The more knowledge you gain about auto racing, the more you realize you have a lot to learn. Car setup, track familiarization, race strategy, and remembering to put fuel in the car before the race. Obviously, it is a lot, hence the need for continued lifelong learning. The best competitors in any sport are usually sponges for knowledge and continued improvement. In a lot of cases, that increased knowledge comes directly from a coach.
In racing, there is a common through-line between experienced race drivers and future driving coaches. But every student learns a bit differently. Just because you are a good driver doesn’t immediately correlate to you being a good driving coach. When you have the opportunity to coach other drivers, be it as an HPDE instructor with NASA or private coaching, it is incumbent upon you as the coach to cater to your student.
The first thing to do as a driving coach or instructor is check your ego at the door. You don’t need to lead every conversation with how many races or championships you have won, and generally continuing to explain how great you are. People already know that about you, which is why you are the one at the front of the classroom explaining things like the friction circle or threshold braking. Instead of competing with your students, share your knowledge with them to help them to be better drivers. They will respect you much more for that, than they will respect you for you rattling off your racing resume from a race you won in 2008 — before they had a driver’s license.
Before I begin any instructing inside a car, whether it be for a group at a driver’s school, an HPDE session, or a private coaching gig, I always start with a lecture, or chalk talk, to ensure everyone inside the car is using the same vocabulary. I want to ensure that the student knows what I mean when I say, “Unwind the wheel.” That may sound like a simple term, but if the student is unfamiliar with what it means to take steering out of a car as they exit a corner, then when we are flying into Turn 2 at Sonoma with adrenaline pumping and a big tire wall on the outside, this is a bad moment for the two of us to realize we are using different terms to talk to each other.
To avoid any confusion, I start every coaching session with a simple lecture about the basics of performance driving, flags, track layout, vocabulary, etc. Once we are on the same page then, and only then, is it time to get the car and put the concepts to work.
When riding shotgun with a student, it is helpful to use radios through your helmet to communicate. Yelling through your helmet, “Brake! Brake! Brake!” and hoping your student can hear over the engine screaming at 6,000 rpm does not breed trust and clear communication. Ensure you have a radio setup that works for your helmet, the car and your student’s helmet before you are on grid about to go green — a terrible time to find out nothing works.
Sampson Racing Communications has kits that will solve this problem for you. One easy solution as the passenger/coach is to just use a handheld radio that clips to your safety harness, and is attached to a car harness and is zip tied together to transmit to the car system attached to the driver. Simple, easy and works great.
As much as we are there to help improve a driver’s ability behind the wheel, as a coach we are guilty if we don’t ensure the basics of safety aren’t followed to a T. The first thing I do with a student is ensure they know how to get out of the car. How to unhook the belts, how to drop the net, and how to open the door. I make sure they know where the kill switch is and where the fire bottle handle is located. Nobody can learn if we all burn up in a car fire. This process takes time and may seem a bit rudimentary to the student, but every racing driver needs to be proficient in the skill of getting out of a car with haste. Once that is completed then we can learn how to go faster.
The next step is to get on track and evaluate what the driver needs. Do they just need to be shown the line around an unfamiliar track? Do they need to work on going deeper with their braking points? Do they need to work on being smoother with driver inputs? The first on-track session will tell you as the coach what the driver needs. Here is where you need to be flexible with the learning domain. Do not overwhelm the driver. Stay positive. Talk about what went right, and then suggest small changes to help them to go faster. Positivity is magnetic. It attracts more positivity. Keep things light and you will see the driver slowly start to improve. The coach needs to adjust the learning to the student’s needs.
Before I have a second session in the car with a student, I like to take a stroll around the ring road and look at the track from a different viewpoint. As we watch other cars go around the track, we can discuss the different line options and let the student see for themselves which ones look right or wrong. This is a great opportunity to chat, without the pressure of driving around the track at speed. We can discuss more high-performance driving concepts and discuss why they work. When we get back into the car, the student has a chance to visualize what we are going to do based on what they saw during the ring road drive.
Being able to use data to help explain concepts really helps close the loop for the student when it comes to implementing driving concepts and then seeing the results in regards to lap times. My last student was stellar. He just needed to go to the throttle a little sooner out of a few corners. After some coaching and my yelling, “Roll on the throttle, here we go flat out now!” we really started picking up speed. The data showed him that those laps were 2 seconds faster just from getting on the gas quicker. GPS data, throttle percentage, and lap times proved the case for earlier throttle and the student was able to see the gains from the data. But data isn’t everything. The students comfort with going faster, ability to recognize when counter steer was necessary and repetitive results are more important to me than a single lap that is one tenth of a second faster.
The key to being a successful coach is to ensure your student got what they expected to get when they sat in front of you at the beginning of the day. Did they learn anything? Did you help to improve their skills? Did you show them something they didn’t already know?
If you just told them they suck at racing for eight hours and then suggested they find a different hobby, I’m not sure that went well for either party. That may sound a bit extreme, but believe it or not, I have seen it. The goal of a coach is not to turn the student into a mirror image of themselves as a race driver. The goal of a coach is to improve the student based on the student’s individual capabilities. If you can do that, then you are a success. Give the people what they want!
Rob Krider is a four-time NASA Honda Challenge 4 National Champion, the author of the novel, “Cadet Blues,” and is the host of the “Stories and Cocktails” podcast.
