Fear is an interesting topic as it relates to motorsports. It is arguably one of the most important things you must master in order to be fast. It is also the key to making sure you (and your car) get home in one piece.

The Videogame Mentality v The Real World

If you’ve ever played Gran Turismo or a similar car racing videogame, you are quite familiar with the high rate of crashes you experience in such games. That the controls and various cues are different from actual driving certainly plays a part, but the biggest factor is that you have no fear of crashing. Because, when you crash in a game, you simply point the car in the right direction and try again. There is no need to work up your speed slowly because there is no penalty for not doing so.

The same is decidedly NOT the case in the real world as you might imagine. If you go into a corner too fast and lose control you may very well die.

I fear a student with no fear

Most instructors fear the student with a powerful car. Look at any of the high horsepower cars in the novice group and you’ll probably see instructors tiptoe around them to a lower powered car. To me, this fear is entirely misplaced. As far as I’m concerned, the size of the car’s engine is entirely irrelevant - I want a student that is AFRAID. As long as my student is afraid of crashing, they will keep the reigns on their engine without me having to constantly warn them and be on them to keep their speed down. The worst student I can imagine is someone who wants to go fast RIGHT NOW, regardless of their ability. With such a student, they’ve put their desire for speed ahead of their fear of speed (or perhaps naivety of speed, but in the end it is all the same). Without the fear of the consequences, such a student is a loose canon.

Take 2 examples: I instructed one student with a supercharged Corvette C5, and another student with a stock Scion. The student in the Corvette was a middle aged man who cared about his car and didn’t want anything to happen to it or himself. His priority was getting home safely, and he was very safe and easy to work with.

The student in the Scion was younger, inexperienced and concerned entirely with going as fast as possible. This inexperience meant that we headed into corners very fast, and in one corner too fast - after grabbing some brake after it was too late we had a little brake oversteer and hit the wall, softer than I expected, but enough to leave a scuff on the bumper. All because the student had no fear.

Risk Assessment

Pretty much every corner you’ll take on a track requires a risk/benefit analysis. By that I mean you must assess how hard you want to push your car and yourself against the likelihood of crashing and how bad a crash it may be.

The Uphill at Lime Rock is probably the best example I can think of that demonstrates this principle. The fastest line will be put you farther to the left at the top of the hill, but also closer to the wall with an ever decreasing margin of error. If you want to be safe, you track out on the right. If you want to push things, you track out on the left. To the left is faster, and to the right is slower. So which line do you take? Again, this is up to you to determine whether the faster line is worth the tradeoff. I usually start the day tracking out in the middle, then gradually push more to the left as my confidence goes up.

The essence of this risk assessment is how you value your speed v your car. I like to push myself and my car, but at the end of the day I’d rather only go 9/10s and have a car to drive home in instead of 10/10 all day and risk wrecking. Cost of the car comes into play as well. All the owners of Ferraris, Corvettes, Porsches, and all the other exotic and expensive cars you see at the track can obviously afford to spend all of that money once. But rare is the owner who can afford to spend that money TWICE (once initially, and then again after he has wrecked it). Compare how those owners must drive with how Clint can drive the Protege - an entire new Protege probably costs about as much as the Ferrari’s rims, so Clint can afford to push his car a bit harder.

Mastering Apathy

Professional racers are often asked what they think about the risk of injury and death inherent with racing. Most of them say something to the effect of, “I don’t want to die, but you just accept that things can happen out there.” This is the key to getting faster responsibly. As your skill and speed progress, you are going to be pushing the limits of your car and your own ability more and more. You obviously do not want to crash (or if you do, please tell me before I get in the car with you!), but you’ll probably want to squeeze as much as you can out of your car. To a certain extent, you’ll need to adopt the mantra of the professional racer. Things can and will happen, and that is the risk that everyone undertakes when you head out on a racetrack. The key is to become apathetic enough about the risk that you don’t limit yourself, while not becoming so apathetic that you throw all caution and reason to the wind.

Good luck.