Brucelee and I discussed this thread in another thread, so here goes.........
There are different techniques learned in and from racing that have translated into major safe driving skills. I have worked hard to pass what I have learned on the track, to my wife and two daughters.
I am hoping all of us who have and do drive competitively can pass some of those
life saving skills on to our good friends on this forum.
It can also be lots of fun for all of us.
We tried this on the RX8 forum and it somewhat turned into an ego/anti-ego thing, if you know what I mean, so I will try to head these attitudes off, from the beginning.
I am not trying to come off as some sort of expert, because I am surely not.
I've won my share of SCCA races and a couple of minor, amatuer championships, but all that fame and fortune......and $2.00, will get me a cup of coffee, anywhere except Starbucks!
I certainly hope some of the other racers and track day guys will come on this thread and add their two cents worth, as almost all of my driving was in purpose built formula cars, so I have basically zero experience racing a street car.
In competitive driving, you either learn fairly rapidly, or you need a very big budget!
I had almost no budget when I first started, so I spent many, many hours devouring books by, among others, Jackie Stewart and Niki Lauda - both excellent books on driving.
I then spent the time I had driving on the street to master quite a few of their lessons. Interestingly enough, being in the Air Force, at the time (I was NOT in the military
) they also sent out a monthly flyer on driver safety, and the two sources overlapped on a remarkable basis.
The first thing I learned from Jackie Stewart is to NOT use the standard technique taught for driving! That technique is to let your eyes wander around the scene out your windshield to "see everything." Nonsense. Your brain is much smarter than your eyes. His technique, that I have used ever since, is to focus your eyes as far down the road as you can see and watch that entire "scene" of your full vision picture with your brain. You do this by focusing your attention on different parts of that scene. You will also immediately pick up ANY movement within that scene. Movement you may miss for a critical split second if you are letting your eyes wander around the view out your windshield. You can hit an apex perfectly while looking as far down the track as you can see. That apex is right there in your vision scene. If you are autoXing, you will see entire sections of cones at once, not just the few close to your car or the next few you need to manuever through.
With some practice, you will aslo be able to watch your instruments without looking directly at them! Don't believe me? Try it. If you have ever seen a photo of the dash of a race car with the instruments all turned at strange angles, you've probably been confused at the lack of order. Not so, those instruments are all turned so that the needles are straight up at proper operating range. So the driver only needs to keep them in his awareness and a guage out of operating range sticks out like a sore thumb! HE will also shift when the tach needle becomes vertical. All you "Shift light" guys are so lazy............
and this is a lost art with the advent of full digital dashes.
As you sit low in a Porsche with the guages fairly high in your vision picture, it begins to make sense. Porsche has led the auto industry in ergonomics and placing your guages near the center of your sight picture is key. The farther away from the center of that vision scene you get, the harder it is to see something without moving your eyes to focus on it.
After learning to "see" your guages without actually looking at them, learn to be "aware" of your mirrors, at all times. Once you master it, ANY motion in your mirror scene will immediately draw your attention.
Mirrors on a Boxster are somewhat of a problem, as the roll bars are a huge blockage in your rearward view. The restricted view of your central rear view also bleeds over into restrictiong the width of your view in the two side mirrors.
Maybe someone can come on and talk about how to adjust all three mirrors to get the widest possible panoramic view.
In the meantime, practice the technique and see how well it works!