when those same drivers, under the tutelage of professional instructors, don’t show significant improvement race-after-race (and perhaps even season-after-season), then I think the question that must be asked is; ‘Exactly WHO does not have IT; the driver or the instructors?’

You Can Only Teach the Basics

To those who believe “You can only teach the basics, which should be enough to allow most people to get out there and drive on the track safely. The rest is really up to the driver,” I must say:

Why can you only teach the basics? I think if you KNOW more than the basics, then you can TEACH more. I’ve given some free advice to a few formula ford drivers who had plateaued well below their potential, even though they were getting regular “professional” instruction. I provided Speed Craft information to, and coached, a few of these drivers, and they very quickly made significant improvements in their speed and comfort level; you can see the details here.

The bottom line is that only the basics are taught because it seems like that is all that’s well understood. Most racing schools (at least the ones I know of) are good at teaching the basics, which is important. However, they all use basically the same 50+ year old approach, so I feel they are all equally ineffective at helping students that are having trouble bridging the gap between being a novice and becoming proficient, or competent, or maybe even an expert.

All You Need is Experience (Track Time)

Many of the driving books and schools I have seen teach basic driving techniques and then say essentially, “All you need now is experience (seat time).”

For many drivers this is WRONG!

I believe that a driver’s experience does contain the lessons they need to learn and apply in order to take the next step up the learning spiral.

However, the lessons are often hidden within their experience, and therefore require honesty, intention, and effort to uncover. Failing to discover, understand, and apply the lessons will doom the driver to repeating the same experiences (lessons) over and over until they do learn them. But it gets worse, because racing is not a kind teacher, so often the first opportunity to discover and learn a lesson is the easiest; with subsequent exposures to the lesson carrying greater consequences. (For example, the first exposure to a lesson may be a loss of time caused by getting too sideways, the next may be a spin, the next… perhaps much worse.)

All honest work is good work; it is capable of leading to self-development, provided the doer seeks to discover the inherent lessons and makes the most of the potentialities for such growth.
– Paramahansa Yogananda

So, if drivers are left to learn on their own, they may well reach their potential by intuitively knowing how to use their experiences to seamlessly move up the learning spiral (these would be the ‘naturals’ who have ‘IT’). However, based on my observations, it is far more likely that driver’s will become stranded at plateaus in their driving performance as they struggle to identify and learn specific lessons.

If drivers are equipped with the knowledge and mental tools they need to extract and apply hidden lessons, then they will have a much better chance of maintaining momentum as they climb the learning spiral (continually improving their mental processes and driving techniques as they go), and they should be able to do so with far less “seat time”.

When drivers can continually improve their performance, then they will eventually reach their true potential, as defined by their “talent,” instead of by their inability to identify and learn lessons.

My Issues with Traditional Driver Training

The final reason I created Speed Craft is because I feel the gap between what is taught by most race car driving schools and what must be learned to become at least a proficient driver is too large for many drivers to cross.

In December of 1978 I attended a three-day racing school. Early in 1980 I did one ‘lapping (instruction) day’ in order to qualify to race in the school’s Formula Ford series. That was the end of my racing ‘instruction’. At the first race, I asked the chief instructor for some advice, and was told essentially “we’ve taught you the basics, now all you need is experience (track time). As it turns out, I was fortunate, because I learned quickly from my experience. However, there were many guys racing in that series who were progressing very slowly, or not at all.

Fifteen years later I did a one-off race in another school’s Formula Ford series race so that I could research my ideas and test some of my training techniques. At that event I saw that there was far more instruction than I had received back in 1980, however the amount of learning (progress for the drivers) looked to be about the same.

To continue my research, I also observed (and interviewed some drivers) at the series’ next race. During the two events, I observed the instructors critiquing students’ driving; telling them what they were doing wrong, and what they should do differently. All of this was very useful information, but ONLY IF the student could actually make the changes to their driving. Unfortunately, what typically happened is the driver would go out in the next session and do EXACTLY the same things they had been doing in the prior session. This cycle repeated each session until both student and instructor were frustrated, and both were wondering if the driver really belonged in a race car.

Here are some instructor comments from those two races:

I received this comment from an instructor “You’re scaring the car” (I thought to myself, “What are you talking about?”) so I said, “Do you mean I’m turning in too aggressively, which is building the cornering loads too quickly, causing the car to be unstable from corner entry to mid corner, which is causing me to worry too much about controlling the slide instead of focusing on getting on the gas early and hard?” To this he said “YES, that’s exactly it, I never knew how to describe it.”His feedback was correct, but delivered the way it was, I think many drivers would have had a hard time understanding it or putting it to use. Since I was able to understand what he meant, it did help me; both in the corner where he had been observing, and at several other places around the track.
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Here’s a paraphrased quote from multiple instructors to their frustrated students…”Your lines look good, now just go faster” (same comment every session).
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Another paraphrased quote, “Everything looks good, you just need to push the tires a bit harder” (same comment for four race weekends).

Seriously, don’t you think these guys would go faster if they could?

If a student can’t implement a suggestion within one or two sessions, that should be a clear message to the instructor that there may be something wrong other than the student has no talent. For example, perhaps the student:

Didn’t understand the instruction (the way it was described)
Needs to be taught techniques for implementing changes to their driving in addition to be told what to change
Must first improve a mental technique that supports the driving technique that needs improving

If a student can’t figure out themselves how to make the changes, then they need their instructors to teach them HOW; not just to keep repeating what needs to be changed ad nauseam.

If an instructor’s student went two sessions without improving; i.e. without being able to implement the instructor’s feedback, then perhaps they could try a different approach. Even if the instructor does not understand the possible underlying mental technique issues holding the driver back (which I’m endeavoring to explain on this site) perhaps they could try one of more of the following instead of saying ‘go faster’ again:

Maybe say: “OK, you did a 29.9 last session, let’s (us, not you, because we’re in this together) shoot for a 29.5 next session (setting a goal).” “Relax a bit, think about last session — how the car felt in each turn — and then figure out where you’re going to find the 0.4 seconds.” “Find me and tell me your plan before your next session. (That forces him to create a specific plan and then listen to it as he describes it to you, which makes his plan ‘real’ — gets it ‘out of his head’).” If the plan sounds reasonable, suggest that he take a few moments to visualize the changes before his next session, and again after he is strapped into the car waiting to roll out.
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Or maybe the same thing presented in a different way, for example: “Let’s pick 8 turns (avoiding the scariest, most consequence laden turns) and try to cut .05 seconds off of each one. That should be doable, don’t you think; that’s only 5/100ths of a second in each turn.” And then the same thing… send the student off to work out how/where in the turn they will get that time, and report back with their plan. The student would be asked to do all of the same imagery prep work as in the example above.
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Or another approach might be to work on adjusting the driver’s perception of traction/limits. One thing is for sure, if the driver has been told he can go faster, but repeatedly can’t do it, then at the moment, he obviously thinks he already is at the limit; he’s using 100% of the traction available. That’s why he won’t push the tires harder; no matter how many times you tell him to, and no matter how much the evidence (like being passed on the outside of turns by the ‘fast’ guys) indicates he can, and no matter how much he would really like to. Self preservation, whether triggered by actual threats or by erroneous interpretations of experiences/sensations, is doing its job; protecting him from himself. So meaningful change must start with helping him redefine (for his self preservation system) what is, and what is not, a ‘real’ threat. Talk to him about what he’s feeling/interpreting/expecting. For example, if he believes the car should be stable and should track smoothly around the track, well that doesn’t happen when the tires are working near their limits, so that would be somewhere to start. Maybe he’s confusing the resistance of self-aligning torque (SAT) with slip angle generation, so when the SAT drops off (as tire loads and slip angles start to move into ‘productive’ levels), he may be misinterpreting that as the limit of traction. Anyway I’ll add more details about this in another section, at some later date.

My point is that some thought and effort should be put into teaching. Students look up to their instructors, they trust them, and they put their faith in them; expecting that they are capable of helping them, and will do their best to help them reach their driving goals, or at least help them keep progressing up the learning spiral.

Racing schools typically hire ‘hot shoes’ on their way up ‘the ladder’ or ‘been there, done that’ fast guys. However, just because a driver is fast, does not necessarily mean that they know why they are fast (what exactly it is that they do – or don’t do- that makes them fast). Typically, they just learned naturally, empirically, from their experience, as drivers have done through the ages. So it’s unlikely that you’ll get a particularly coherent answer if you press them for an explanation about why they are fast… or maybe more precisely, HOW they do the things they do that makes them fast.

I know this was true for me; I was a ‘hot shoe’ back in the day, and due to the lack of instruction in the series where I competed, the frustrated mid-pack guys wanted me to walk the track with them and tell them my ‘secrets’. They were sorely disappointed because, while I was willing to tell them what I was doing, other than the line I was driving, braking points and the like, I either did not know, or couldn’t articulate in a way that they could understand/use, what exactly it was that made me fast.

If you can’t describe what you’re doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.
— Dr. W. Edwards Deming

Any fast guy can teach ‘the line’, the basics of driving (friction circle, weight transfer, etc.), and critique a driver’s technique. While, those things are important because they form the foundation of ‘fast,’ taking the next leap and actually becoming fast is a different challenge entirely. Fast is on another level (hiding between your ears, and in the spaces between what you ‘do’ when you’re driving), which is a much more difficult thing to understand and teach.

Speed Craft Objectives

All that said, I’m not trying to offend anyone; I’m just commenting on what I experienced and witnessed. I’m sure there are many good, committed, innovative, driving instructors out there. However, it does not seem that the state of the art in driver training (especially the understanding of the critical mental skills and processes of driving) has even come close to developing at the pace of the sport’s other technologies, such as: safety, tires, materials, data acquisition, etc. Time will tell if I’m full of crap, or if I know what I’m talking about, but I’ve created Speed Craft, and made it free, to hopefully try and nudge driver development forward a tad.

So ultimately, my hope for Speed Craft is that by documenting my learning process and the training techniques I used, and by providing a detailed description of why I was fast (how I sense, process and filter information, how I interpret it, and how I largely automate the tasks of driving) , I might be able to:

Make racing fun again for some of the drivers who are falling through the cracks in the ‘traditional’ instruction methods
Help , drivers keep moving up the learning spiral (by avoiding getting stuck at learning plateaus)
Help ‘fast guys’ understand why they are fast, so they might be able to take their ‘art’ to the next level