At some point we start calling ourselves racing drivers. At first, a friend or relative introduces you saying that and we’re all humble and embarrassed but we see their positive reaction and we’re suddenly not so opposed to people saying it, and the next step is we start using that moniker ourselves. From this point forward…I am a racing driver. Tens of thousands of people have had this little epiphany (or some version of it) but when are you actually a racing driver? What is the threshold where you’ve actually earned those stripes? Do you have to be a professional driver (someone who is paid to drive a car in a professional series) or do you just have to drive a race car of any type or description? Can an auto crosser be one? Hey, how about a drifter?
Each type of motorsports has its own definitions based on historic thresholds or levels, to a certain extent, but could we generally define when someone reaches that level as a driver? A racing driver drives in races. Races are wheel to wheel, meaning there is passing (unlike rally, for example). A race car driver does not necessarily race wheel to wheel (something like time attack or rally). Drifting is in the middle – it is wheel to wheel, but without passing and timing. A bit confusing and perhaps perplexing. Actually, it’s all those variations (and many I haven’t even mentioned so this doesn’t drag on longer than it needs to) that makes it all so cool. All represent a different type of challenge, but it’s the things they have in common that give us the clues to answer the original question.
What do you have to understand, do, then master, to be an actual racing driver or race car driver?
First part of the job description: Go fast. That’s purely relative to your motorsport because even the drift drivers have to go as fast as they can (though it’s not timed, per say, since they are partly judged on speed, so going fast is still a factor). “Speed” is relative to your direct competition that day. So, go faster, got it.
Second part: Don’t crash (at least not often and/or for no good reason) – “to finish first you must first finish.”
Third part: This is more subtle but perhaps the most important and the thing that wins championships. Every team and every driver has off races (setup missed, strategy blown, etc.). The trick is (relatively, it is always relatively) you have to suffer less on those days than your competitors (example: instead of finishing 7th, you finish 4th, with equivalent bad luck or mistakes). You need to be scrappy and never give up.
The key to these three parts is attitude: Attitude gives you adaptability. Your job as a racing driver is to drive a good car fast, a bad car well, and everything in between (rain or shine). It makes no difference. There has never been a perfect race car but with a real driver at the wheel, no one needs to know. It is that symbiotic relationship between human and machine, and an efficient team putting them in a position to succeed.
So, we are in position to succeed. What is it exactly that the driver needs to be relatively better at? The driver needs to be a better car balancer, able to deftly make an understeering car neutral (same with an oversteering car), any type of corner, any part of a corner, and under any conditions (that’s where the consistent speed comes from). The driver needs to optimally manage the tires (car balancer), brakes, and engine temperature, while perhaps racing wheel to wheel. The driver has to make the team’s strategy work and adapt to an ever-changing race (remember, it’s all relative). There is an amazing level of work load happening that requires very high levels of accurate subconscious programming (see The Optimum Drive consciousness/free will blogs) that will have taken years to ingrain (that’s where those closely supervised, always coached youngsters in karting have a big advantage). These are the real racing drivers, where everything is taxed to the maximum and done in real time with full commitment. Since you are doing the peacetime version of dogfighting…it is basically war.
All racing counts, but is just different. Rally is its own type of war, as is time attack. We adapt to the particular challenges to the maximum of resolution a human being is capable of. The driver of a Top Fuel dragster has amazing throttle control, as does a motorcycle racer, because their disciplines demand it. Formula 1 and prototypes demand granular feel of downforce to take advantage of the particular physics of those classes. It is all frankly amazing. No one thing is harder than the other, just different, though some forms of motorsports are taken much further due to their popularity (and the money that they bring in) and that some part of that money will be used to improve human performance, which will make them more developed than less lucrative forms of motorsports. That does mean the best drivers are in top motorsports, as you would expect, but not because they are fundamentally better. They are built and developed better due to the higher standards that are their “normal.”
You are officially a racing driver (or race car driver), in this author’s opinion, when in your discipline this is all second nature to you – holistically you can feel and visualize all the nuance that is required to “flow” at the limit. Will you always win with this level and approach? Probably not because in any decent series, there will be two or three other teams at the same level pushing you as hard as you are pushing them. You are mutually responsible for the levels you have reached; the trick is to reach the next level one race sooner! As implied, though, you will be on the podium, or not far from it, every weekend and therefore be battling for the championship. A racing driver is competitive, and therefore respected and feared by their fellow racers. This is how you know you’ve arrived.
If you just do the math on that, saying the level is the top three – maybe four – teams battling for the championship, who have real racing drivers at the wheel, you end up with about 25% of people who drive race cars as real race car drivers (I’m allowing for up and coming talent working their way up in that). Whether you go on calling yourself a racing driver is ultimately up to you, but I hope this little thought experiment has helped clarify when real race car driving begins and thrives. The intent is not to discourage anyone but to put down a marker, because that is where motivation comes from, first having to understand that there is more (spoiler alert, there is always more!). We have no limits to how good we can become; it is mostly only dependent on time and motivation. The third variable is intelligence, or, since this is a team sport, collective intelligence. Intelligence is a multiplier of time plus motivation because it provides the more direct path through the efficiency it affords. Surround yourself with smart people and you will learn faster than you would on your own. On every level in every form of the amazing endeavor we call motorsports, this is the formula for success that creates the true racing driver.