No time to sulk
After the bitter disappointment of the GR Legends Rally in Bronkhorstspruit, where I made a mistake in the very last stage of the rally, and had to retire our Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa GR Yaris, it’s time to bounce back.
Having a decent level of race craft is only one part of being a race car driver. But what is just as important, if not more important, is your mental game.
Physical skill gets you into the car. It’s your mental strength that makes you competitive, consistent, and keeps you safe.
As a driver you are processing multiple information streams at the same time. Car behaviour, grip levels, road condition, braking points, turn-in points, constant radio comms from your co-driver, all while trying to drive flat out.
Racing asks more of your brain than almost any other sport. Decisions arrive and expire within fractions of a second. You have no time to mull over a mistake on the fly.
If you do, before you blink you are into the next corner, and having not processed this corner, you are in trouble again. And this is where you can have a big off.
You can try and say the pressure doesn’t get to you, but it gets to every driver. You are dealing with sponsor expectations, team pressure, and the ever‑present risk of failure.
You are also dealing with extreme differences in cockpit temperature. These cars don’t have air-conditioning to heat you up when it is minus 3-degress in the morning.
Or cool you down when it goes over 50-degrees inside there with your thick fire-proof race suit and helmet on in the middle of summer.
If the heat doesn’t get to you, the fatigue of the bouncing and bumping around in a rally car stage after stage for a full two days of rallying certainly will. Under these conditions, the limiting factor is often not the car, it is you state of mind.
The INGCO Ermelo is Round 5 of the National Rally Championship. And finishing this 16-stage rally will pick us back up again and give us the much-needed confidence going into to Round 6 and 7 at the Algoa Rally in Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth).
