Why Intelligent Racing Drivers are a Nightmare

But also the best, eventually... if they make it through

Thick drivers are really easy to work with. You can say ‘take that flat out’ and they just do it.

So long as they have the skills to drive, they can just throw themselves into situations and come out on top.

They don’t burden themselves with the question ‘what if ?’. They prefer to physically find out what happens when they get there, rather than try to figure it out first, perhaps because they just can’t figure it out!

A thick driver can find themselves fighting for wins very quickly. Therefore they are often labelled as ‘talented’.

Now, that’s all fine and dandy until the competition gets very tight, and they are up against the very best in the world, and they need to find something extra. When they need to dig deep, they find there is nothing there to dig into.

They reach a ceiling to how much they can improve very quickly, and tend to disappear after that because they get stuck. When things get very technical and they need to outsmart the opposition, they just can’t.

The Burden of Intelligence

If you are reading this you count as an intelligent driver.

That means you are a bit of a pain in the arse, because you don’t just go ahead and do anything and everything you are told to do. You have this terrible habit of thinking about it first.

You have probably learned in life that thinking things through before you take action pays off.

And in racing you have probably reinforced that tendency because you can see things happening in advance, especially bad things. You know when an idiot is going to out-brake themselves ahead of you and go wide, you know when an inexperienced driver is going to take a weird line. You figured out how to avoid disasters.

You have probably patted yourself on the back for avoiding a disaster before it actually materialised before your eyes and gave yourself a giant endorphin rush as reward.

You even knew that talented but thick driver was going to throw themselves into that scenario, and you sailed past them and laughed at how thick they are, because this time your anticipation and intelligence paid off.

It kept you safe and it got you a whole bunch of positions in that race.

Now you have a very big problem. You just backed out of a situation, fate conspired so that the decision was correct and your physiological reward system just locked that policy in for future scenarios.

Why Making the Right Decision is Wrong for a Racing Driver - The Intelligence Trap