Keep your eyes on the road

Yeah sure, we've all heard it, since before we were driving, "Keep your eyes on the road". Maybe it was our fathers and mothers talking in the car, maybe during driver's ed, any way you came across this nugget of brilliance it was a winner.

Some things seem too simple, but the basis for any high performance driving is built upon that simple axiom. It's where you keep your eyes pointed that is important. All too often as I instruct folks on a race track I find their field of focus is far too close to where they are on the track. It does you little good to be focused on a spot 20 feet in front of the car if your momentum is going to make it impossible to do anything about it. Besides making it more difficult to focus what's really important, the habit of focusing too closely to your car increases your brain's workload.

One of the most important things I do when training folks is to try and get their brain up to speed. I find that as we begin, the student is unlikely to see much of anything besides what is going on right in front of them. The brain is working as hard as it can just to process all the information that it is being bombarded with in this new environment. By expanding their visual horizon, we can slow things down and their skill and comfort level increases at a much quicker pace than it would if we didn't break the habit of too close a focus point.

If you develop this technique at an early point in your driving career you will find that as you climb into cars with more potential you will be able to adjust to them much more quickly.

I would much rather see my students taking a long look ahead of them, maybe where the car will be in 3 seconds, that's a pretty good rule of thumb. Besides being able to do something about what you can see at that distance, it also helps to get your brain up to speed as your car's speed increases. If you find yourself feeling rushed or like there's too much to take in and maybe a bit out of control, slow down a bit and make a conscious effort to look further ahead. Even go so far as to look artificially ahead, only taking short glances at anything closer. I'm sure you will find your speed increasing and your comfort level getting higher.

Feel free to come by my website and give me more feedback and for further thoughts. http://www.sportscarstuff.com/ or Http://mallenalley.com