I wrote this shortly after attending race school at Waterford Hills in 2022. Posting now, in case others find it helpful.
It’s not about being perfect; more about responding to (small) imperfections
A big part of being happy and relaxed is having few or flexible expectations (I happen to believe this applies to most everything in life). I didn’t hit most apexes. I had corners that I didn’t get right all weekend, despite ample feedback. The schedule moved and shifted and moved back and wiggled. Some people were overcome by the ‘red mist’ and angry voices rang over the paddock. There were some medium-sized on-track incidents. Do your best as a student and know that your best won’t be perfect. Also know that school staff are doing their best and they won’t be perfect. I did my best to acknowledge when I messed up, apologize whenever I could, thanked people, appreciated people, smiled (even with puke all over me), gave hugs and handshakes and pats on the back and shed some tears, then went out and did my best to be better. About that small part: It’s much better to make a series of small mistakes than one big one.
Have Boundaries
If you get asked to do something that feels unsafe, speak up and, most importantly, don’t do it. Just because you are a student doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries or hold ultimate responsibility for your own safety.
Go-kart experience did translate
Coming into school I had no automobile racing experience…none. No track days, no autocross, zippo. What I did have is a lot of go kart experience. Quite a few people told me it would translate. I took this with very guarded optimism and went out onto the track the first time assuming it wouldn’t. Thankfully, at least for me, it did. I had some sense of when the car was going to lose traction, if imperfect. And, when that imperfection resulted in a spin (and another and another), that sensation was not unfamiliar, nor was the process of driving back onto the track.
Day 1: Drinking from a firehose…for twelve hours.
From the time I got to the track until the time I left on day one was about twelve hours. During this time I might have had 60 total minutes when I wasn’t in an activity, driving, getting feedback, listening to directions, getting ready to drive, on grid, walking the track, jogging to the bathroom, looking for my gear, etc. The amount of sensory and mental input was immense, continuous, and impossible for me to fully contain or assimilate.
Day 2: Learning to drink from a firehose.
The second day was no less hectic than the first, on and off the track. It was a bit shorter without the post-6:00 PM track walk. After a good night’s sleep and some processing time, things did, as we were told would happen, begin to slow down. I developed a semblance of procedure for getting into the car and putting on my gear and restraints, I began to understand how long that would take and how long I had to just hold the wheel straight and the pedal down and breathe on the back straight. I knew where the driver’s meeting was and was not late. I took a Dramamine first thing in the morning and a half at lunch and had no issues with nausea.
Trust the Process
I had to keep reminding myself that the exceptionally talented and dedicated volunteer staff at Waterford have been teaching for many years; they know how to transfer skills and knowledge to students safely. My biggest concerns going in were that I’d be pushed to drive beyond my safe limits in order to pass the course, and that other drivers would exceed their safe limits in a way that threatened my safety. This came up for me most significantly on my first on-track drive on day one and before the side-by-side exercise on day 2. What was true, of course, is that the first on-track drive was structured to keep us well within our limits as we got to know the track and our cars. And that by the time we got to the side-by-sides we’d absorbed enough to do that safely and sanely.
Tech Note:
If you throw up once you can hold it in your mouth and keep racing. If you throw up twice there’s no way it will stay in your mouth and you’re either bolder than me, or heading to the paddock to clean yourself up. Corollary: Dramamine WORKS.
Be Open
Yes, I wasn’t feeling so hot before the last session on day 1. A life-long issue with motion sickness was creeping up on me and I wasn’t sure I’d be good through another full session. As turned out I wasn’t, and it came on much faster than what I’ve experienced in go karts. Before I went out I let my mentors know I was feeling nauseous, so they had some sense of why I came into the paddock early and messy. Afterward I was told that someone else was also feeling sick and had skipped a session…I felt like less of an outlier that way, and I made it clear that it was okay to tell people I’d yacked in my helmet on track.
In the paddock, I was encouraged/coached to try some Dramamine that evening to see how it affected me. Thanks to that I was confident to take one the morning of day 2 and I had no further issues with nausea.
As a mountain guide I want to know what’s going on with my group mentally and physically. I endeavored to walk that talk as a racing student. It helps with safety, support, and builds community.
Help is so important
When you are drinking from a fire hose it’s pretty hard to attend to details like, “Where did I put my helmet?”, “Is my shoulder strap over my HANS?”, etc. I was fortunate to have three friends and my daughter at the track with me both days to help as I asked and to help with what I didn’t know or was too distracted to ask. They also offered a lot of moral support, pats on the back and shoulder, cheering when I improved, and because two of them were retired long-time racers, helpful advice. Bring your people to school if you can!
Why is this nice lady grid worker waving both hands up and down at me?
I only wish I knew her name. My first time on grid, a smiling grid worker walked toward me waving both hands. “How friendly”, I thought, and I tried to wave with one hand back amid my open-cockpit arm restraints. At the car now, she said, “Lift up your arms, I need to see that your arm restraints and on and adjusted properly.” Remember to laugh at things like this.
Things Will Happen
As a student, at times I didn’t know what to do, where to go, when to go, on and off the track. I hadn’t attempted to learn a new, complex skill from scratch in decades. How to be a husband, mountaineer, skier, and father in the 90s. How to be a consultant in the 00s…in the 10s? In this aspect, I sort of coasted. I came in unpracticed at being ignorant. They told us in the classroom day to be compassionate at the track, with the car, with others, and with self. So I tried to keep my self-castigation over errors short and repeat them as little as I could. Still, I had two corners I got consistently wrong all weekend.
Also, I spun the car three or four times. I missed some flags. I forgot to wave to some corner workers on pace and cool-down laps a few times.
And outside of my little world, there was one car hard into wall, a car on top of a wall, and an end-over flip with an upside-down landing, all by other drivers. This isn’t Disneyland; the railings aren’t there to keep anything/everything bad from happening, they are there to reduce the badness of things that happen.
Unmanaged thinking about the mistakes I made an hour or a turn ago, or the mistakes other drivers made is more likely to cause more mistakes. I tried to save the mental reviews for time allocated for that or the end of the day.
Mistakes I Made…
- Didn’t know I needed to go request tech so the car sat in the tech line for a long time and ended up going through, along with my gear, when I was in the driver’s meeting.
- I was watching the bleachers for the first driver’s meeting to start. It was at the pavilion, so I was late.
- Print out, laminate, and post the schedule at your paddock. If you don’t wear a watch, bring a clock and hang it up. Time flies by, especially on day 1.
- Keep track of your gear; helmet, gloves, sunglasses, HANS, etc. Call to grid is not the time to figure out where you left it.
- If it’s a warm/sunny day and you get hot easily, keep your helmet in the shade between races. It’ll be cooler when you put it on.
- An umbrella at grid is a good thing for open cars. Seattleites, denizens of a place where it rains 250 days a year, rarely use umbrellas. This one is going to buck the trend going forward and have one for grid.
- If you have any inclination toward motion sickness, try Dramamine or something before school. If it doesn’t make you dumb or drowsy, use it. Or risk pulling a “Loren”.
- Minimize complication: I had a GoPro…and I never started to put it on the car. I didn’t need another thing to remember before grid. I stayed very close to the track. I had lots of food and water and snacks so I didn’t need to wait in a line.
- If you use a popup canopy, make sure it is anchored. If it’s not, don’t leave your cell phone on the table under it. If you do, make sure it’s in a case. If it’s not in a case, budget for a new phone 😊
Some Mistakes I Didn’t Make…
- Drink lots of water. Lots. More than that. Seriously.
- Bring HELP. I was extremely fortunate to have four people there to look after me, help me find my sunglasses, get the car and my gear through tech when I screwed that up, keep me grounded, cheer when I did something good, smile and offer sage advice when I didn’t, etc. And I had two car-angels from whom I rented the car who handled all things related to it. You can’t have too much help. You’ll need more than you think.
- If you are using your own car you either need a car that doesn’t require much between races, or you need someone to do that for you. There is very little unallocated time during school. Race, come off, group debrief, mentor debrief, drink WATER, take a test, prepare to go back to grid.
- Have a hard copy of the track layout to refer to when getting tips and feedback.