Driver 61: The Vision Trick That Turns Amateur Drivers Into Racers - Scott Mansel

This is pro linebacker TJ Watt and I'm back with YPB by Abercrombie for another Activewear Drop.

My second co-design collection has new shorts and tanks that keep up with all my in-season

workouts and their new Restore collection is a game changer off the field too because

even pro athletes like me need rest days. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in the app online and in stores

because your personal best is greater than anything.

Could you define natural talent to me? Do you believe that to kind of fully be true that?

I think it's a blend, right? I mean...

Scott! Driver 61 is a former racer who turned his passion into a movement.

After years of being a professional driver, he is now sharing his secrets to the world of racing.

The biggest thing that anyone can work on is making sure they're looking in the right place.

80% of driving quickly on track is vision.

How do you get a rookie with basic experience within 1.5% of someone in a racing car?

The quickest way to do it is to break everything down. You do the boring stuff,

brake in a straight line, get the braking pressure right, keep on doing it.

50 times in a row and that's how you learn. I loved it of course but it was hugely stressful.

It sounds like from your story all you've ever known is racing. Life sometimes gives you all

these punches and it feels like you're being punched away from the thing that you love.

I wasn't going to be able to send the money for the rent that month and then Covid hits

and I thought oh my god what are we going to do now?

Scott! Otherwise known to many as Driver 61, you've built something which has changed the

way that people are educated around racing and how they can improve their talent on and off the

track because so much of it is down to so many microns that make differences in the world that

you do. Not only that you've built a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers which

puts you in just a small percentage of creators in the entire world so you must be very proud of

everything that's led you up to the moment of sitting in this valentine tell your story to my

listeners but in your own words who are you and what do you do? I'm a racing driver at heart.

I kind of had my first career as a racing driver and now I make content to bring more people into

the sport that I love and explain the details behind it and the way in which the engineers

and the drivers are always pushing the extremities of what's possible. What I find with so many

guests that sit opposite me in this van is the thing that like when we're in our earliest years

that we set out that sparks us that finds our passion. Many many many moons later life looks

so different but can equally be happy or can equally be fulfilling or brilliant or open doors that

you never thought possible. Just how different is your life now to what you'd pictured it to be

maybe when you were kind of 15 16? The the I'd say externally it's very different but internally

the way that I work and the way that I push and the way that I look at the the details it's actually

very similar. There's a lot of similarities between when I was racing to what I do now

and it's just the same thread that runs through but the life is is very different obviously I

always wanted to race I always wanted to get to Formula 1 and now I've got a big YouTube channel

so it is very different but you know the fundamentals are pretty much the same to be honest.

But when you say the fundamentals are basically still the same we're going to go on to talk a

lot about fundamentals today because everybody thinks they're a racing driver until a real one

shows them what racing really looks like right so we're going to talk about how people can improve

their track days because so many people like myself and my friends just end up balling around a

track thinking that we're the stick and when the stick shows up we find out that we're actually

not the stick but we're also going to talk about how the hell your life has changed from that point

of your earliest years and then entering your 20s and racing all the way through to building over

a million subscribers on YouTube now but what would you say that all of those things that you've

done like there must have been a point where you were captivated behind cars and racing

in your earliest years do you remember that like is it significant?

It was so ingrained from the beginning that actually I don't remember where it started and

it's interesting I've got a five-year-old now the same's happening to him I think it all started so

early I was at like track days and racing events from when I was two years old my dad was racing

I had a go-kart at the age of four it's always been there it's always been my love and so I

don't remember a specific point I do remember like you know snapshots as we go along but right

at the beginning it's just always been there so I've been very lucky in that respect.

There's so many people that watch Formula One that watch Formula Three or different racing

series whether it's the GT cars whether it's IndyCar whatever it is and they think damn it

I'd have loved to have done that like I wish that was the thing I chose as my passion or hobby

when I was growing up but we'll get into the accessibility of racing and like how different

people start but do you think to be on a grid somewhere now it has to start from the age of

like four to six these days or is it possible to become a racing driver later in life?

I definitely think it helps if you start earlier because all of the feeling the way that you understand

how the car behaves beneath you if that's ingrained from the beginning into your nervous system you

have all of that information there naturally but it's only because it's become you know started

off so early and you can teach but as you get older and older it does get more more difficult

you know I've worked with drivers that have been very young all the way up to maybe 50 or 60 years

old and it does it becomes more challenging to break down the old habits and install like the

new ones. So how did you learn your habits it started in a go-kart at the age of four years

old give us like a timeline of how that developed into like your later racing? So I mean at the

beginning you are just yeah you're just driving around because it's fun you're enjoying you're

enjoying the thrill of driving and understanding the the kart or the car doing the same with my son

at the moment he was just in the simulator yesterday we're going karting in a couple of weeks for the

first time on a proper track. That's the difference right there for the for the first start then point

is the fact that he's hopped in a sim straight away before going there I'm guessing you didn't

have that luxury. I didn't know because sims back back then and you know around 2000 year 2000 when

I was stepping into cars at least they didn't exist like they do today and actually the simulator

side of things is really interesting because I think it might open up motorsport as I think

we might be talking about it might open up motorsport to to a wider range of people.

You can argue that sim racing is actually more competitive than real world racing

very likely is. There's so many examples of just what you're saying happening in the world as well

like I don't know the exact name but I'm pretty sure you'll know one of my kind of memories over the

last few years was a lad that had won a sim challenge and he ended up in one of the cars at

Le Mans I think it was with Nissan. Yes it was around that and it was those kind of stories

that we hear about that then kind of opens up the other end of the can where we talk about

people that have to race since they were younger but there are people that kind of get these

opportunities through sim racing so I can see why you'd be pushing your lad to be doing that but

that wasn't there for you it's like how did go karting progress into those next stages.

It's just time in the cart I think back then it was a bit different than it is now just because

the seat time was reduced and I think if you look at karting now there are kids out there that are

just spending so much time in the carts they're in the sim they're so well prepared but it was

it was just doing as much testing as we could as much racing as we could and then some guidance

from from my dad. Well my dad never carted he raced at like a club grassroots level

and he pointed me in the right direction. Well we all think growing up

our dads are the fastest racing drivers on the planet but there's definitely a crossover point

where us guys and girls that are into cars have that crossover we're like do you know what I think

I'm faster than you know dad they've got to kind of accept it but something you said was really

interesting that I want to dive into is natural talent because natural talent is a phrase used on

so many videos we see about racing it's used when commentators are describing a certain driver

maybe they're describing max for example versus someone that's had lots and lots and lots of

training more analytical potentially to get to the way they drive or the way that they are on track

could you define natural talent to me a little bit because what you said a minute ago about it

being it's not natural talent it's just the things that you kind of develop in your earliest years

do you believe that to kind of fully be true then I think it's a blend right and there's no way that

we can ever know right how do you know that everyone has different amount of training different

quality of training they start at different times in their life so it's definitely a blend but I would

say probably leaned more to the side of building these patterns and habits and how do you analyze

your driving how do you then set out a plan to improve on track and developing in that way so I

think you know if everyone's had equal training equal quality and equal amount of training maybe

there is some difference there that's when the mentality comes into play a confident driver

and a mentality like somebody like Verstappen you know relatively aggressive very analytical in

how he drives very precise in how he drives that then also comes in and is that natural or is that

just the way that he's been brought up and you know it's nature versus nurture and it's a difficult

thing to actually well you can't pinpoint it when did you start to realize that you had that thing

that natural talent that seat time from a young age that you're actually quite quick did that happen

during carting or is that in like a series after that you know carting's it's difficult when you're

a kid because you don't really know what's going on and carting's a very difficult environment

actually because what ends up happening even when I was doing it in like the when was it the mid 90s

the the carts are so responsible for the speed of the driver and so you know we went up into the

senior category when your 12 years old tkm was the the name of the category and I was quick

straight away I was running at the front of the national championships which was a bit unusual

actually because it's 12 to 16 age range and obviously there's a big development in you as a

as a child probably where we have a lot of our earliest development years is in that age range

yeah yeah exactly so I went in and I was I was quick straight away I was running at the front

of the national championships and then at the end of the second year I was running like sixth in

the national championships which was great would just set me up then to potentially win the year

after the year after that and at the end of that year my engine my good engine that I had seized

and I didn't have a good engine anymore and the next year just got another engine and I was running

mid-pack and that was very difficult to understand as a kid of you know 13 years old or so and it

made me realise actually you know the the car the car is extremely important and while you think

that you're quick you you think you're competitive actually there's many other factors that are

involved in in the performance that's one of the issues with karting is that you know you will find

families or teams that buy up all the engines they'll mix and match all the components run them on

the dyno keep the quick ones out of the market keep the quick ones for themselves and then of

course they have an advantage and that's why you see big budgets in karting because it still happens

like that one of the lads that works for me part-time does all of the shorts for road success

and everything else is Louis we've referred to him as child labour services on some of the channels

as a bit of a giggle however he's now tino jay for services and he's racing saxos and that's really

unlocked my mindset just listening to him and his dad and to their first season of that of something

so almost I'm going to say mundane to a lot of people who's just like here in a saxo championship

there is so much more to it than that and the way that they find pace the way that they can

eke out advantages is unbelievable but they've also just had a seized engine which as well as

coming round to it and there's so many people out there now going to be listening to that go-kart

in common said I knew I had the slowest car I knew I had the slowest car when I went with my

mates next time I'm going to give them a backhand but did that was that one of the most valuable

lessons as well that it's not all about you and your ability you've got to make sure that all

the pieces of the puzzle come together to actually give you a package that can provide speed that

is true I don't think I fully understood it at the time is a bit confusing you know 12 13 years

old I did understand it later and actually then when I went into cars I saw where the driver is

more involved than it might be in a go-kart I actually saw my kind of skill level seem to increase

there because the driver is more involved at that level although it is still you know a lot about

the machine at that age if you haven't had those six years prior to that then you are really at a

massive advantage disadvantage which is where it comes into it because you said it all of those

natural skills you'd have had six years a long time like people do start racing crazy early really

compared to other sports and things that you do yeah I mean of course you're at a disadvantage

you've got six years less experience of what whatever it might be one thing that is interesting

about racing is that as an amateur driver you can actually get quite close to professional

so when I was you know when I was coaching drivers I was coaching some young drivers and some

amateur drivers and you could get a 50 year old bloke who was an am who'd not raced anything before

within a couple of years with enough training you could get them within maybe a percent and a

half of a professional driver which I just find astonishing because if you look at other sports

there's no way that an am could get that close to a professional see one of my favorite quotes I've

ever heard on any podcast ever was a random podcast in the states I was listening to

and it was Chris Williamson and he said the magic is in the work the others aren't doing which

sometimes it's such a small percentage like that one and a half percent difference and that's the

bit that's made up of starting at four years old and just having a hundred more turnings on a corner

compared to someone that's done it 50 times like there are so many things that go into that one

and a half percent even though it seems like a seemingly small number yeah that's the difference

between somebody being able to do it and frustrated that they're so close to being able to do it but

how do you get a rookie with basic experience someone like myself that could go and slap my

LT around Donnie on a track day and think well that was okay that was a respectable time how do

you get me within one and a half percent of someone in a racing car the quickest way to do it is to

break everything down in a really simple way if you look at other sports where you do drills

you do the boring stuff right you break it down to the simplest form that you can and you just do

that hundreds of times driving is very different right you go and do track day and you go out there

and there might be race cars on the track yeah you're trying to navigate all the traffic you're

just trying to go as fast as you can over a complete lap so you're trying to do this kind of

incredible incredible kind of symphony of braking and turning and looking in the right place and

balancing the car and getting some oversteer you're trying to learn all of this while there's another

30 cars on track at the same time the way that people learn race car driving at the at the AM level

especially is just way too complicated you're going in is imagine going you know you're training for

boxing or something like this it's like going straight into a fight you'd never do that right

you'd punch the bag first and so when I ran the racing school it goes back to Chris's quote that

you were mentioning we did the boring stuff I hired a I hired Bruntingthorpe which is a big

runway and it's got a bit of a track on there and we would do the boring stuff we would break

in the straight line accelerate break in the straight line get the braking pressure right

then do the next bit of the braking we would even like I would improve people's sensitivity on the

pedals by accelerating in a straight line lifting letting the car decelerate a little bit then getting

back on in a smooth way and if they didn't get on it smoothly we just keep on doing it 50 times in

a row and that's how you learn in the quickest way it's funny that you mentioned Bruntingthorpe

because Bruntingthorpe was the first time I ever had an off in a car and it was back when I was

18 years old I was let loose in a McLaren 570 Spyder up Bruntingthorpe and we were just doing

some drag races for someone's YouTube video and that was the first time I realized that on a track

environment as you head up the runway there's a right hander to come back down the other side

that it is so different to the road and your perception of speed sometimes is so different

to the road and we've been doing all these fast runs up and down and I remember I thought I'll

take this corner quite quick now I thought I was going in at like 80 for example and I was going in

at 120 because we'd been doing 180 190 up the runway my perception of speed was gone

and I completely missed the braking overcooked it I was in the field the front splitter ripped off

like it was my first big lesson in a car was that exactly but if you take that person there is a lot

of potential there to be unlocked with the right training then yeah absolutely yeah it can all be

learned it's very rare that I've actually been sat next to somebody and said you know they're

they just don't have any ability I think with with enough training you can get there I've worked

you know I have worked with drivers initially you're like this this guy's going to struggle but

actually given the right training given some time they build that feeling they build the right

processes and they they become quick many of you might not know this but away from the recordings

that I do in my van studios I've actually got a digital marketing agency now we specialize in a

lot of automotive clients but we cover everything really our team is made up of ppc specialists

seo specialists and the most talented designers I've ever seen which have done work like the

stana gloss website the twr website and many more we've actually just built icon box for the

auto alex crew as well meaning that people that watch their channel can buy their favorite merch

seamlessly and in style so if you're interested in starting a project and you'd love to speak to

the link below and let's hop on a call let's dump that down a little bit why would someone

struggle versus someone not struggle and can we look at it as like a lot of people are familiar

with the personalities on the f1 grid you know you've got someone like you key from two years ago

who's just and then you've got someone really cool calm and collected maybe like a bot ass figure

who is the easier one to train the holidays mean more travel more shopping more time online

and more personal info and more places that could expose you more to identity theft

but lifelock monitors millions of data points per second if your identity is stolen our us

based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back don't face drained

accounts fraudulent loans or financial losses alone get more holiday fun and less holiday

worry with lifelock save up to 40 percent your first year visit lifelock.com slash podcast

terms apply well with the with the f1 drivers that's something different but if you're talking

about someone who might be a little be pushing too quickly at the beginning and someone who's

not quite quickly enough it's actually easier to bring the the more aggressive driver down than it

is to push the other one up okay it it still depends it's not black and white but if you've

got someone who isn't worried about the speed but they just need the refinement that's generally

an easier task than building the confidence in somebody to get them up to the limit.

So where is that first magic unlock you said about breaking it down into real simple steps

but are you looking at kind of is is there like a single thing is it like breaking is the biggest

place that people can gain an advantage or is it cornering or is it like what what is the thing

that if you were stood on the the pit all of donny watching people going into the first right

hander that you see making the most consistent mistakes the the biggest thing that anyone

can work on is making sure they're looking in the right place so i'm super simple what happens is

when they get in a car especially on the track there when it's busy there's a lot going on right

you're using a lot of mental bandwidth you might have the adrenaline flowing in you a lot of people

think oh i just need to push hard i just need to go faster that isn't the right way around you do

that you start making mistakes you shouldn't have to be brave right a racing driver is not brave

they if they're brave to be brave right you have to it means that you are not sure of the outcome

on the other side you're being brave into a corner you're going to have a crash at some point because

you don't know what you're not predicting what the car's able to do a racing driver will always

believe that the car will go through the corner at a certain speed right and so they're looking

they're predicting how the car's going to behave whether it's going to touch the the limit or not

to start sliding but actually the the biggest thing that drivers can focus on is is the vision

and what what i was leading to there is if they're full of adrenaline what naturally happens is your

vision comes down close to you and it becomes more tunnel vision right you're kind of full of

adrenaline you're running away from that tiger everything comes down like this and it happens

to me as well right if i get in a a quick car i get in an f1 car when i haven't been in one for

you know three or four months my vision naturally comes down and you have to i have to force myself

to open it up now i've done it enough times in my lifetime that it happens very quickly and i

i re-adjust but my natural instinct is for that to happen and that happens with with a lot of

drivers on track so if you're heading into red gate at donnington as you're mentioning there

if you're not looking in the braking zone if you're in the braking zone and you're not looking at

the apex which is what a lot of drivers will do they'll just be looking you know 10 meters in front

of themselves they'll brake and then when they get to that turning cone they'll go oh there's a

turning cone just turn the car towards something on the inside they don't know what they're turning

towards and so they can't estimate the speed they can't estimate the right line everything's coming

at them really quickly because they're not looking far enough ahead now if you in that braking zone

look across at the apex you're triangulating your position as you come into the corner which means

that you understand the speed that you're coming into the corner everything slows down because

you're looking further ahead your line will be naturally perfect i've not met a driver who can't

go on the right racing line if they're looking in the right spot and you understand when to come

off the brakes you understand when to turn in without the use of these stupid cones and everything's

just so much easier 80% of driving quickly on track is vision everything falls from there everything

that leads on from there to give an example of what you're talking about actually having a profound

effect on someone have you got like an example that you think about to someone that you coached

that was in like position a and finished in like position b like there was such a journey and a

kind of short amount of time just from a few things that you changed yeah i there was a driver

years ago that i coached in a catering and what one so one of the key things is they they they begin

to learn how to look further ahead but then when there's other cars on the track and and again it's

comes down to bandwidth and adrenaline when there's other cars on the track they're in a race their

vision just comes naturally down so we just we taped like a sticker on the dashboard um just to

bring them back into focus so every time that they would see this i thought lift my vision up again

and he he went from running mid-pack in this catering championship which is pretty competitive

and then as we did this we stuck this thing on the dashboard yeah i think he came second he was

definitely it was on podium which was like and he hadn't had anything or any glimpse of a position

like that before and yeah it just it makes everything so much easier do you think people

try and transfer skills that make them quick on their favourite road for argument's sake over

to the track as well there's almost no correlation between the two there's zero correlation um

i would say i don't know because i'd never asked that question but i would say that people believe

that if they can drive down a b-road quickly they can be quick on the track and to me it's

completely different i think that's where i had my biggest education when i was in my teenage

years like six seven years ago was in that exact thing because i decided to take a rossper

institute of advanced motorists test so i did a um i got a silver in it so not quite gold but

never gold in anything but i did this test and i expected it to be like do you know every single

road sign and what it means and do you know like every single white line or if it's dotted like

what the difference is between the two i expected it to be like very much suck eggs and all about

like the things that was never good at school which was doing the revision but what it was all

about was finding the limit point of vision and it was like constantly like bring your eyes up

you're looking at the car in front of you look for the limit point look at where the corner

starts opening up is when accelerate look when that corner stops closing and it was all about

that so much driving on the road could become a lot safer if you just opened up your vision which

is exactly what you're talking about and then i took some performance coaching with a guy called

Ivan still remember his name from total car control and i went out with him for two days on how to

safely drive my sports cars on the road in a spirited fashion and the first thing he said

again was vision like bring your vision up look look further forward do you understand your limit

points you can take this and go forward and now you need to understand position one on the road

like right over to the left or the way over to position five however when i tried to correlate

some of those things over when i started track driving around 2021 there is like

the track is so much bigger for one than the road like there's so much more space to kind of learn

stuff and and gain an advantage so you've trained somebody to improve their vision it's like a massive

tick and you're trying to keep them reminded to do so because you can get so involved in racing

what's the next biggest thing you get in the string out between the steering wheel and the

accelerator pedal it's a bit more complicated than that to to to be clear but yeah corner entry is

is is probably the the hardest part of the corners where you can find the most most time

because when you're when you're talking about the limit there i'm not sure exactly what you're

referring to but when we talk about it in a racing sense we mean are you is the car sliding

but the limit is not a singular kind of point if you change how the car behaves coming into a

corner you can lower the limit and actually you can be sliding but be slow or you can increase

the limit of vision yes so the limit of what is the furthest point you can see that the vision

point like the furthest piece of tarmac that you can see is the limit on the road for argument

same with the limit in refer to a racing stance is obviously when the car starts to lose it

basically yes exactly so when yeah when you talk about it on referring to a race circuit we're

talking about the limit of grip but you can change that that limit of grip right so depending on how

you balance the braking depending on how you trail brake coming into the corner this is the most

important part who shumako who said that you know the reason that he thought he was quick was because

of the corner entry because of how you trail brakes into the corner it's the most complex part

because you've you imagine coming up to a corner you've done the main part of the deceleration

in a straight line where you shed most of the speed but then as you as you begin to turn

into the corner you're still on the brakes not necessarily to slow the car down that much it's

more to change the pitch of the car like this so if you hold on to the brakes a little bit more

you've got more deceleration means you've got more load transfer on the front of the car

and less on the rear so if you hang on to the brakes a little bit more the nose will have more

grip because pushing those tyres into the track harder which gives them more grip and the rear

less but it's you know it's almost like a seesaw you give the front some you take some away from

the rear what actually most enthusiastic drivers do is they trail brake too much they'll brake coming

into a corner they'll hang on to the brakes too much because they're coming in kind of you know

all a bit of a hot mess coming into the corner and they'll turn it in at which point the rear

feels really lively and they'll say okay that's the limit but it's not you're using the limit of

the rear of the car right because the rears are sliding but actually you might only be using

60% of the grip at the front of the car what you actually want to do is try and transfer some of that

load some of that grip rearwards which balances the difference between the front and the rear

more which means you actually overall you increase the amount of grip the car's got

so what you in fact want to do is brake release the brakes probably a little bit earlier and a

bit lighter pressure so that the the nose isn't digging into the track quite as much level off

the car a little bit therefore you generate grip from seemingly nowhere because that's another thing

that people get wrong right is they come off the brake pedal they treat the brake pedal like they've

got to get rid of it yeah and you most teachers are referring to most trainers would say that you

need to kind of release it in a calm manner to kind of make sure the car doesn't go what you're

doing like yeah i mean you're not on the brake or the accelerator there's nothing going on here

does what you have just talked about only apply to real-wheel drive cars though

no no it's it because the the the driven wheels make no difference on the corner entry okay you

might adapt your line slightly in a front-wheel drive car but actually the balance that you're

talking about going in it's it doesn't have anything to do with the driven axle um the the

technique is exactly the same you obviously have learned so much by doing it and understanding

and doing lap after lap after lap after lap but you provide this content on your channel and you've

put it together in so many short easy to understand videos for so many people to understand and that's

out there now and sims are out there now to practice on without the walls and all the rest of it but

who who taught you when you were younger where did you start to get your experience and understand

those things to become a racing driver i actually believe that i'm quicker now at 40 i was 40 last

then i was when i was 20 because i understand everything a lot more i was just quick when

i was younger now i understand the engineering behind the cars i understand how they're working

dynamically and because i've sat next to hundreds and hundreds of drivers that's actually where i did

most of my learning just through sitting in the passenger seat and seeing how different people

approach it um and reading books and understanding the physics behind what's gone on and i hadn't

done that until probably my mid 20s when my racing career was coming to an end and i decided to go

and coach and actually the start of driver 61 i wanted to put that information out there and

so there was a lot of learning going on there and that's why i ended up building the racing school

that i built your goal at the point of you being scenes and stuff though was formula one right

like it is for so many people were captivated by formula one do you think if you had that extra

information available in your late teens early 20s that that would have given you a better shot

at it or have you learned now that like to get to that level there's so much more that comes into

it that's almost like impossible to affect unless you're in a certain circumstance no it wouldn't

have helped maybe if i had a business degree that might have helped um it's really interesting you

say that because i had karoon on yeah a few weeks back and he spoke about how that was one of the

of it because of how important it was to get your name out there to speak to the sponsors in

the right ways dress appropriately and all the other things that come into being yeah

a one man racing driver essentially and karoon says himself how much support he had and yet he

still needs to learn that so it's quite interesting that point yeah i mean it's tough right i you

need you need to have that understanding from from an early age and while my dad did race at a club

level i don't think as a package we didn't understand how f1 worked we went along and

pushed as far as we we could go and this all the sponsorship that i got was genuine sponsorship

it wasn't deals with my family or you know it was all i wasn't part of any academy because

they didn't exist like they do today um it's just when i look back i just think it was it was

basically impossible there aren't many stories of people coming through

and without without the funding from an early age to all my loyal listeners listening on spotify

apple and other streaming platforms i urge you to do me a quick favor that you might not know

that you could do you can actually follow if you're listening on spotify the road to success

podcast and also rate it with how you feel these conversations have been how they may have helped

you or if you're just enjoying the one that you're listening to today it really will help us if

we're able to grow our streaming platforms beyond hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners

thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast and i really hope to bring you

some more inspirational guests soon but you've still managed to make a success of all that talent

and i think so many people that enter and understand and learn this crazy thing which is racing and

have that passion that's termination that drive that competitive spirit to get in a car to want

to win to want to get better to keep improving to be able to get so frustrated so stressed to

sometimes overcome injury and scary things that happen like i've got billy monger coming on hopefully

in a few weeks and like his story it's just absolutely insane when you look at it like that

but you've managed to transfer all of that into something that's equally exciting and you're

able to take it to the next level with your channel which begin you get which i believe you

started in 2015 but it was a different name then right it was no it was drive 61 2015 so after after

i raced i went i i coached and i ran events in in the space and got to the end of 2014 2015 i was

abroad for like six months of the year which which was great fun actually while i was in my 20s but

i was like having the time of your life yeah it's having the time of my life i was having fun yeah but

i did that for four or five years but it was hectic and i just wasn't you know i wasn't in

financially in the position that i wanted to be in and i was working for other people and so

i just thought you know i want to build something that's my own that can that can improve and and

build each year that's the thing with with racing right you get to the point where you're like okay

it's binary in the success not in terms of racing itself but in terms of whether you go racing or

not so you either raise the sponsorship you either raise enough sponsorship or you you raise 20%

less than you you don't go racing or you build a bloody big youtube channel yeah well this was

the point i was like thinking you know i'm putting all this work in i'm working flat out as hard as

i possibly can so stressful because it feels like life and death all of the time you know this is

everything that i've looked for in my life and actually i can put this work in for five years

and it's not building year on year every year it's the same thing going to try and find the money

and if you don't find the money then you then you don't go racing right it's really difficult

and when you look at the if you take a a view on it remove the emotion from wanting to be a

Formula One driver or be a professional paid driver it's the likeliness of it happening

is very low right if you if you put that effort into a business it's an easier thing to to make

work yeah you're more likely to make it work but do you are you content with the fact that you had

such a stab at it and let's be real here there's not many people that wanted to get to Formula One

didn't quite make it to Formula One but still get the chance to drive Formula One cars like that

is a very small world that you've been able to kind of set that up and this is why i do road

success because road is excess and success of whatever your end goal was can manifest as we

said at the start in so many different ways and the fact that you're able to build a business a

channel and get to drive Formula One cars when you look back on how difficult it was year on year to

gain that sponsorship and you're in that complete turning wheel constantly of are we going to be

able to go racing it's insane how some decisions can have such a great big outcome but you wouldn't

do this now if you didn't have such a passion for racing and some success so before we like leave

your kind of racing years and i know there's so much more to unpack there but what was a race

that stood out for you loads that when you're talking when you're referring back there's

something that like that one was the one do you have that in terms of your racing years

in terms of when i was racing it would i mean it was a stressful time if i'm completely honest

with you because it was always about raising money and then when i when i raced in the states i did

indy lights on a strew you know shoestring budget i was out in the us by myself when i was 19 my

family didn't come with me i was trying to raise money raised a little bit didn't do any testing

would go there into free practice one free practice two and then go into qualifying really stressful

time um we did reasonably well but yeah when you're asking about like a yeah i i loved it of course

but it was hugely stressful because at 19 years old you're thinking you know every race feels like

it it's the the beginning of something great or the end of the career right and i would have loved

to been in that position where all of the the contractual stuff and the finance was taken care

of and you can just focus on the racing but you know for me and a lot of other drivers that just

isn't isn't the case when you ask me when i think about races that stand out in my mind is actually

more more recent it's the stuff that i do for fun that i just go in and enjoy i love driving it

doesn't matter what car it is i love extracting the speed from it and from the cars last year i

did a race with my dad for our endurance race and that's probably the most fun i've ever had in a

race car i discovered your channel when i watched a video titled can a normal person drive a formula

one car what a fabulous question but i'm going to rephrase that question to you is what is it like

when a racing driver drives a formula one car for the very first time for the very first time uh

well the very first time i drove a formula one car was 16 so so it just felt normal because at that

age you just do it don't you it's not like you build up any expectation you just jump in and go

i didn't know any different to be honest with you other than my neck was probably sore afterwards

um now it obviously feels like a very privileged and special experience and i cherish every car

that i get in i've driven 30 something different f1 cars now um so i think once i stopped racing

and had a rest period of you know five years of not i was still racing but kind of at the not at

kind of highest professional level you get a perspective on it and you realize how special

it is i've obviously got mixed emotions about when i was racing i loved it and it was also very

stressful at the same time um but since then as as things have evolved i now look back and whenever

i get in a car i like this is a special moment i love going to the tracks now i love just hanging

out and speaking to the teams and the drivers and and just that whole environment has become a much

kind of friendlier place for me now just less pressure so so i enjoy it more um but yeah going

back to what it's like to drive a Formula 1 car depends on the type of Formula 1 car the earliest

car i've driven is a 1982 Lotus all the way up to the mid 2010s not driven one of these new generation

cars i'm still waiting for one of the f1 teams to ask me um hi alpine yeah anyway um i just thought

putting some drivers in their car so we need to go to house um but yeah i mean it depends on the car

for me that my favorite cars are probably around like late 90s early 2000s not driven in 2004 i'd

love to drive a 2004 car why uh are they 600 kilos v10 big downforce lap records have only just been

noisy they are pure the cars now are 800 kilos they're you know i've not driven one i've driven

a couple in the sim in the f1 sims and they feel a lot more strange but they feel a lot more lethargic

big boats you know they take a while to turn whereas those cars from that period 2004 particularly

they were nimble when you watch the footage you can see them moving around they look a lot more

live and i think for the the most raw extreme f1 experience that's probably the time now after

explaining what those cars are like and after the audience hearing that the first video that i

discovered on your channel was can a normal person drive an f1 car for the first time if they haven't

seen that video let's describe that very car that you're talking about the 2004 version 600

kilos v10 nuts how long would it take for the average person to not kill themselves in that car

on their first car or even set off from the line what have you watched the video where we put a

subscriber in the form of one car i've not you've not no so maybe watch that one next because we

did it when we passed a million subscribers we picked a subscriber at random and they came to

Paul Ricard and drove 2013 was it blue it might have been because it might have been an alpine

colors yeah i think it was it was an alpine colors yeah it was actually a lotus i've seen parts of

it but i can't remember the intricacy of the video yeah so we we got a guy who's 27 28 uh picked him

at random he flew across to Paul Ricard i coached him for the day with alpine and the racing school

down there called winfield racing and we put him in a form of one car not done anything before

aside from cutting and he drove the car and he was quite fast actually can you just dive into

why when you've hit a million subscribers you decide to give a subscriber the opportunity

to do that in a modern car versus i'm taking a formula one car of this generation out for the

first time to you are you very much like business and channel first knowing that that video would

have far greater opportunity than maybe a few is jumping the car and do it i mean it'd be boring

if i did it right i mean not not boring but it's a different feel are you willing to sacrifice

some experiences for the growth and benefit of the channel and your audience as a whole of yeah

of course yeah yeah yeah i mean not really because of the the growth i just thought it was a cool

thing to do i mean it's not cheap we paid for it right but i just thought it'd be a much better

experience and actually the subscribers and the people who watch our content are the ones that

have enabled us to have a business so why would i want to spend that money on me and also i've

driven that car before so i didn't need to drive it again but um getting ricky in the car was it

magic i loved it it was it was better watching him do it and just the emotion and just the

excitement of course that he had and we filmed it of course um than than me driving it yeah

what was one of the biggest things that you had to overcome to be able to do it um he underestimated

how difficult it was so it was from new york he was like a little bit brush he's really super

nice guy right but he came in and he was like he thought he was thought he was rocky if you watch

the video you'll see so he does he does the first session in a f4 car right and the point is just to

learn the circuit you're behind like a pace car i drove the pace car he followed me around to learn

the track and learn the lines poor records quite a difficult track because it's really wide open

it feels like a car park at points difficult to pick out the the braking points and and all of this

followed me around did that really well we told him that he did really well the second session

he goes out by himself to make sure that he doesn't need to follow a car to do the right

racing lines did the first three quarters of the session well was building speed well

and then a few laps before the end on the quickest corner of the track seen at the end of the back

straight which is fast right hander flat more or less flat out almost he tried to go in flat out

and it's really it's a long quick right hander and as he went in there he realized he was running

out of track because he'd gone in slightly the wrong line and he lifted and as i was talking

about before with with the low trunk though when you lift like that all the all the grip goes to

the front of the car removes it from the rear he's just i just hear we were actually stood there

filming it and i just hear like spinning for like five or six seconds and at that point

there's a barrier on the inside if anyone's going to crash at poor regard where the barriers are a

long way away this is the closest one and he went to the inside and i was just thinking shit please

please don't crash because the decision was not mine as to whether he drove the f1 car it comes

from alpine directly of course so at that point he puts in danger the entire video and his whole

experience because there's no more sessions left you know that's the point at which he

has to prove that he's sensible enough and competent enough to drive the f1 car which is a

massive step up and he has his spin right towards the end of the session and so he came in his kind

of confidence level was on the floor at that point and we have a conversation luckily i spoke

to alpine said look you know look at how he's progressed this was although it looked dramatic

it was actually a fairly small mistake let's tone him down a little bit and let's get him in

in the f1 car and thankfully they let him do it and then he went and drove the f1 car he did

extremely well that's unbelievable and like what an opportunity for someone to be able to do that

and if i just unpacked that for a minute if i was to have you know even though you jumped in

your first f1 car at 16 if i was to take that kid with a passion of racing and say even at near 40

he'd have been at the time right because it was a year ago is it yeah when you did that video

oh it was actually a couple of years ago yeah when we passed him in here so now you would be

essentially picking subscribers from your channel and putting them in formula one cars to go for

days out which you'd film which would somehow financially pay for itself it didn't would that

person be like extremely excitable to opposite me yeah i would have thought so what do you mean if

someone's getting the opportunity to drive there must have been so no i mean is you as a as a young

star would have these weekends and years where it'd be like you can go racing you can't go racing

emotion high emotion like but if you were to tell that person that in 20 years time okay you were

able to for a job essentially take someone out that's completely random put them in formula one

cars film it driving around tracks what would what would they think what would your old self think

of that right now i think it'd be difficult to comprehend right i mean that's that's cool we

do it because it's it's fun and it's cool and it's great to do that with with a subscriber

and i think the 16 year old would be maybe a little bit confused as to how we got there

because it's been yeah it's been a long and twisting journey let's say but um i just you know

i'm proud of of what we've managed to do and we're still constantly trying to improve and get better

and build the business um so yeah i think i'd be pretty happy did you set out when you started

driver 61 to have a million subscribers and be doing the videos that you're doing in recent years

was that the goal from the day of creating the youtube account did it start as something else

no i think it's very um it started completely differently and we've been through many iterations

and many tests along the way we've started things we've stopped them because they're not worked

properly it's the same like you're always like testing things right you're always a b testing

it's like it's like when you're driving you you go out there you try something does it work check

the data if it does do more of that if it doesn't and then you have these big swings where it might

not work completely been the same with the business so at the beginning it was uh almost like a blog

in 2015 it was just a website and i was writing articles like the videos that came later and i

didn't particularly like the writing which is ironic because i spend a lot of time writing

there but i didn't particularly like writing and i thought it would just be a better way to explain

things um using like a whiteboard and me one camera seems simple now but back then you know 10

years ago youtube was a very different place um so it started off there and the whole point of

making these in-depth whiteboard tutorials right they were pretty dry they'd only get 20 30 000

views but they were highly valuable to a very niche audience and the point of that initially to

be honest it was what i knew and i was like let's build the audience first and then i'll decide what

to do afterwards i was reading a lot of books you know like tim ferris and these types of books that

were like build an audience social media was gaining a lot of traction at that time build an

audience and then figure out what to you know how to how to how to make a business out of that later

so i was doing that i spent six months not earning any money my my now wife was supporting me

i was working flat out and she actually looked after me for for a good year 18 months two years

financially it was pretty difficult times we then off the back of uh the youtube channel and the

website the decision was to build a motorsport e-commerce website which which was a which was

extremely difficult so we'd sell that helmets and you could buy tire warmers and whatever right

and we'd partner with all these different suppliers and we'd then bring all the orders together and

would they come through us and then go out to the to the customer we didn't stock anything and

it was a very difficult business to make work in fact we didn't make it work i did it for 18

months and it was one of the most difficult things to to try and get this thing going and then say

i've invested all this time into it i don't think it's going to work let's stop like where's that

point where you say let's stop and the scary part of that is it sounds like from your story

all you've ever known is racing and even though running an e-com store is not necessarily racing

if there's a part of it which is which is selling the goods that lean back to the thing that you

love doing life sometimes gives you all these punches and it feels like you're being punched

away from the thing that you love but obviously now where you are with your youtube channel you've

still managed to make your life what you love doing but it must have felt at points there like

it was potentially you're gonna have to find something completely else right to do or did

you know that you would you would be able to do something um no it's kind of you know it's never

been okay let's get to that point where we're at now it i've always been you know moving around

like this i think that's how a lot of people naturally get there unless they're extremely

lucky that the first thing that they try works and you're exactly right like i was a racing driver

right so when i then went in to try and make a business work i had a big big awe of knowledge

i'd never worked in a proper business before i'd never seen how the processes worked uh i didn't

understand how to employ people i didn't understand any of that stuff um and so i had this i'm

you know i'm still learning now i'm not you know i you know you've never done learning i'm still

trying to improve all the way but it's that kind of philosophy i suppose that you get from racing

of always looking to improve the work ethic figuring out the problems looking at the mistakes

and improving that just continues through that's what i was saying at the start the fundamentals

of what i do have stayed the same it's just applied in a different way so when did you start to

realize beyond the 30 000 views of video keeping a niche happy potential start monetization on the

channel that oh my god there's like there's a there's a light here at the end of the tunnel

this could maybe like go to the next level was there like a point for you when that was a thing

or a video or something do a couple of points so the next point after the the store was pure

desperation so i lived in Barcelona at the time um which is where i met my wife and i wasn't going

to be able to send the money for the rent that that month and it happened a couple of months in a row

and so out of pure desperation i had an email list that i'd built up from the youtube channel

that i'd used for selling the e-commerce goods and i emailed them said i'm thinking of putting a

a racing school together we're going to do two days with nine drivers per day and it's going to be

i can't remember seven or eight hundred grid a driver and literally over the next 24 hours i just

got all these payments come through and i thought oh my god like first of all i needed that money

but we've sold it now we'll figure out how to make it work that was basically what happened yeah

exactly um and i then realized like what have i been doing i've been trying to sell these things

that i'm not known for in terms of the there's loads of competition it's just a product so

you're basically competing on price um whereas these people are on my email list because they

want to learn how to drive so teach them how to drive so i did this first this first run uh it was

heading into winter um i think it was twenty eight seventeen maybe and it went really well but the

format wasn't quite right so i called up after the event everybody that had been there and said

what can we do better what was bad what was good uh what would you like to see and they all said

because i had three i had three coaches and three cars i was in the classroom and they rotated

around throughout the day so they did classroom driving have a break and they went around like

this they all wanted more time they all wanted more of my time and they wanted like one on one so

i listened to them and in the end uh over the next three years that built and built and built

and so in the end it actually started turning over really good money um i was working with 120

drivers a year different drivers and that's when we were running up a brunting thaw i put together

this incredible um process of teaching a driver like i figured it out over time and and that's

where i learned the most about teaching was because when you're a coach normally you go to

donnington you go to bram's hatch you go to sneserton you're in a ferrari you're in a Porsche

you're in a masler it's very hard to connect all the dots and and see the patterns of course you

do but it's not that precise but every driver was coming to me on the same track in the same car

so the only variable was the driver and i was doing 30 000 miles a year with you know all of these

different drivers when you do that the depth of knowledge the rate of learning is massive i learned

so much during that period and i actually started writing a book because i wanted to get it all down

on paper despite your hatred for writing just yeah yeah well yeah exactly but i started to i started

to enjoy it after after i learned how to write um then covid came along and that all stopped and

that's why i haven't finished the book was because youtube took off at that point so the next point

along was covid we just moved back to the uk my wife was five months pregnant we were starting

to get on top of things like the business was the racing school was going well and then covid hits

and we you know we're we're we're in lockdown and i thought oh my god like we've just started

getting going this is this is doing well it was turning into something what we're gonna do now

and so i changed the strategy on the youtube channel right and it was quite simple rather

than talking about or titling the video how to trail brake on a racetrack which will only ever

appeal to 20 30 50 000 people i broke down and sent this technique which is essentially talking

about the same stuff 80 of the video is exactly the same this is what the driver's doing but it was

packaged in a different way in a more interesting way for a broader audience and so that's a trick

with youtube is like packaging it in a broad way that will appeal but still going into the depth

that i want to go into and that's still the same today because you can hook people to get into

a subject matter which you can see from your titles and thumbnails appeal to such a broad

audience like pick pick me two or three videos if you're picturing your library in your head

which you like oh my god like these are videos for me that i learned that this can work like

doing it in this way like this appealed to like a mass audience obviously putting a subscriber

an f1 car has got to be up there but prior to that maybe when you started through covid coming

out of covid was there some videos that you were like oh my god yeah that worked yeah i mean

literally you can if you go back in the history of the channel you can see how the content changes

and i think the first one was about senna it's about how he was healing towing and how he gets

on the throttle in that aggressive way so i think the first one that really went was about senna

it was about his throttle technique and how he blips the accelerator pedal how he used to

blip the accelerator pedal and you can see the jump in the views i mean in 2020 we went from

about a hundred thousand views a month these are all long form views of course um in the march

change the strategy in the april by december we were doing 10 million views a month and i'd

before that point before i don't know when it was like april may of 2020 i'd never switched the ads

on because i was just i just thought these people that are watching this content will come to the

racing school i don't need to earn any money off them with ads and at a hundred thousand views a

month you know you don't generate that many ads especially when the videos are only 10 15 minutes

long um and then yeah during some of that year i turned them on and was like oh okay this can

actually be proper business i always thought it would have been like pocket money but actually

realized that you could run the business off this and as soon as we did that started employing people

and started building it and going from there so what does driver 61 look like now what does it take

to run your channel um we've been through different kind of phases if we've gone we've gone all the

way up to 12 people at one point we had four channels um two main ones driver 61 and an

automotive channel and then uh spanish language versions of those where one was dubbed the other

one was actually a spanish presenter for driver 61 that we that we had still changed now on youtube

because you can have the different audio tracks can't you so we've stopped doing those um but driver

61 now there's six of us and a freelancer or two um we we obviously focus are on the content but

after running the other youtube channels i realized that i didn't want to just have a suite of youtube

channels which at one point was the goal i was like okay we've done driver 61 let's move into

automotive let's see where what else we can do but realized that i didn't want to have this this

kind of media company quite volatile as i'm you know i don't know what what what your business

looks like but for driver 61 the youtube channel can be volatile add rates move around views move

around formula one gets more or less interesting over time and so there's there's lots of kind of

um volatility there uh so i decided to create the content that i wanted to protect ourselves

from some of the easier to create content and ai type content that's coming out so that's why

i go to the f1 factories now that's why i go and visit cars and yeah yeah exactly because you

can't replicate that and one advantage that we've got now is we get access formula one started letting

us in the f1 team start letting us in and that can be our moat well there was actually a part of my

ipad that i've barely used today because you're so interested in the way we can dive into so many

things where i've started giving guests kind of five words and they have to pick a word that without

that thing the channel just couldn't operate and i know sometimes there's two but usually one stands

out to people and some of the words that i've got is passion control curiosity access

and consistency like which would if you were to order those in terms of like importance

what do you think you stands out to you the most the one that stands out is curiosity

um forever being interested in how something works in improving i guess i might be blending

that slightly with just keep on pushing or keep on working on something but it's that curiosity of

figuring stuff out um probably the key thing both in the content but also in how the business

works and how to put it together and how to build it and how to improve it after so many years and

so many videos that are doing it you know week in week out and building the channel to where it is

now how much more stuff is there to cover between one million subscribers and 10 million subscribers

you ever just like with your team racking your brain like oh my god like we've covered this and

we've done that like is there anything else to do or do you guys have like so many ideas it's

unbelievable no we have i mean there's processes to the ideas right it's not just like they come

to us our team if they have an idea or they get inspiration from somewhere we dump we dump it somewhere

then over time we filter through those and work through them some of the ideas come through

the partners as well the f1 partners um because with that access you know when you get access to

something it's actually a bit easier because you don't have to create the interesting topic right

the interest is just because you've got access to something yeah exactly so that makes things a

little bit easier um we've got plenty of ideas we're not pumping out quite as much content as

we used to we do about three videos a month at the moment but they're better videos you know

and a lot of the team the focus is on on actually the the other stuff that we do so we ran some

tests over the last 18 months or so which is one of the reasons why a youtube channel is great right

you can you can test other mini businesses see which ones get traction and which ones are actually

interesting and then dive into those a little bit more it's almost like a great testing platform

so we we make these wallets that have parts of formula 1 cars in them

so we'll buy like a crash damaged front wing i remember seeing this yeah yeah so we we we were

looking at for a way to didn't you do something with hass didn't you have a hass we've got a hass one

we've got for uh for oregon now that's so cool take a look at that so what has gone into making

that i can see the carbon there like i i literally want one hang on you with me we sold them all

actually um what goes so that's a 2022 front wing end plate from carlos sciences car i crashed on

the first lap of the japanese grand prix that year when it was really wet and we just like these the

the parts already crashed right it's already partly damaged so we we take those they go through a

process all handcrafted where we take these slivers of the carbon and our perspective is

better to be given to i think we've got 250 of these 250 individual people who've got a

piece of history in their pocket rather than just on someone's wall in the back of the garage or

wherever it might go um and it's been yeah it's been a process to figure out how do you how do

you stick a piece of carbon how do you get the carbon like apart it's a good challenge it's a

messy job uh but we've got there in the end and uh it's it's an interesting project i love to make

comparisons when doing these episodes between things that the guest has said maybe 20 30 minutes

ago as part of their story and things that are so normal as part of their environment and their work

that they do now but you spoke about one of the hardest times that you've kind of gone through

in your journey was doing that ecom store like it nearly broke you and working out the margins

and not being able to put your stamp in it i just find it fascinating to take a minute to pause and

kind of think about how that comes back around but packaged in a completely different way it's like

sometimes people do one thing like they start the ecom business or they want to sell stuff and then

the youtube channel maybe comes after that as a form of marketing to try and push people to the thing

but it's so funny how even though you've gone through such i suppose hatred in a way of that of

thing because you couldn't quite make it work it's actually the other way around that in the in

the future the youtube channel unlocks the ability to do the ecom again and to sell something and to

make a product and to physically ship it which was what you were going for years ago as well it's

just a funny thing to kind of see that people think sometimes it's all lost like you think that

moment that you start the store they're all of that's lost or you're at the lowest point or you

can't do anything or you haven't made the money but it's so funny how these things come back around

and have value because surely when you were doing these you were leaning on lots of things you

learned from your days in ecom right it's a constant cycle right it's the same as as driving you

do something you analyze it you adjust and you just keep on going in in a cycle the end product

here whether it's this the ecom store the youtube content is constant testing right we're testing

all the time every single video 10 you know 10 combinations of titles and thumbnails different

structures to the story constantly analyzing that and adjusting and improving it doesn't

matter whether it's a youtube video it doesn't matter whether it's this wallet it doesn't matter

it's how we run the business or whether you want to get quicker on the next lap

then you've just been on a previous lap it's the same it's the same thing just just keep on doing that

but it's all risk management as well because at the time it was obviously a huge risk to figure

out what it was that you needed to do when you're at a point of pressure and risk management also

plays a part on everything that you do with teaching people and have done in the past with

teaching people on track and on circuit and before we finish off there i really want to

pit your brains on something which is is it a really fine line to coach someone or to make

someone better when they're also managing the financial pressure in their head through a lap

on a track they have the thing that they're driving if they've been it into a wall is done

and dusted like i always call it i go in at eight tenths to everything that i do on track because

i know somewhere between eight and ten is the point where i've been the mclaren i think as your

confidence and experience grows on track that will probably go away i think it also depends

what you're trying to get from it right if you're racing i don't have that part i don't have that

part on my brain i'm either racing or i'm not and if that came into me i wouldn't i wouldn't go racing

so i'm either flat out or not but the other thing is like like i said to you earlier a

racing driver doesn't need to be brave they are predicting what's going on with the car

and they will predict that it will go around a corner in a certain way they're not thinking

about the the danger now they might approach a lap at least when they're learning in a different

way right so i would always get my drivers to to when they were finding their feet

pick the corners on the circuit where it has the most runoff or it's a slow to medium speed corner

where you can begin to lean on the car and understand what the grip level is like on this

particular track do that in the safe areas you don't want to be doing that you know cops at

silverstone on the first lap you want to be doing get a left field which is the tight 180 degree

corner because you've got much more room in which to make those imperfect decisions not a mistake

but if you run in a little bit too quickly you're going to be able to collect it whereas if you do

that in cops you get the wind going in the wrong direction so that you're going to end up going

off potentially in the barrier so it's balancing that risk and and doing that in a strategic way

where you're reducing the lightliness of crashing or making a mistake in business or whatever it

might be you're clearly a very logical thinker a very calm thinker and at the beginning of the

episode you spoke about the challenges people have learning when there's so many people around

you sometimes on track what's your opinion on the notebook and most of the public sessions

it depends what the goal is again if the goal is to learn it's a terrible place to learn

yeah if you want if you want to learn to go fast you want a short circuit that's easy to learn

where there's no cars minimal distractions with a coach who's not shouting at you all the time

because again it's bandwidth so the notebook ring is the opposite of all those things really long

circuit loads of difficult to predict cars that are out there on the track if you make a mistake

even by a percent or two you're probably going in the barrier um aside from that if you're just

going for the joy of driving what a fantastic place right there's no there's nowhere else in the world

like it i love these old school circuits and uh yeah i haven't been for a while but i would like

to go again do you think it's dangerous um for a rookie do you think too many people go out there

that probably shouldn't go out there yeah probably probably i mean that that's a hard one i mean a

lot of crashes there right um but people should be allowed to decide to do i mean it's incredible

that they open it up and people can go out there on on track i'd prefer them to go there and drive

quickly rather than you know out on the road just here so it's good in that respect i suppose well

scott i can't believe the amount that i've taken into my brain today and i'm going to have to like

decompartmentalize that and package it down this is certainly going to be one of the first episodes

that were some of the things that you've been talking about i'm going to have to do some overlays

on the screen just like you do as well for the audience that are viewing this rather than just

listening to it but it's also been fascinating to take a bit of a deeper dive into to you how you've

built that channel and all those things that come through in the videos but were been actually built

from years and years and years of knowledge understanding and passion so thank you for giving

me your time and the audience to talk about your journey and our always goes so fast on these things

unbelievable i'd love to have you back again in the future thank you ben been a pleasure

Driver 61: The Vision Trick That Turns Amateur Drivers Into Racers - Scott Mansel

About this episode

Formula 1

Formula One

IndyCar

motorsport

sim racing

Nissan

Le Mans

go karting

engine

Citroën Saxo

oversteer

Bruntingthorpe

Mclaren 570

braking

adrenaline

tunnel vision

apex

racing line

Caterham

corner entry

limit of grip

pitch of the car

load transfer

deceleration

V10

2004 Formula 1 car

Lotus

F4 car

F1 car

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Road To Success with Benedict Fowler