Hib Halverson
My performance driving “skills” are primarily self-taught. While, at times, I have received some professional instruction from a few racers I know, for the most part, I’ve relied on books and practice on various race tracks and on twisty public highways, as my “instruction”.
I know I’d probably benefit from a real performance driving school, such as Spring Mountain Motorsports’ “Ron Fellows Performance Driving School”, but with today’s stagnated economy, I just don’t have the budget. So…I read books.
I’ve read many a performance driving title over the years starting with Alan Johnson’s seminal Driving in Competition back with I was just a kid. Every so often since then, I’ll run across one that looks good and I’ll read it as a sort of “refresher course”. Of course, I’ve also run across a few driving books which weren’t worth their cover prices.
Earlier this year, I saw Ultimate Speed Secrets on Motorbooks’ web site and ordered a copy.
Wow. Great book! Rivals Johnson’s book as the best driving book I’ve ever read.
Not only does it have great depth in its discussions of high-performance and race driving skills but it delves into a number of topics that other performance driving books either just gloss over or don’t address at all.
For example: there are chapters titled “race team dynamics”, How the Driver’s Mind Works, Brain integration”, “Behavioral Traits” and “Decision Making” all legitimate topics of discussion for those planning on making race driving a “serious” hobby or a profession but which are sometimes neglected in other performance driving books.
The book’s author, Ross Bentley not only is an accomplished race driving having the 1998 USRRC, the 2003 Rolex 24 at Daytona. He’s also run the SCCA Trans-Am and raced Indy cars. Bentley runs a successful consulting business which enhances the performance of individuals, teams and organizations through coaching and other methods. Bentley has worked with not only race car drivers from the amateur ranks up to Indy cars and NASCAR, but all sorts of athletes and teams from lacrosse to racquetball and tennis.
In the sporting world, Bentley’s coaching specialty is in the mental game and that comes through loud-and-clear in Ultimate Speed Secrets. Not only do you get the usual stuff – corner entry, apexes, corner exits, esses, accelerating onto straights – but you also get a lot of useful counseling on how to prepare yourself, both mentally and physically, for high-performance driving and racing.
For instance, I learned how making “lazy-8″s with my hands, doing “cross crawls” with my knees and touching the roof of my mouth with my tongue helps a race driver with “brain integration” and makes him or her better prepared just prior to going on track. Don’t laugh. That stuff works and there’s a lot more of it in Bentley’s book.
For some of the sport compact types who like to drink beer, have 5-in tailpipes and talk hours about how their 700-hp Subarus can roast ZR1s, the book actually may be too long and way too in-depth, but for people serious about improving their performance driving skills, and especially those who want to race cars as a competitive amateur or a professional, Ross Bentley’s Ultimate Speed Secrets needs to be at the top of their reading list. In fact, if they haven’t already read it, they need to get on the Motorbooks site and order it, now.
