In this article I am going to examine what makes Lewis Hamilton stand out in F1 and how you can apply this simple technique to your own driving!
Now when Lewis Hamilton was first driving in F1, in his very first year in F1 was able to win the Canadian Grand Prix there were several remarkable aspects to this win:
- It was the first win that Lewis Hamilton recorded
- It was only his sixth Grand Prix race (quicker than any other F1 driver to win a race)
- It resulted in him leading the drivers championship
- And most remarkably – he had never been round the track until the race weekend.
The race that Lewis drove was not an easy race, he had to deal with four restarts after a period behind the safety car and rebuild his lead each time from scratch. Also, it is a track with a high crash rate, as seen in the number of other (more experienced) drivers who crashed out during the race!
So what is the secret that led Lewis to win his first F1 Grand Prix?
- Lewis drove the course before he even arrived at the track!
That’s right, before the Canadian GP Lewis Hamilton said how he was looking forward to the Canadian GP because he had only ever driven it in his mind! This is absolutely the key to his success. This allowed his mind to run through the race corner by corner, from start to finish. In doing so, he was able to see in his mind how he’d drive the course, find the best racing line, work out his braking points, and so on.
Purely by using his mind, imagining how he’d be and what he’d be doing, he had already driven the race perfectly 10’s maybe 100’s of times before arriving in at the track or even in the country!
That’s it. It is that simple.
Now we all have the ability to use our minds to imagine scenarios to generate powerful images of performance. This allows us to practice many times the perfect lap in our minds without the need to actually be there and it can be error free. This is what all the top guys are doing before every race. And I tell you it is one of the reasons they all made it to F1.
There is one more way to make this process even more powerful. You must include all your senses when using visualisation to improve your performance. You must make them visually detailed, you must be able to smell the car and the helmet, you must be able to feel exactly what is going on for you as you blast around the track, incorporate smell into the experience and taste as well. Once you get all of these senses up to a 9/10 for believability you will be really notice how seconds are slashed off your lap time. Your mind is unable to tell the difference between imagination and reality so you are literally tricking your body into thinking it has just driven a lap!
Combined with imagining the perfect lap it is also helpful to pre-programmed in some different scenarios. So you could imagine getting a great start, getting a poor start, getting a puncture, losing the in-car radio etc. Run through each of these scenarios in your mind, ‘seeing’ how you’ll deal with and come out the other side after coping well with them. Then, should they happen in reality, they will seem familiar, you’ll already have a well thought through plan, which is ready to execute.
So that is the trick that Lewis Hamilton used to win his 1st GP without ever driving the track! It is also the trick that Lewis will be using as he prepares for more racing success in 2009.
Lewis Hamilton had his very own neuroscientist fine-tuning his brain for racing success. Now he is going out with one of the hottest women on the planet! Make yourself sexy by picking up F1 Drivers Secrets to learn how the top drivers are training. www.F1DriversSecrets.com
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