33 Superior Racing Driving Characteristics You Possess and Must be Proud of

In a society that wants to promote smallness as virtue, the racing driver runs directly against the tide. Keep these characteristics and thrive, even when the world wants to pull you back.

Welcome to a 🔓 free edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Every week I take a deep dive into driving technique and unique racing driver perspectives, to keep you fully lit as a racing driver.

Against the tide of modern virtues, where citizens should load themselves up with guilt in order to do ‘good’, the racing driver stands as a heroic force.

Here are 33 Racing Driver characteristics I believe you already have, and should maximise, so you can achieve excellence, despite the prevailing winds.

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BTW, the audio isn’t me reading the article, I always give a bit more just talking about the subject, have a listen!

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1. Heroism:

Drivers seek to achieve greatness on the track, inspiring bold actions and decisions in high-pressure situations. They are willing, sometimes reluctantly and therefore even more heroically, to hurt themselves, or worse, in their pursuit.

2. Bravery:

Essential for facing high-speed risks and split-second decision-making inherent in racing. You may or may not be scared, and sometimes drivers submit to fear. But despite fears, you go back for more. And you feel utterly lost, unless you go racing and conquer your fears again.

3. Total Commitment:

Necessary for enduring the extensive training, travel, and preparation involved in racing. Even more necessary for the ruinous financial implications of going racing. Even Lawrence Stroll is feeling it!

Whatever your financial status, racing takes everything it can from you, and you gladly give it.

You know the power of the racetrack, when money loses it’s value and flies out of your hands with abandon.

4. Strength:

Physical strength aids in handling the intense physical demands of driving at high speed, while mental strength helps in coping with stress and competition.

Karting is so physically tough, that it simply cannot be enjoyed properly unless you are in your peak condition.

5. Resourcefulness:

Enables drivers to adapt to unpredictable racing conditions and technical challenges. Racing requires constant demands to ‘dig deep’. This can be emotional, i.e. summoning the will to get over a bad race and go again with full positivity, or getting a harsh rejection from a sponsor and having to go after the next one full of optimism.

6. Self-Esteem:

Fosters confidence in one's driving abilities, crucial for maintaining composure under pressure.

Today’s society wants to load everyone with guilt, so self-esteem is under constant attack whatever your background. A strong sense of one’s own validity is needed to dominate other drivers and forge your own path in the world.

7. Self-Efficacy:

Builds a driver’s belief in their ability to succeed in specific racing scenarios, leading to better performance. The practice of improving in specific driving techniques in order to become powerful is what creates success, followed by even greater success. This counts for driving technique, and then for conquering anything else that stands between you and your goals.

8. Raw Driving Ability:

The foundational skill set required for racing and winning. Being a skilful racing driver feeds your soul, because its just mint.

9. Preparedness to Push Limits:

Motivates drivers to extend beyond comfort zones, necessary for achieving breakthrough performances.

Limits that racing drivers face are serious and dangerous. Pushing on those limits can cause injurious crashes that cost money, pain and damage confidence. Facing those risks and pushing again is what drivers love.

10. Unreasonable Attitude:

Helps in persisting through the demanding and often irrational aspects of competitive racing.

Being a bit bonkers and continuing to race when it seems utterly stupid to do so is what separates drivers from normal sensible folk. That’s why drivers can go further in the world, they don’t quit when logic says they really should.

11. High Emotional Energy:

Fuels the passion and endurance needed for the rigors of racing.

Whether it explodes out of you or burns deeply within, drivers are driven by something primal that pushes them to a higher purpose.

12. Killer Instinct:

Important for seizing opportunities and making decisive moves on the track. And the word killer here is apt. Drivers, even if this is an unpalatable truth, are prepared to dice with death - their own or others. Check the disclaimers on the ‘motor racing is dangerous’ signs.

13. Aggressiveness:

Aids in competitive overtaking and defending positions during a race.

Aggressive and confrontational, willing to risk their safety and their opponents and dominate. Passivity is not a racing driver virtue.

14. Nobility from Adversity:

Allows drivers to grow and improve from their racing experiences, including losses and setbacks.

Noble souls follow a higher calling that is above the everyday folk priority, even when drivers are everyday folk, they aren’t quite. For example, a parent with a mortgage, young kids and a job shouldn’t be risking injury at a race track.

But they do… because they are called to do so by higher principles.

15. Magnanimity:

For a racing driver, magnanimity is shown through actions and attitudes that reflect a larger-than-life character, demonstrating the capacity to rise above petty rivalries or disappointments, and to handle victories and defeats with equal dignity.

Everything a racing driver faces, whether good or bad, feeds them and increases their personal power. It doesn’t turn them into narcissists, but makes them great.

16. Artful Compromise of Core Principles:

Involves skilfully balancing one's principles with the demands of a racing career, adapting strategically while maintaining integrity.

Racing is full of ducking and diving, wheeling and dealing. Look to the very top and you’ll find a man who seems to be paying off the largest criminal fines ever levied on an individual. He’s no model to follow, but in racing you’ll be swimming with a great deal of sharks.

How you can keep on top of your own moral compass whilst making the necessary brutal moves to thrive in racing is an art… Maybe the highest art-form there is!

17. Selling Skills:

Enables drivers to attract and maintain sponsorships, vital for funding a racing career.

Selling racing sponsorship must be the greatest business challenge there is, because it is pure selling of yourself. Being able to take resources from a business and burning them in racing under the guise of ‘return on investment’ is a tremendous victory for the racing driver. Even better if the return on investment is kinda real.

18. Vulnerability to Depression:

Awareness of this can lead to better mental health management, crucial for sustained performance.

The racing life is beautiful. Being outside of it, or feeling unsuccessful is its equal and necessary opposite. Racing drivers get hit unusually hard by the seeming futility of life, having tasted the magic of racing.

This means you have to accept that you have been exposed to a higher purpose and you have to pursue it. Without the pursuit you’ll be tormented and face an abyss of normalness that cannot be tolerated. You simply have to push higher, constantly. That’s your lot.

19. Courage in Facing Physical Risk:

Key in managing the inherent dangers of racing, allowing drivers to focus on performance without being paralyzed by fear.

Facing serious physical risk for something as daft as racing requires courage. Facing the demand to improve under duress requires the development and growth of courage. This is maybe the greatest benefit of racing, the growth and value of courage.

20. Long-Term Vision:

Helps drivers plan their careers strategically and cope with temporary setbacks.

Racing is a long road, and like nothing else all the signs along the road say ‘no, you can’t’. The easiest one to fall for is money, but there’s always money OR a cheaper way to race just to stay on the path.

Drivers need the ability to constantly update the internal sat nav as road closures and traffic pop up continuously. Never giving up on the horizon being reached (the horizon can’t ever be reached of course, what of it?)

21. Strong Soul:

Provides the inner fortitude to handle the highs and lows of a racing career.

The soul is the racing driver soul. It means the essence of you that says ‘I have to be in racing’. Without that soul being strong, you can’t be in racing because racing is always trying to kick you out!

Foster and strengthen your racing driver soul, the harder you are treated the stronger it becomes.

22. Optimism:

Helps maintain a positive outlook, crucial for overcoming challenges and staying motivated.

Stupid, and I mean stupid in the sense ‘lacking realistic’, levels of optimism are required by racing drivers. So much is against you that continuing is in fact silly. And within that fact is the justification of your optimism to carry on pushing yourself in racing. Almost everyone else isn’t stupid enough to continue, leaving all the doors wide open for the ones stupid enough to continue,

23. Positivity:

Influences team morale and personal mental state, impacting overall performance.

Exuding your optimism creates positivity all around you. You will attract backers who want to use you to show why positivity wins, and they will give you time, money and effort.

The more impossible your challenge, the more they want to help you.

On a deep level, you represent life in a dying universe - hope.

24. Persistence:

Essential for continuing in the face of adversity, a common aspect of successful racing drivers.

Racing drivers do not know when to let go. All of them - even the ones who think they have successfully quit have not. The more overtly persistant you are the better you will go.

Sponsors love to see persistence, that’s why the good ones will always reject you at first contact. How can you display the persistence they want to see unless they tell you ‘get lost’ at step one?

25. Speed:

Not just physical speed, but mental quickness in responding to changing race conditions.

Racing drivers are fast, they do things fast, even recklessly. But fast is at their core. Decide fast, act fast. Notice changes fast and move.

That mental quickness is rooted in high self-esteem, so that doubts don’t slow you down.

26. Aggression:

Essential in competitive racing situations for overtaking and holding positions.

Lack of aggression is the most common complaint I hear, from parents or from drivers themselves. But entering a race is already an act of aggression, you are asking quite literally for a fight. So you are aggressive, you do want to win at the expense of the others. Develop your aggression and harness it as a driver, even though the world wants to eliminate it.

27. Tenacity:

Helps in staying focused and determined throughout a race or racing season - even more, in the racing life.

Being hungry, demanding and never-ceasing in pursuit of victory in racing is a defining characteristic you have. It’s very rare for a driver to quit during a race, and the once or twice I have seen it happen is not through resignation, but emotional overwhelm.

Drivers never give up and apply energy constantly even when the race is surely lost. Drivers make ridiculous dive-bomb moves for 17th when it makes no difference. They still go all in.

28. Wisdom:

Enables smart decision-making during races and in career management.

Wisdom is what you earn every time you race, and you apply it the next time you race. You can’t help it. But you don’t gain wisdom unless you push yourself, which is the fate of those who aren’t racing.

So, even though I say drivers are bonkers, and that racing is ‘stupid’, drivers are extremely wise because they are constantly testing themselves in extreme circumstances.

29. Intelligence:

Crucial for understanding complex race strategies and data, feedback on set ups and the dynamics of the racing world.

You can’t race well without intelligence. Some drivers are outwardly unintelligent and have a natural racing intelligence. Others are blindingly smart, but on track struggle to quiet their intelligence telling them risk taking is dumb.

But eventually when that intelligence is tamed and used properly, racing intelligence becomes a powerful weapon.

30. Indomitable Spirit:

Keeps drivers motivated and resilient, regardless of circumstances.

And the circumstances racing drivers face are almost always impossible. You can’t afford to race, or you can’t get the right engine etc etc. But you don’t quit, you can’t be stopped from trying another engine, or believing another ‘ special engine’ tale.

31. Resilience:

Allows drivers to bounce back from crashes, losses, and other setbacks.

The resilience of racing drivers is borderline pathological. Especially the ones who get beaten constantly, and create fanciful tails as to why. It may seem delusional, but it is still resilient - and eventually they’ll succeed.

The pit area of the local racing track is like a congregation of the resilient!

32. Charisma:

Assists in building a public persona, which is important for fan engagement and sponsor relations.

If you asked to imagine a racing driver, for sure you imagine someone with charisma. It’s just a natural association, because being a racing driver is so damn cool.

The more you get into all your racing driver characteristics, the more magnetic you become. That attracts money, support and you become significant in peoples lives as a beacon of hope against adversity.

33. Extra Natural Mental Capacity:

Provides an edge in processing information quickly and making effective decisions during a race.

Most of what you do in training, both on the track and in the gym, is to free up and develop mental capacity, so that you can calculate strategies and act fast, without overthinking or becoming overwhelmed.

Racing is an activity that can fill your processing capacity to 100% in an instant. All the signals from your body, your fight or flight alarms and the sheer difficulty of driving at speed are so demanding, that it’s easy to shut down, and go into survival mode.

Drivers work their way through that, normal folk stay away!

Thanks for reading

Terence