Send It - The Essence of the Racing Driver
Overtaking utterly depends on your ability to throw yourself into the unknown; you must relinquish control until it's over. If you can't let go you can't overtake!
“Sometimes you've just got to lick the stamp and send it” Daniel Ricciardo
I don’t know what happened to Ricciardo after he left RedBull, maybe after he dropped that stamp licking mega quote his destiny was fulfilled and that was it. I mean, the quote is THAT GOOD that he could have dropped the mic there and then, disappeared into the sunset and into racing immortality - job done!
I’m going to deep dive into the quote because although the meaning is obvious to us all (racing drivers I mean), I reckon digging it all out will help anyone struggling to overtake understand what’s stopping them.
Come with me just for a second into the banality of normal life, and let’s imagine posting a real letter. You write the address, add a stamp and put it through the slot in the locked box and then LET GO. After that the letter goes its own way, and if you followed all the handy hints (correct address and stamp) then it should arrive after a long time out of your control.
Once you let it go you can’t reach inside and check the address again, you can’t make sure the correct stamp is on there; the letter is gone and you won’t know what happened to it until it arrives. You may have even felt that little tinge of doubt as you let the letter drop, especially if it’s mega important like a demand for sponsorship from the local plumbing merchants.
Anyway, the point is you can’t send it unless you are prepared to let go of control of that letter AND that you don’t care anymore whether the address is right, or that the thing won’t get lost and so on.
Overtaking - Line it up, pull the trigger - fire and forget.
When you overtake at the limit, I don’t mean an easy gimme of an overtake, I mean the overtaking where you are wrenching the position away from the kind of driver who has a real problem with you taking that position. Anyway, when you are performing that kind of move, you position the kart, aim it at the apex and go in.
Between braking and hitting the apex you cannot do a damn thing about it. You cannot:
Pull out of the move.
Adjust your line.
Stop the victim turning in.
Change where you braked.
Reverse your decision to overtake.
You are all-in and no longer have control, you have handed your destiny over to the racing gods. All you can do, with great skill actually, is keep the kart on the chosen course by beautifully balancing the brake pressure and steering. During this period of sublime balance at the limit and ceding of your destiny to chance, you may find yourself experiencing the sheer magic of racing. Or, you may find yourself bracing for impact!
But if you are not prepared to hand yourself and your fragile little body over to the racing gods either in sacrifice or for glory, then you can’t overtake.
So that’s it, you have to hand yourself over. You have to drop your obsession with control. Not sure what I mean? I’ll spell it out. You cannot have your cake and eat it.
This is where I think you are getting stuck with making the big moves.
You want to give yourself options, you want an escape route if something goes wrong; a get-out-clause and a contingency plan. Tough, you can’t have it.
You cannot overtake and allow yourself the margin to change your mind halfway through. If you want to give yourself the opportunity to change your mind, eg for when the other driver doesn’t see you coming, then you won’t be able to brake late enough. If you don’t brake late enough then the move is off, you will not even attempt it.
Here’s what I recommend to anyone struggling with letting go of control of overtaking circumstances.
Think very deeply about what racing really means. The essence of the racing driver is the will to dance with danger, to throw themselves into situations where they don’t know the outcome. Not just being brilliant at driving fast, they also can live with chance - they accept that chance will occasionally, by definition, kick them hard in the guts. And in the face of that certainty they do not hesitate to send it. They are heroic and glorious!
So are you going to act like a racing driver or not? If so, meditate on what cautions you are holding on to that you simply must let go of. How many ‘what ifs’ are you accounting for…. I’m telling you now, those desires to make overtaking moves whilst keeping the option to back out have gots to go - GO!
So, run the scenarios through your mind, imagine yourself going full send, and watch the little ‘what ifs’ crop up in your mind, identify them, and evict them forever - you cannot keep them.
Thanks for reading
Terence
P.S. In honour of ‘sending it’ I’m not going to check my proper use of punctuation in this very article. Once it is done I’m gunna hit send - if you find mistakes you may laugh at me for binning it, but I’m sending it anyway.