Racing Psychology
(24 December 2001)
A psychologist was recently quoted in a motoring magazine as saying that any racing driver who did not want to push another driver into the wall in an effort to get past obviously didn't want to win badly enough. To my mind this is more like the definition of a psychopath. It is the sort of thing that may go on from time to time at lower levels of the sport, but it just doesn't happen in big-time racing. If it did, there would be a revolt among the other drivers, and certainly among the team owners, because it would be costing a fortune in damage to the cars.
Any driver who does descend to that sort of philosophy obviously has a lack of confidence in his own ability. This can also take several other forms. I know of one driver - whom I raced against when we were in Formula Ford together, and who later went on to compete in Formula 3 - and although he was very good, I always felt he had one weakness. This was that if another driver was pressing him hard, his motivation was to block him rather than to out-drive him. He used to say he was using his experience in doing this, but I thought it was a flaw in his own driving.
Another driver I coached over a period when he was in F3 was very quick, and could often break the lap record in qualifying, but he never won a race. He used to say things like, "Oh, I was following so-and-so, he doesn't drive well, he's very rough, a bit out of control," and I would say, "Well, what the hell were you doing following him, then? You should have passed him!" Any driver who acts this way has to get over it if he wants to develop.
One of the most important psychological aspects of being a racing driver is the ability to focus less on yourself and more on the behaviour of the car. Let's take Juan Pablo Montoya, for instance, who is looked upon as one of the great hopes for the future. From what we read in various motor racing journals, it seems that it took him at least half the 2001 season to get to grips with the handling of his Williams-BMW, which had understeer problems. These were very likely down to him, because his team-mate Ralf Schumacher wasn't getting them.
In later races Montoya seemed to have the situation under control, to judge by his results. However, in my experience of operating with drivers even at this level, it could all have been sorted out in ten minutes by having someone tell them they're having problems because they're doing this, and if they do that instead the problems won't occur.
At the same time, Montoya is very tough mentally. We saw in Brazil, for instance, that he is not overawed in the slightest by Michael Schumacher. Another very good example is Nigel Mansell, who I personally feel was the only driver in Grand Prix racing able to outpsyche Ayrton Senna. When the two of them got mixed up together, Senna really knew he was in a race. I thought Mansell was brilliant from that point of view.
From a psychological point of view, it is very handy to have this kind of determination, but I think that to be a real world-class driver you can't rely just on that - you also have to be able to go far more deeply into the actual driving side than is the norm.
This is what impressed me so much about Jackie Stewart as a driver. In one of his books he wrote about sorting out an F1 car, and I always remember a little quote which went along the lines of "a good handling car is often a bitch to drive". This told me that he always tried the car set up to go as well as it could, which I feel is one of the hallmarks of a great driver.
The only one doing that now, as far as I can see, is Michael Schumacher. That's what makes him, apart from his natural ability, one of the greats. In this respect he has the same attitude as Stewart - in other words, he accepts that the car may be difficult to drive as long as it is also as quick as possible. It enables him to have a far bigger repertoire of driving skills than most of the others.
What usually happens, unfortunately, is that if a car does not handle through a corner, the driver does not say, "What did I do to make it do that?" but, "What's wrong with the car?" Drivers rely on the engineers to change the car to suit them. Sometimes the engineers can do this and sometimes they can't. But the basic problem is that, because of a fundamental lack of technique, the drivers do not understand what they are doing wrong to make the car handle badly in the first place.
