How to take power from criticism, and blow everyone into the weeds

Learn how to thrive on the most ubiquitous commodity in the pitlane - resentment.

Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only 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.

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Everyone has to deal with demons dripping lead into their ear. The key is to turn that lead into gold….

I got a cracking question from a subscriber…. Get this:

How do I use bad vibes, hate/negative stuff as fuel?

That’s a badass question, because it has that racing driver edge. It is a question that only cares about taking advantage, and getting power from every situation.

But of course, the question arises in the first place, because the weight of someone dripping lead into your ears is no different to some sneaky bastard bolting great lumps of lead to your kart - weight is a racing driver’s deadliest enemy:

• You can’t get off the line fast

• You can’t brake as late

• You can’t accelerate as hard

• You can’t corner as fast

• It wears out brakes, tyres and uses more fuel

Weight has the same effect on drivers, who need to be wildly positive, psychologically super-lightweight, in order to continuously strive against the constant adversity we encounter in racing.

When you have to push yourself, even though your engine is crap, or you have to hit up another sponsor, after one just told you to bugger off, you can’t be carrying the extra weight around of someone giving you grief.

Here’s what happens to drivers weighed down by the verbal onslaughts they regularly suffer:

• Sometimes they can’t even get going, they skip the gym or they fail to make the calls to current sponsors, and potential new ones

• They don’t go all in when an opportunity arises - ‘yeah but’ becomes the response. This happens on track with hesitation and self doubt, or when someone shows interest in backing them.

• They get tired, unresponsive, and they won’t chase. On track set up problems create a downward spiral in performance. Off-track every activity becomes sapping, and they quit or do a half-arsed job.

You really don’t want to be carrying any extra weight at all, so how do you get rid of this heaviness?

Standard issue advice that you find everywhere, just doesn’t cut it.

Nice everyday stuff like:

• Surround yourself with positive people and cut out the negative ones.

• Just drop that negative baggage dude.

• They’re just saying that because they are sad, have sympathy and pity them instead.

That may apply to folk just trying to get by in life, but drivers aren’t just trying to get by, we are striving to live an extraordinary life, which often means using every resource we can lay our hands on, maximising our performance.

Some of those resources are people. For example, often the best engine builder is a miserable sod who you don’t want rid of. Completely sacking everyone off who talks down to you isn’t really optimum.

The racing world creates negativity, and supplies it on tap like nothing else!

One thing that the world of racing is not short of is:

Resentment.

Drivers always feel hard done by, and their support network usually feels knackered, skint and disrespected.

The people providing racing services are disenchanted, often sick and tired of dreamers, and want to dispossess everyone of their ‘unrealistic’ expectations.

Resentment is just in the air, and we all breath it continuously - and very often we unleash it on drivers.

Most of that ubiquitous negativity is focussed at drivers first, because that’s who everyone is putting themselves out for. Everyone wants to have a go at drivers!

Be ready for criticism, get ahead of it and transform yourself in advance - then boss everyone