Racing Tips - Ocular Driving
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Ocular Driving
Ocular driving is a fancy name for where you are looking when you drive. Most people are taught to look where they are going when they learn to drive. This is wrong for racing, and not really even the best idea when you're on the road - although its close. Whenever you are driving at speed you should be looking where you WANT to go, not where you are going.
You should not fixate on one point on the road (you are driving to a specific point for more than a brief moment in time, and this can lead to road hypnosis), instead you should be looking well ahead of where you are and constantly shifting you vision to you are watching where you want to be in the near future. This means that if you go round a bend in the road and you want to remain as far over to the left as you can, you should keep looking to the left of your lane. Likewise, if you want to exit on the right, you should keep looking at the right hand side of the lane. This applies all the time, whether you're changing lanes, cornering or simply following curves in the road. In addition to this, whenever you come up to a corner you should usually have your heard turned and be looking through either the side of the windscreen or the passenger/driver side window before (or at least just as you start) you turning the wheel. If you're eyes are looking ahead of you as you enter the corner and start to steer, then you are lookign where you are going not where you want to go.
You generally know when you're getting this right as after a few days you start to find the A and B pillars of your cars windscreen are constantly in your way.
Although you are primarily focusing on where you want to go you should not totally ignore where you are. You need to keep your immediate surroundings in your peripheral vision so you can react to changes or hazards that occur in your immediate vicinity. In particular this includes being aware of cars that are passing you or driving along side, as well as the usual hazards and surface changes you encounter every day.
This should noticebly decrease your laps times on circuits, or through slalom courses. This also makes you a much safer driver as you have more time to react to things that are coming, and a much much smoother driver. This extra smoothness is a combination of the extra time allowed to cope with whats coming up, and the magic of hand-eye co-ordination which means the car will automatically go where you are looking. As a result, this is also a must on hill climbs/rallies etc. where you are racing at speed on loose surfaces. Remember, smoothness is the key to speed.
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