Track Driving, Do You Have To Actively Think About It?

After Stirling Moss' big crash at Goodwood in 1962 he said he had to actually think about driving versus it being automatic.

This resonated with me; as a road racer (2 or 4 wheels) things come natural to me but conversely when I'm riding off road or a motocross track I have to actively think about what I am doing.

Note I am not talking about being focused or concentrating but have to actively think about what you are doing. As an example on a dirt bike I have to remember not to lean of the inside like a road race bike.

I see this with students at track days but I also notice it with experienced drivers; some of whom are reasonably quick.

So out of curiosity how many of you have to think about what you're doing?  

Depends on what I'm doing. I can run around our local track pretty quickly in autopilot easily enough because I've done it so many times, which is handy for when we're testing things - it allows me to concentrate on the testing, such as managing heat loads. But when I'm pushing for time, I'm analyzing everything I do.

Keith Tanner said:

Depends on what I'm doing. I can run around our local track pretty quickly in autopilot easily enough because I've done it so many times, which is handy for when we're testing things - it allows me to concentrate on the testing, such as managing heat loads. But when I'm pushing for time, I'm analyzing everything I do.

Exactly this.  If I need to be as fast as absolutely possible, I am very much thinking about every action.  

The big things I am thinking about are getting on and off the brake pedal as smoothly as possible as well as getting on the throttle at the right time so I don't slide the car or need to feather the throttle.

Otherwise, I can do 8/10ths on total autopilot.

I think it depends on age.  When I was young, I'd developed car reflexes that meant you could 'feel' what the car was doing and react almost instantly. I caught cars that had gone 90 degrees from direction of travel a c. 80 mph and kept them from spinning and got them back in line and I was able to react when things like someone missing a shift when you were drafting them at 100 mph maybe 8 feet off their rear bumper.

As you get older you lose some of the speed of those reflexes (sadly) although most who had them in the first place retain basic car handling skills - just not reacting as fast.  It always amazed me watching the great old drivers - Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart, Fangio etc. at Monterey when I was running the vintage races there, how well some of those old guys were still driving - they just weren't functioning at the raw edge they had once been capable of.

A good example of still being good but not good enough, was Sterling Moss who was absolutely great in terms of car control when young but lost that after his crash at Goodwood in 1962, and realized that and retired. I bet he would still have been able to give many excellent drivers a hard time, just not at the level he was used to.

If I'm not, I head for the pits. I don't do any racing, just track days, so there's no point in pushing when I know I'm not 100%.

There's definitely a big autopilot factor for me, when I'm in a simulator and I try to replicate the kind of lap I can casually turn out in real life it feels like it takes vastly more active thinking.

For me it depends both on the speed I'm trying to go as well as what I'm trying to do with my driving.  I've been working with a driving coach for a few months now and he's made me a lot faster but many of the things that I've learned from him are still at the conscious level, rather than the subconscious one.  So I'm a lot faster that I used to be in practice and can usually carry that over to qualifying, but once the race starts and my brainpower is now being divided between using my new driving skills as well as trying to figure out racecraft (passing, defending, etc)... well, I tend to "backslide" and a lot of my old bad driving habits come back up.

The solution to that is more seat time doing it the right way so that those new techniques become the habits! :)

I am always thinking really hard. Usually there are 70+ other cars on track and I am thinking about managing that traffic as well as trying to drive as quickly as I can. If I shut my brain off, I'm going to cause a problem for me and others.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

So to clarify: in Datsun when I'm at 100% of the car I'm analyzing what's going on but I really don't have to think about it. I naturally know if I've run the car slightly wide at an apex, why it did it and automatically adjust to that. It's akin to correcting a slide, I just do it.  Same goes for things I may want to adjust.

Even in the D-sports racer, which was pretty fast it was a similar situation.

Conversely on my vintage MX bike if I get the back wheel chattering under braking, it actively registers in my brain and then I respond accordingly............instead of just reflexively doing it (I hope that makes sense).

Now with all that said if you stuck me in something like a Formula Atlantic pretty sure I'd have to put a whole lot of active thinking into that; I haven't driven a car with a Hewland Box in almost 20 years and an Atlantic is a level of car that's probably a bridge to far for me.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

That's exactly the type of thing I was thinking about; for motocross I had a friend coaching me (she was AMA National Champ). My joke is I totally sucked at motocross but now I only kinda suck (riding with Pro's is humbling).

I'm new enough to the sport that I'm focused on a line that I think is fastest (but probably isn't) and I don't even have the brain power to cognitively know what my feet and hands are doing.

Go fast, don't hit cones, pick a line.  That's how I do it, but I'm in it just for fun.  I don't have delusions of winning.  Only time I won anything, I was the only car in CAM class.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

I don't even have the brain power to cognitively know what my feet and hands are doing.

The brutal honesty of this made me laugh.

We all do but, to some degree, your experience and level of natural talent is going to skew how much you think you are doing intuitively and how much you actually, actively think about.

When I consider everything that has to happen on the motocross track it blows my mind. I'm shifting over 100 times a lap. In some sections you're on the gas, off the gas, clutching, shifting up, shifting down, front brakes on hard, rear brakes on light, turning, navigating defects in the track, and off camber areas, often at insane speeds, and all of it within a second or less. And you do that many, many times a lap, while you are also thinking about other things like what line to run and keeping an eye on the other bikes around you.

I've often thought it would be interesting to see the choreography between your hands and feet during a typical motocross race in slow motion.

Hundreds of hours of sim racing have gotten me to the point where, once I am familiar with a track and car, I can enter a flow state and the laps just happen. 

Tom1200 said:

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

I don't even have the brain power to cognitively know what my feet and hands are doing.

The brutal honesty of this made me laugh.

It's so true.  I just flail the car around and try to not die.  I end up going across the line lucky that I haven't pissed myself.

When I was racing all the time, there wasn't much conscious thought given to the mechanics of driving the car, but there was a lot of processing what was going on with the car, the grip, cars around me, and using my situational awareness. 

Now that I rarely get on the track (hoping that changes for 2024), a lot more bandwidth is given to the actual physical control of the car - I'm rusty! Since I only do track days, I don't have to worry about beating the cars around me (or them beating me), but I still rely a lot on my situational awareness to keep from getting involved in someone else's problem.

Conversely, I autocross regularly and I'm always thinking about trying to string everything together smoothly, but don't really think much about what I'm doing behind the wheel. It's what you are in the habit of doing that frees your mind to pay attention. 

At one the last autocrosses this season I noticed that the heel of my shoe was dragging on the carpet when going from throttle to brake, so I guess my brain wasn't totally maxed out while driving. I normally wear those weird Hoka shoes with the long soles, so I thought that I should try a different style of shoe. I found a pair of Pumas with very thin soles on clearance for cheap, so they should be great for driving. Since I autocross my local Porsche, it looks like I'm turning into the stereotype of a Porsche owner with the fancy driving shoes - now I just need to wear a TAG Heuer watch, wear Porsche branded apparel and sunglasses, and spend $$$ on my hair.

For me, wheel to wheel is 80% focusing on working traffic and race strategy and 20% focus on actual car operation. if the car operation part starts to swell it's usually a sign something is up with the car.

Time trial is basically a flip. 80% focus on execution and 20% on strategy, traffic management, gauge gaming, lap time monitoring, etc.

The real challenge for time trial for me is staying in the moment, or in the future instead of drifting into the past. concentration needs to be entirely on executing the next input, not analyzing the previous one. That's what post-session review is for.

I run mostly TT. I find that on track, the vast majority of my car control/inputs is basically automatic. Most of my attention is on precision of execution, analyzing performance of the immediately preceding action (mine and the car), and planning the adjustments for the next lap i.e. timing and exact placement. I typically run with my AIM timer on split mode for this reason. I hear JG's point, but I still strive for incremental improvements during the session as well as the more thorough post-session data review.

I've driven enough varied and oddball stuff over the years that cars requiring "special techniques" don't faze me much and turn automatic after a short while.

The W2W I've done is endurance racing. Settling into a comfortable 8.5-9/10 pace is easy, and my focus will be simply on focus as the time ticks by in a stint--it's easy to zone-out and lose focus as the fatigue sets in, and that's when E36M3 happens. I get into a routine and focus on staying in it. For example, on long straights, making sure I'm relaxed, breathing easy, do a long gauge look (as opposed to the quick sweep several other times a lap), and think strategy including proximity of competitors. 

I find that doing both kinds of racing, it's absolutely my Zen and nothing else in the world matters. That mindfulness/presence/escape/reset is very meditative and one of the most enjoyable parts of a track weekend for me. Sometimes, it's almost like watching myself in the car.

Having said all that, I've never raced anything with two wheels. I like to ride MTB and have cruised Harleys with my Dad. Both of those definitely take conscious effort on operating the machinery. Off-road stuff isn't too demanding and it's easy for me to pick a line at speed.

Interesting topic to think about!

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

Both time trials and wheel to wheel I am working on strategy. 

Especially in the Datsun as it is slow enough that I have a long time down the straights to formulate and changes.

If I'm not actively thinking about it, I'm driving glorified parade laps.

Racing at my local track I can turn lap after lap without much thought.  Normally I will focus on traffic, how not to get stuck behind a slow car, how to get through a crowd, passing, how to get it right in one corner at a time.   This is for endurance racing running 9-9.5 tenths, occasionally I will run a hero lap where I really focus on everything a bit more.

It is my bad habit to daydream, relic of a very bored childhood. Being *present* in most any moment takes a conscious effort on my part; it's kind of embarrassing but true. So my dashcam footage is full of me yelling observations and instructions to myself so I don't wreck.

At a TT I spend the first couple of laps at a reasonable pace while working out traffic and bringing everything up to temp. From there I try to do at least 3 laps all in. 100% concentration. I tend to talk my way through the track. Where to brake, where to turn in, where to throttle and how much. After three to four laps at that pace, the tires are starting to get greasy and the temps are climbing. I'll do another couple of cruise laps to cool things down while driving the mirrors to stay out of the way and then I usually park it.  

In an enduro, I spend a fair amount of time on autopilot if there is no one around me. After a couple of hours, you don't really need to take note of the brake markers or turn in points. You've already done it 50 times. You also aren't pushing as hard because using up the car 2 hours into a 14 hour race isn't a good idea and C class Lemons cars won't run sprint speeds for 14 hours and stay together. I have been teased for driving one handed with my arm resting on the window ledge and my helmet resting on the cage. Most of your concentration at that point is managing traffic and trying to decide if the guy beside you headed into the kink at 100 mph is driving his first race or 15th.

I'm constantly thinking. As I get better I'm not thinking about the corner I'm going through at the moment and more about the ones coming up.

RacerBoy75 said:

Since I autocross my local Porsche, it looks like I'm turning into the stereotype of a Porsche owner with the fancy driving shoes - now I just need to wear a TAG Heuer watch, wear Porsche branded apparel and sunglasses, and spend $$$ on my hair.

Don't forget fingerless stringback driving gloves!

In reply to P3PPY :

I am the ADD Poster kid..................this is why I drive at the level I do. Leave no room for other thoughts.