How your kart’s or car’s handling balance relates to your mental approach

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How your kart’s or car’s handling balance relates to your mental approach

Why you need to catch your mental slides early
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Hi there

It’s now March and you’ll either have just had your first race of the 2009 season or will be close to having it. Are you 100% happy you’ve done all you could and have everything in place to do the world class job your racing demands?

As a subscriber to this Mindset for Racing newsletter you are in great company because there is a whole range of top quality racers who read it every month. From National level Cadet karters and their associated Team Staff all the way up to people in Formula1, this Newsletter is being read, digested and acted upon by an ever increasing number of movers and shakers in motor racing, including, of course, YOU.

If you’re in the quicker group in your series, you’ll already be on the pace technically. Your kart or car control will be so well developed you’ll catch the understeer or oversteer very early. Without thinking, you’ll naturally make many tiny corrections as you set out to nail the perfect lap and get on the limit of tyre grip all the way around the track.

In fact, your skill in being able to sense the handling balance EARLY and act with an appropriate input on the controls is what sets ‘the quick’ apart from the ‘merely good’. When you were a novice, by the time you’d sensed some slides, you were already facing the wrong way or had scrubbed off so much speed you’d lost the lap.

Now then, you have ‘mental slides’ too. Sometimes these ‘mental slides’ can equally cause you to lose the lap or even the whole session or indeed the whole race weekend. For example, if you get emotionally wound up and lose control of your performance state, then beyond a certain threshold level you are unlikely to get it back under control in a short amount of time. In such a case, by the time you’ve got it back under control, you’re on your way out of the circuit gates…

The key with these mental slides then, is to catch them EARLY.


* The Mindset for Racing Finish Line *

If you’re going to say ‘good-bye’ to a problem, you’re better off saying ‘hello’ to it in the first place.

The earlier you catch your ‘mental slides’ (and they will come in many and varied forms) the better you’ll be at dealing with them effectively and getting on with the real business of going motor racing.

AWARENESS then is what this is all about. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to elite racing performance. Be aware of when you are off-line mentally and identify this as early as possible. The resultant mental slide you’ll have to deal with will then be smaller and you’ll correct it better and faster, losing less lap-time in the process.

You know what the top guys do and what you should be doing, don’t you?


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Next Edition – Would you tighten the diff with a tail-happy driver?

How your racing mindset relates to your differential on the setup sheet
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Enjoy your racing and never give up.

Regards

Mike

Mike Garth
Helping karters and racing drivers perform better
+44 (0) 7737 655 912
www.sun1400.com
Sun1400: Sunday 2pm - Ready to race?


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