“How can I increase my confidence on the track?” That’s a question that I hear from a lot from my coaching clients. I have a great friend who I coach from time to time since he crossed over from track days to racing. Now that he has a couple years of racing experience under his belt, he decided that his next step was to have more confidence with driving the car at its limit.
Think of those situations like the start of the race when your tires are still cold, or when you’re qualifying in less-than-ideal conditions but still need to get the best time possible. How do you maximize the car’s potential without feeling intimidated?
After discussing it with him, one solution that we identified was to integrate some car control/skid pad practice. That might seem elementary, but beyond it just being fun to slide the car around, a driver really starts to understand where the limits of the car are and how to control the car. It’s also a safe way to learn how to regain control once you’ve passed those limits! During an on-track session, you might have one or two “moments,” but on the skid pad, you can have several every minute.
We coordinated an evening skid pad session at Virginia International Raceway the night before a track event, so it was a perfect back-to-back opportunity, practicing the skills on the skid pad and then putting them into practice on the track the next day. My friend’s goal was to use those newfound car control skills—and the confidence they bring—to drive quickly right away even when the tires were still cold.
Not only did we have a lot of fun, but I think he learned a lot and is excited to be able to implement those skills during the next race weekend.
My own “next race weekend” is this one, with round six of the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge season. It’s at one of my favorite tracks, Lime Rock Park. It will be a very exciting event since the circuit has the busiest traffic of the season: we’ll have almost 40 cars on a 1.5-mile circuit! The traffic and race strategy will be paramount, and we’ll be sure to have some very close and intense racing. Tune in for live coverage on IMSA.com or on the IMSA app on Saturday, July 21 at 11:10a.m. EDT.