I can’t look where I’m going when I’m driving on the track. It may sound like a joke, but I’m serious: If I don’t look ahead—if I don’t make a point of actually turning my head to look 2 or 3 steps ahead—I’m slow and clumsy. I’ll miss apexes, track out carelessly, and go in too hot.

Read any book on driving and you’ll find that I’m using flawless, textbook technique. You should always be looking a few steps ahead: Coming into the braking zone for a corner? Then your eyes should be on the apex or the track-out point for that corner. You’d use your peripheral vision, and perhaps a quick glance or two back, to reference your turn-in point. Not sure where you want to turn in or begin braking? Tough luck for you. You should have been looking at those spots a long time ago.

But is this necessarily the best way? I don’t know. Noah and I have talked about this many times. He does not look ahead, not to the same degree, and not with the same exaggerated deliberateness as I do. He prefers to focus on the upcoming event, be it a braking point, an apex, a throttle application point, or a track-out spot. This is not to say he drives with proverbial blinders, but that we our use of direct and peripheral vision is opposite. And, as you’ve seen from our track videos at Watkins Glen and NHMS, we’re both capable and fairly fast drivers. We have our distinct approaches, and they work for us.

To complicate the issue, my textbook looking-ahead does not play out into a thoroughly textbook driving style. On the contrary, Noah is the smoother and more controlled driver. I will do all sorts of “wrong” things: Jerk the wheel, overdrive the front tires, pitch the car into a corner such that the tail comes out and then hold a slip angle through the apex. Most of the time, I’m also faster this way than if I drove correctly.

I also struggle to use visual references for many of my braking points. Coming into turn 1 at NHMS, I am looking so far down and to the left that the distance markers on the NASCAR fence are nearly out of my peripheral vision (you can see these features at the very beginning of this video. Distance markers are in the upper right of the screen.) I brake between 2 and 1, but by the time I get there, I can no longer see the markers. The logical conclusion, of course, is to pick up a reference point on my left, where I am looking. But I find that area to be featureless, and the numbered markers on the right are exceptionally inviting.

In the end, all this means is that while Noah, who is not looking ahead correctly, gets to pick up the distance markers and get a nice, accurate braking point. Meanwhile, I end up turning my head back and forth, lose the point I was looking at in corner 2 as I try to get a braking reference, and end up in the ditch between the road course and the NASCAR oval. So much, for looking ahead, I suppose—except that when I go against my natural preference to look very far ahead, I miss the apex for turn 1 and end up slow anyway.

But it also means that the skills and the body of technique you develop for the track don’t necessarily have to be consistent. Your approach doesn’t have to be by the book—that’s obvious. But it can also incorporate contradictory preferences, like looking-ahead and goofy slip angles. For me, the mental approach, just like an approach to a given portion of a racetrack, should be the one that gets you through the fastest.