dream | act | succeed

With me being sick, obviously I wasn’t practicing on the simulator. But that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t practice.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We have all heard that one. But it’s true! Of course I could have wasted my time waiting until I get healthy again, but that is a lot of time wasted! Sure, time isn’t the problem here, but life without racing is just boring as hell! So what did I do?

I did two things. I was driving mentally and I was reading books about racing. Wait a minute, what? Driving in your head? Are you mad?

It’s a thing I have been doing for years. Even in my childhood when I had no clue about what I was doing. Instead of actually doing something, I was thinking through the process. I did that with soccer and table tennis when I was 10 years old. I did that with the instrument I was playing (the keyboard) and later on on various occasions like practicing presentations or tasks.

The funny thing about it is that this not only works brilliantly, but also that it helps you to improve in the actual thing. And so instead of driving the Nordschleife virtually, I was driving it mentally. But it’s not the same, is it? Well, for me it is. After thousands of hours I know the track and the cars I am driving my heart. I know when to shift, I know when to break. But it’s not easy to explain. Driving a race car, or any car around the same track, lap after lap. The process of driving becomes a process, a melody, a defined order of tasks put behind each other.

It doesn’t even matter if I drive on the simulator or in my head, I reach nearly the same lap times. Of course sometimes I am off a couple of seconds, but sometimes I am on point. But is it effective? I say yes, it is! Because you get the chance to think things through. You can visualize a situation. For example an overtake maneuver and think it through. Where can I do what? How will the opponent react? And so on..

It might sound a bit crazy, but you can do that with everything in life. Just close your eyes and pretend to be there, right in the moment. And you will be surprised how many details you have in mind. Of course you will get better over time and can’t expect a perfect training right from the get go. But you will improve fast, especially at the beginning.

And so, the last couple of weeks were not even wasted after all. I have improved again! Taking the next step towards success.

See you next time!