Overcoming the Brain's Safety Filter in High-Speed Decision Making

Training Your Mind to Allow Instinctive Actions in Critical Racing Moments

The audio is not a read through, but a much deeper exploration of driving instincts and how to hack the confidence building process - I strongly recommend you listen if you want to understand how to specifically build confidence for particular racing scenarios

When drivers ask how to improve, the standard response is often just "get more seat time."

While practice is undoubtedly important, it's not a complete answer. Seat time is expensive, and most of us simply don't have the luxury of endless track days. Yes, if you drive around forever, your skills will improve, but it's a haphazard approach that takes far too long to nail every technique needed.

You don’t just know, you’ve experienced going through a very convincing exhaustive process identifying and improving the right skills for the job!

The Two Modes of Driving - Fast Instincts vs. Slow Thinking

When we examine the mental side of driving, we can identify two distinct modes:

1. Instinctive driving: This is your subconscious at work, executing learned skills automatically without conscious thought. It's still your brain and nervous system doing the job, but it happens without active thinking.

Consider catching oversteer with opposite lock. You weren't born with this ability - it's something you've learned and passed over to your instincts to execute in a flash. Remember the first time you caught a slide and realised what you'd done? It's an incredible feeling. Picture this: you're going 60 mph in the wet, the kart steps out, and you catch it instantly. That's when you feel like a driving god. It's cool, it's exhilarating, and it's your instincts at work.

2. Conscious driving: This involves active thinking and decision-making while behind the wheel. It's slower, more deliberate, and often holds you back from fully committing to an action.

The Brain's Safety Filter Will Stop You Making Moves

When danger is involved, as it always is in racing, processes we're not absolutely certain about get held up by the thinking, conscious part of our brain. This part keeps you alive, but it's not as fast, and it will hold you back from doing things or execute them in a more clumsy, deliberate way.

Doubts make us think, thinking is slow - then the opportunity is gone!

Imagine you're about to overtake another driver. You know that to pull this move off, you need to brake late and brake really well. Let's say you're a good driver with some skills on the brakes. However, as you're about to make the move, your brain starts to run through a checklist of what you're about to do. If any item on that checklist has a question mark by it, your brain will say,

"Red Alert. We're not handing this over to instincts, because I'm not 100% sure."

During the time your brain's gone through that process and wondered, "Can we do this?"blah bah blah - by now the move's off. You have about half a second to decide, and you've delayed it. The opportunity's gone. You don't even have to decide against it - it's just the small amount of time it takes to make an assessment that costs you.

What we need instead is for your brain to go, "What are the things we need to do to make this move? Rapid yes, yes, yes, all clear, instincts do it."

And you can do that very quickly. In fact, that can be done in advance - you can have the boxes ticked before you even get to the situation.

Building Confidence to Unleash Instinct

The key is to build rock-solid confidence in your skills, a deep-seated knowledge that you can execute when it matters- so you have the confidence that your skill can deliver exactly what you need in the moment.

The Efficacy Sheet: A Tool for Targeted Improvement

To break out of the "just get more seat time" trap, we need a targeted approach to building racing skills and confidence. This is where the Efficacy Sheet comes in. I've developed this tool to help drivers systematically identify their strengths and weaknesses, and to provide a clear path for improvement.

How to drill down to what it truly takes to switch off those nagging doubts and fully commit to your abilities on track.