155 replies to this topic

[Buttoneer]

No, not 52 seater trucks which end up hung arse out over cliff edges in the Alps, but trainers with responsibility to keep young turks on the straight and narrow and impart their vast experience and knowledge.

JYS thinks it's a good thing.

I agree, mostly. You only have to read Martin Brundle's 'Working The Wheel' to see what a wealth of experience he has and which may be extremely useful even for those drivers arrogant enough to think they already know it all.

To my mind though, it seems F1 allows the race engineers to do this job to a certain extent ("Come on Fisi, Push!") but an ex-driver could very well be more useful in those circumstances.

Of course the drivers are all confident and arrogant in their own way, but no more so that the top players in any sport, most of which employ professional coaches.

[Hotwheels]

I think the difference between F1 and other sports is the amount of time available. It's a 2 hour car - can you imagine a driver reciving info for the car through the engineers, his own thoughts / reactions based on a particular lap AND a coach telling him to relax ?? A bit much i think. And if he has a coach for in between races and season then it may not really help him at the crunch time.

[F1Fanatic.co.uk]

I think the article's a little confusing. Are we talking about pre-race coaching to improve mental discipline, or better communication between team and driver during the race?

For what it's worth, I think both are needed.

[kar]

I'm not so sure. I think rather than a 'coach' these guys could use neuro-psychologists.

F1 drivers are in a very literal sense becoming more pilots than drivers. They are operators of highly sophisticated equipment. Operating it is the easy part. Operating it under stress is quite somethign else. The drudgery of actually driving the car has been reduced to such a science that the differences between the top drivers are quite small.

I think the difference between a good driver and a great driver is less to do with out and out talent but rather signals processing and response. Lewis' accident in Montreal was all down to sensory overload. Too much to think about and too little spare mental capacity to deal with it.

Gary Anderson can't help you with that. But a trained neuro-psychologist can teach you 'cognitive tricks' to better manage these situations. Of course this sort of development work is best implemented at karting level when the driver is very young. But someone in their mid 20s can significantly improve their fundamental ability to read and react in a 'noisy environment' with appropriate training.

[Tigershark]

From the article I don't get the sense that the FIA is prohibiting the use of driver choaches, which suggests the teams and drivers simply don't consider it a worthwhile idea. For a sport that spends millions on it's top drivers and tens of millions more on finetuning the design of their car, I have to wonder why such a relatively small expense as a personal coach hasn't become common practise if it is indeed as fantastic as some suggest.

[Fatgadget]

Originally posted by F1Fanatic.co.uk


For what it's worth, I think both are needed.

Why? What is wrong with someone mouthing off or not whatever rubbish happens to be in them? So these so called 'coaches' pretty much teach drivers how to say things is that it? Whatever next?...'My coach advised me to apologise when in actual fact I think I did fookal wrong. Or wait a minute,i realy fancied a beer but my coach advised me to have a muesli instead.

[stormshadow]

I think JS has said this in response to Hamiltons on track incidents if late.
In that case.....hell forget coaches! what the hamster needs is a friggin Psychiatrist!

[Ricardo F1]

Originally posted by kar
Lewis' accident in Montreal was all down to sensory overload. Too much to think about and too little spare mental capacity to deal with it.

And the half dozen (at least) other drivers who have missed red lights over the past two years?

[Buttoneer]

At a team like McLaren, all the drivers will have a personal fitness coach, a race engineer and we also know that McLaren at least provides some sort of psychological/mental training too. It makes me wonder whether employing someone as a driver coach is just too much or whether they can be combined? I would imagine, for example, that Pedro would make a great driver coach, trainer or training partner to either of the race drivers.

During Monaco this year Martin Brundle spoke about how the puddles would dry up slower in the shaded parts of the track and how the line was not constant dry/wet. This is something we can all sit here and say 'yeah duh!' too just as much as we can to someone missing a red light, but with everything else going on that sort of information which is relevant at the right time, from the right person, and provided in the right way could make all the difference.

[Mila]

the idea sounds like another step in the infantilization of Formula One.

[Buttoneer]

Originally posted by Ricardo F1


And the half dozen (at least) other drivers who have missed red lights over the past two years?

You didn't have to read kar's comment as a negative one. This is no more or less than Alex Wurz said in the race build up on ITV. Most drivers won't admit it but there's a lot to remember and when you are at 300km/h or preparing to go to 300km/h a red light is a) the last thing you expect to see when a pitlane has been open and b) the last thing you really want to take notice of.

Not to excuse the situation but I think you're reacting unnecessarily here.

[Lifew12]

Will the ego allow it?

[kismet]

I believe Jackie Stewart already suggested some kind of driver coaching after one of Hamilton's not-quite-stellar GPs earlier this season. Apparently Ron Dennis was not a big fan of the idea; something along the lines of "Yeah, right - like McLaren would ever employ a driver that needs to be told how to drive..."

Edited for crimes against grammar.

[Tigershark]

Originally posted by Ricardo F1
And the half dozen (at least) other drivers who have missed red lights over the past two years?

What about them? Why wouldn't kar's (and Wurz's) explanation apply to other drivers as well?

Hamilton crashing Raikkonen out of the Canadian GP was simply the most recent example.

[Rexx Havoc]

did JYS happen to leave his card?
what is next will he be tucking flyers under the wiper blades of the cars in the paddock parking lot

back in the day I think they called it racecraft
now a driver needs to have everything fed to him other that steering and pedal inputs :

back in the day you didn't have children driving these machines so coaches were never thought of...

[travbrad]

Originally posted by Buttoneer
You didn't have to read kar's comment as a negative one.

You must have missed the memo, stating that Hamilton is anything less than a god won't be tolerated

[potmotr]

Originally posted by kar
I'm not so sure. I think rather than a 'coach' these guys could use neuro-psychologists.

Originally posted by kar


Gary Anderson can't help you with that. But a trained neuro-psychologist can teach you 'cognitive tricks' to better manage these situations.

Good points Kar, but as you'll remember, Lewis Hamilton received considerable training from Kiwi neuro-psychologist Dr Kerry Spackman prior to his debut last year. And you'd have to say, for much of last year it appeared to have been very good preparation indeed.

What's interesting is that Spackman fell out with McLaren and (it's rumoured) the Hamiltons after being the subject of an article in the Guardian last year. I think the rumour went that Lewis objected to being portrayed as some kind of robot by a doctor of the brain. Spackman has since stopped working (ie: fallen foul) of the team and has returned to New Zealand.

A link to the story is on Spackman's website: http://www.kerryspackman.com/index.htm

You'll also notice he has a tag on the website: 'confidentiality assured' which is a bit strange given the article spilling the beans on Hamilton linked above on the same screen!

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big supporter of Hamilton and McLaren, but I wonder if Lewis would have benefited from ongoing neuro-training using Spackman's techniques...

[AlexS]

What a disgraceful idea. Bureaucratic tentacles reaching new heights, as if they arent destroying F1 already, old drivers should be retired and stay there. Stop. I have no problem that a driver gets a coach but that is his/her choice.

And argument is mighty silly like if any coaching on earth would have precluded the Hamilton mistake, only maybe if F1 gets 2 driving places and there is a teacher in the other one.

[Dave Ware]

I'd perfer to let the the drivers drive the cars themselves. If there's too much sensory overload for most of the drivers, but a few can handle it, then those few are better drivers in that situation.

Fangio didn't need a coach at Monaco when he saw all the spectators looking past the blind corner, at the accident he would have driven into if he had taken that turn at full song.

If it was up to me, I'd go back to pit boards.

Dave

[kar]

Originally posted by travbrad


You must have missed the memo, stating that Hamilton is anything less than a god won't be tolerated

It's not a bash on Lewis, it's just a fact of life. There's only so many things you can think about at once. But like anything it can be improved by training.

I went to a starcraft tournament in Seoul a couple years ago (it's a pc game, the koreans are crazy over it) and watching the top players simply beggars belief. It's not their point and click skills that makes the difference either (although that's a prerequisite), it's their multitasking ability. The top drawer players are doing like at least 200 clicks per minute, and 5 per _second_ is considered the grail for professionals. Just stop for a second and comprehend just how much information is being processed here to enable such rapid gameplay.

I remember reading a PhD comparing the cognitive capacity of Australian FA/18 pilots to professional teenage rts players while at Uni. One of the notable observations was that some of the 13-18 year old kids in the study who were playing these high paced games were significantly better at reading and reacting to stimuli overload than the pilots.

It's common sense in many ways. If you're used to having to think at 100mp/h for large chunks of the day odds are that's going to help in everyday life not just gameplay.

Then there's the whole area of autonomous cognition. Think about everyday life, a lot of what we do is governed by stereotyping and cognitive programming. If you know what most of the stimuli are, you can just switch off and react largely autonomously, leaving spare active mental capacity available for the unexpected. One wonders if Lewis had, for example, been cognitively coached through the pitlane procedures until it was utterly mundane if he'd have had more time to look up and see what was going on around him?

It's like a solider learning to put his weapon together blind folded. He'd never have to do it (well rarely) in battle. But it just means that if something does go wrong in theatre you can devote very little mental capacity into fixing it while focusing on the environmental stimuli which are infinitely variable. Think about yourself in the morning, are you thinking about what you're doing while making breakfast? Like most people, I certainly don't, I'm on autopilot and thinking about other things.

I dunno, I find this whole subject matter very interesting. I think Jackie is miles off target with this recent story, but he might not be too far off in terms of drivers training their 'mind management' as much as their physical conditioning.

[Orin]

Originally posted by Buttoneer
No, not 52 seater trucks which end up hung arse out over cliff edges in the Alps, but trainers with responsibility to keep young turks on the straight and narrow and impart their cast experience and knowledge.

JYS thinks it's a good thing.

I agree, mostly. You only have to read Martin Brundle's 'Working The Wheel' to see what a wealth of experience he has and which may be extremely useful even for those drivers arrogant enough to think they already know it all.

To my mind though, it seems F1 allows the race engineers to do this job to a certain extent ("Come on Fisi, Push!") but an ex-driver could very well be more useful in those circumstances.

Of course the drivers are all confident and arrogant in their own way, but no more so that the top players in any sport, most of which employ professional coaches.

If it's some idiot doing the "Come on Fisi, push!" (Alan Permayne?) crap, the kind of verbal diarrhoea typically spouted by Jock Clear, then it's certainly not needed, it's simply a distraction. But that's not what Stewart was suggesting, actually JYS's suggestion looks very sensible: someone offering timely and concisely worded advice as it is needed. As he says, in other sports it's quite normal to have a coach to ensure the player concentrates on what is pertinent. What's required is someone who can see what's important and communicate that effectively. It needn't be an ex-driver and actually most drivers wouldn't be up to the job.

[kar]

I'm surprised Jackie didn't point to Michael Schumacher's mentoring of Felipe Massa in 2006.

But that would have probably involved being remotely complimentary about Michael ...

[potmotr]

Originally posted by Orin


If it's some idiot doing the "Come on Fisi, push!" (Alan Permayne?) crap, the kind of verbal diarrhoea typically spouted by Jock Clear

My favourite is Jarno Trulli's engineer: "Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaarno, eee is three seconds behind yoooo. Push Jaaaarno, push."

[zakeriath]

I think you will find that there a lot of driver coaches out there already, a lot of the F3 boys use them.

Kenny Brack, Andy Priaulx etc

[glorius&victorius]

But Jackie, isn't that the whole point of re-introducing F2!

[undersquare]

It seems to me the idea of coaching in tennis, golf, boxing, skiing etc is that

(a) someone with years of experience knows various things you don't as a young person starting out.

(b) some things are just more obvious from outside than inside.

© an analytical person can show things to a more instinctive person that they wouldn't have worked out on their own.

It amounts to passing on an accumulation of knowledge.

I don't see why these wouldn't be true for driving. We accept that drivers all have their own "styles", like early/late turn-in, harder on the tyres, load the front, prefer different brake materials etc. etc., these are really different slight shortcomings which could be trained out, or trained to be used selectively, it seems to me.

The attitude in F1 is Ron's: "I don't need someone to tell my drivers how to drive a car fast". But in his place I would certainly give it a try.

[Jodum5]

If i were a current driver I would be a bit insulted at the suggestion that the drivers needs coaches. Back in Stewart's day it was a ton more dangerous and I don't think they got coaches now. So today with a small fraction of the danger the drivers need help handling the pressure? Bizzare suggestion in my opinion. Especially since he uses the fact that a couple of drivers made a silly mistake in the pitlane as the basis of his argument.

I have always though a driver's race engineer was supposed to fill a role that helped the driver understand the car and dealing with problems (driving related) during a race weekend and his overall time with the team. I wouldn't call it a coach but perhaps occasional coaching being part of the job description. So am I wrong or is Jackie Stewart out of touch? Perhaps just running his mouth as Max Moseley would most likely believe?

Anyway, the article is a bit odd. It first talks about coaching then switches to Prost helping Senna succeed because of his development skills.

[Lifew12]

Originally posted by Jodum5
Back in Stewart's day it was a ton more dangerous and I don't think they got coaches now.

Back then it was far from unusual for senior driver in team X to give all the help he could in terms of technique and the right route around the circuit to junior driver; prime example being Cevert under Stewarts tutelage at Tyrrel.

[Jodum5]

But they do that now, look at Schumacher and Massa.

That's not what Jackie Stewart is suggesting though. He wants teams to have full time staff dedicated to helping "young drivers" manage situations. Coaches in most sports aren't for that, they are more in place to give directions to athletes based on different situations. Drivers already have race engineers giving them directions over the radio.

[kar]

Those were in the days before sophisticated telemetry and simulators.

Today, most junior drivers have more information at their disposal than Fangio would have had at the end of his career.

What drivers need is not lessons on how to drive, or whatever, but on mentality and stress/time management. Like Schumacher didn't teach Felipe how to drive faster, he taught him an approach, a mental outlook, how to deal with stress etc.

[glorius&victorius]

Originally posted by undersquare
It seems to me the idea of coaching in tennis, golf, boxing, skiing etc is that

(a) someone with years of experience knows various things you don't as a young person starting out.

(b) some things are just more obvious from outside than inside.

© an analytical person can show things to a more instinctive person that they wouldn't have worked out on their own.

It amounts to passing on an accumulation of knowledge.

I don't see why these wouldn't be true for driving. We accept that drivers all have their own "styles", like early/late turn-in, harder on the tyres, load the front, prefer different brake materials etc. etc., these are really different slight shortcomings which could be trained out, or trained to be used selectively, it seems to me.

The attitude in F1 is Ron's: "I don't need someone to tell my drivers how to drive a car fast". But in his place I would certainly give it a try.

but isn't that what Mclaren did with Lewis in the simulator? Preparing him as best as possible... and I am sure that in between races Lewis receives plenty of feedback on his performance....

The funny thing is: last year with Lewis performing beyond expectations nobody said a thing. Now he crashes in the pit during an extremely unusual situation that occurs in racing (I think F1 is the only place where the pitlane is closed at the exit, while the entrance is open) and everybody falls over him.

And if it was somebody else than Lewis crashing in the pit nobody would have said anything about driver coaches.

[Lifew12]

Originally posted by kar

What drivers need is not lessons on how to drive, or whatever, but on mentality and stress/time management.

Most seem to have no problem with it!!

[Ross Stonefeld]

I don't know what JYS is on about. I know an F1 coach, how did he miss them?

[glorius&victorius]

Originally posted by kar
Those were in the days before sophisticated telemetry and simulators.

Today, most junior drivers have more information at their disposal than Fangio would have had at the end of his career.

What drivers need is not lessons on how to drive, or whatever, but on mentality and stress/time management. Like Schumacher didn't teach Felipe how to drive faster, he taught him an approach, a mental outlook, how to deal with stress etc.

I am sure that in every team there are plenty of people who coach drivers, giving them feedback and helping them (I am not talking of Flavio whipping Nelsinho's ass) but teams have their support system around drivers, made up of people who have seen many F1 drivers. The coaching aspect is integral as far as the technical part is concerned.

And for psychological part for raising your moral, and feeling upbeat and positive, finding calmness you turn to your family or close friends who always supported you on the way to F1. And then there is the fitness and personal coaches...

Besides all this support how much support does a driver need/handle? I think most would prefer some time by themselves.

I really don't see this point of another layer of "driver coaches".

[Orin]

Originally posted by glorius&victorius


but isn't that what Mclaren did with Lewis in the simulator? Preparing him as best as possible... and I am sure that in between races Lewis receives plenty of feedback on his performance....

The funny thing is: last year with Lewis performing beyond expectations nobody said a thing. Now he crashes in the pit during an extremely unusual situation that occurs in racing (I think F1 is the only place where the pitlane is closed at the exit, while the entrance is open) and everybody falls over him.

And if it was somebody else than Lewis crashing in the pit nobody would have said anything about driver coaches.

The point is that currently the person speaking to the driver is just one of the team, it's the luck of the draw as to how good he is. Stewart is talking about hiring someone who can see what's most important in the heat of the moment and deliver that message clearly to the driver. In the example you give the coach would try to ensure Hamilton was calm and lucid before entering the pits, when he was jumped in the pitstop the coach would know that it's more important to tell him about the red light than commiserating over a slightly slower stop (or reassuring him WRT the fuel load), that information is secondary.

[Jodum5]

Originally posted by kar

What drivers need is not lessons on how to drive, or whatever, but on mentality and stress/time management. Like Schumacher didn't teach Felipe how to drive faster, he taught him an approach, a mental outlook, how to deal with stress etc .

I think it's called experience.

[Ricardo F1]

Originally posted by Tigershark

What about them? Why wouldn't kar's (and Wurz's) explanation apply to other drivers as well?

It does. But wouldn't it be more productive to make the statement across the board rather than kar's usual attacks on Hamilton?

[mursuka80]

I would love someone to say to Kimi "here is your F1 coach,listen what he has to say about best approach about your job"

[Lifew12]

Originally posted by mursuka80
I would love someone to say to Kimi "here is your F1 coach,listen what he has to say about best approach about your job"

Didn't Ferrari try to get him to 'listen' to Michael at teh beginning of last year? Wasn't Michaels job that of driver advisor or something?

[ex Rhodie racer]

Originally posted by mursuka80
I would love someone to say to Kimi "here is your F1 coach,listen what he has to say about best approach about your job"

The certified one needs to justify his promotional fees you know. The only way he can do that is to flap his lips a bit so that his pic appears in an article about what he´s just flapped his lips about, while he stands there in his new promo **** looking as if he´s just said something important. The wee fella should break out the pipe and slippers and put his feet up. Afterall, he doesn´t need the money. I think the truth is, it´s his ego that needs boosting and not his bank balance, and this is the only way he can achieve that. I did like the way Lewis politely told him to butt out though.

[turin]

Originally posted by kar
Those were in the days before sophisticated telemetry and simulators.

Today, most junior drivers have more information at their disposal than Fangio would have had at the end of his career.

What drivers need is not lessons on how to drive, or whatever, but on mentality and stress/time management. Like Schumacher didn't teach Felipe how to drive faster, he taught him an approach, a mental outlook, how to deal with stress etc.

I think there is the crux of the matter. Because in regards to LH crash in Canada, it is likely that he was upset by losing two places and therefore he wasn't 100% focused. A trained (perhaps "cooler" driver) would have known that there was plenty of race to go and try something else. At the same time, however, the current status of racing and lack of overtaking also means that the possibility to overcome that deficit is pretty small, which obviously could lead to frustration.

Regarding the sensory overload you have mentioned before, it is certainly true, but I would say it is really an issue situations like that happens more often. That Kimi, Kubica and Alonso all stopped suggests that it wasn't really that bad.

As for the original question, I'd say no, let them sort out the problems themselves and thus separate the best from the rest.

[Ross Stonefeld]

Originally posted by mursuka80
I would love someone to say to Kimi "here is your F1 coach,listen what he has to say about best approach about your job"

I've heard Ferrari brought one in last year (or maybe his managers did) for a part of the season to help him get on top of things.

[OfficeLinebacker]

Why not? All the big Olympians have coaches, even for the individual disciplines such as fencing.

I know in NASCAR the best spotters act like coaches (he's all by himself so let him through if you want, nice and smooth here, don't worry about that boy, I know the 70 is holding you up, don't worry--the tire pressures are still coming up, etc).

Bicyclists have coaches.

For a sport with so much at stake, it almost seems strange that they haven't adopted a coach type paradigm yet.

[mursuka80]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld


I've heard Ferrari brought one in last year (or maybe his managers did) for a part of the season to help him get on top of things.

Kimi has said several times "I dont need anyones advice how to live my life" I think that includes his driving

[mursuka80]

I just thought that if they get coaches,then all the fanboys can blame the coach for their drivers crappy performance

[Ross Stonefeld]

He doesn't need engineers then either, as they often coach the drivers.

[mursuka80]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
He doesn't need engineers then either, as they often coach the drivers.

Touche

[undersquare]

Originally posted by glorius&victorius


but isn't that what Mclaren did with Lewis in the simulator? Preparing him as best as possible... and I am sure that in between races Lewis receives plenty of feedback on his performance....

The funny thing is: last year with Lewis performing beyond expectations nobody said a thing. Now he crashes in the pit during an extremely unusual situation that occurs in racing (I think F1 is the only place where the pitlane is closed at the exit, while the entrance is open) and everybody falls over him.

And if it was somebody else than Lewis crashing in the pit nobody would have said anything about driver coaches.

Well I wasn't really thinking about Canada pitlane, in that case IMO his engineer or someone was simply supposed to remind him in time. I suppose as you say it got everyone thinking about the issues though.

It would be interesting to know how they use the simulator, but Ron's quote a month or so ago was pretty robust so I wouldn't think there's much driving coaching going on there. Just, I suspect, untutored practice, the effect of adjustments, fuel loads etc.

But earlier, in his karting career, Anthony really did train Lewis' braking, by making him practice braking later and later, moving his brake marker nearer and nearer the corner. One difference between driving and other non-team sports is that they don't seem to train individual parts of the skills in a formal way, like say backhand volleys or the backswing, in testing the drivers just "drive". I suppose they have the telemetry, but it's not quite the same.

[ex Rhodie racer]

Originally posted by undersquare



But earlier, in his karting career, Anthony really did train Lewis' braking, by making him practice braking later and later, moving his brake marker nearer and nearer the corner. One difference between driving and other non-team sports is that they don't seem to train individual parts of the skills in a formal way, like say backhand volleys or the backswing, in testing the drivers just "drive". I suppose they have the telemetry, but it's not quite the same.

All the kids who come up through karting are taught the basics. It´s just expected that by the time they are ready to step into a F1 car, they have mastered the art of driving as quickly as possible. Most of them will have had a minimum of 12 years racing experience behind them by the time they get an F1 seat, and if they still need coaching at that point, then they should really consider another line of work.
With regards a mental coach, well that´s another matter altogether and would very much depend on the individual I imagine. Most racing drivers I´ve met have been very individualistic types who imagine the world should be listening to their thoughts on the subject, not visa verse, so somehow I don´t think that would go down very well. It would meet a tremendous amount of resistance from some of the more strong willed types I think.

[fastlegs]

Once again on this BB it is implied that the race car driver who has won 3 WDC and has a vast experience in the sport knows nothing compared to the racing wizards in this thread.