Driver 61: The Vision Trick That Turns Amateur Drivers Into Racers - Scott Mansel
Road To Success with Benedict Fowler
Driver 61: The Vision Trick That Turns Amateur Drivers Into Racers - Scott Mansel
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Concept
Formula 1
Formula 1 is a top-level car racing series where teams compete in races called Grands Prix. It's famous for fast cars and exciting races held in different countries.
Concept
Formula One
Formula One is a popular type of car racing where very fast cars compete on special tracks. It's known for exciting races and advanced technology, making it a favorite among car enthusiasts.
Concept
IndyCar
IndyCar is a racing series in the U.S. featuring fast cars that race on both oval tracks and regular roads. The Indy 500 is one of the biggest and most famous races in this series.
Concept
motorsport
Motorsport is a term for all kinds of racing that involves vehicles with engines, like cars and motorcycles. It includes different types of races and competitions.
Concept
sim racing
Sim racing is when people race cars in video games that try to feel like real driving. It helps players learn how to drive and race without being on a real track.
Brand
Nissan
Nissan is a car company from Japan that makes many types of vehicles, including sports cars. They also participate in racing events.
Concept
Le Mans
Le Mans is a famous car race that lasts for 24 hours. It's known for being very tough and is a big deal in the racing world.
Concept
go karting
Go karting is a type of racing where people drive small, fast cars called go-karts on tracks. It's a fun way to learn how to race before trying bigger cars.
Term
engine
An engine is what makes a car go. It turns fuel into power to move the vehicle. In racing, having a good engine is really important for winning.
Car
Citroën Saxo
The Citroën Saxo is a small car that many people use for racing. It's light and easy to handle, which makes it fun to drive on the track.
Term
oversteer
Oversteer is when the back of the car slides out during a turn, making it feel like the car is spinning. It's important for drivers to learn how to control this to stay safe on the road or track.
Concept
Bruntingthorpe
Bruntingthorpe is a place in the UK where cars can be driven fast on a long runway and a track. It's used for learning how to drive better and for testing cars.
Car
Mclaren 570
The McLaren 570S Spider is a fast sports car that can go really quickly and is designed for performance on the track.
Term
adrenaline
Adrenaline is a chemical in your body that makes you feel excited or scared. It helps you react quickly, but it can also make it hard to think clearly when you're driving fast.
Term
tunnel vision
Tunnel vision is when you can only see what's right in front of you and not what's around you. It can happen when you're scared or excited, like when you're driving fast.
Concept
apex
The apex is the part of a turn where you want your car to get closest to the inside of the track. It's important for taking corners quickly and smoothly.
Concept
racing line
The racing line is the best route to take on a racetrack to go as fast as possible. It helps drivers know where to brake and turn to keep their speed up.
Car
Caterham
Caterham is a brand that makes small, lightweight sports cars that are fun to drive, especially on racetracks.
Term
corner entry
Corner entry is when a car is getting ready to turn. It's important because how you enter the turn can help you go faster and stay in control.
Term
limit of grip
The limit of grip is how much traction a tire has before it starts to slip. When a car is going fast, understanding this helps drivers know how to steer and brake without losing control.
Term
pitch of the car
The pitch of the car is how much the front or back of the car leans up or down. When you brake or turn, it can change, and controlling this helps keep the car stable.
Term
load transfer
Load transfer is how the weight of the car moves from the front to the back or side to side when you brake or turn. It helps determine how well the tires grip the road.
Term
deceleration
Deceleration is when a car slows down. It's important for how a car behaves when you press the brakes.
Term
V10
A V10 engine is a type of car engine that has ten cylinders arranged in a V shape. This design helps the engine produce a lot of power.
Car
2004 Formula 1 car
The 2004 Formula 1 car is a type of race car used in the 2004 season of Formula 1 racing. These cars are very fast and have powerful engines.
Car
Lotus
Lotus is a car brand from Britain that makes sports cars and racing cars. They are known for making cars that are light and fast.
Term
F4 car
F4 cars are racing cars used in beginner-level competitions. They help new drivers learn how to race and improve their skills.
Concept
F1 car
An F1 car is a type of race car used in Formula 1 racing. It's built to be super fast and has special features that help it go around tracks quickly and safely.
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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
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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
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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
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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
About this episode
Scott Mansel, known as Driver 61, shares insights from his journey as a professional racer turned educator. He emphasizes the importance of vision in driving, revealing that 80% of racing success comes from where you look. Mansel discusses how he transitioned from racing to creating a successful YouTube channel with over a million subscribers, focusing on making racing accessible to amateurs. He also reflects on the challenges of coaching, the significance of early training, and how sim racing is changing the landscape of motorsport. His story is a blend of passion, perseverance, and the pursuit of knowledge.
Original notes
Check out Tweak: https://www.tweakuk.com/Racing driver, coach, and YouTube powerhouse Driver61 (Scott Mansell) sits down to reveal what really separates fast drivers from everyone else — and how anyone can dramatically improve on track with the right approach.From growing up at kart tracks at age two, to racing in Indy Lights, to accidentally building a motorsport education empire with over a million subscribers… Scott shares the untold journey behind one of the most influential voices in modern racing.Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel for more exciting content about your favourite shows and celebrities. Hit the bell icon to stay updated on all our latest episodes👍 Like, Comment, and Share this episode. Join our discussion in the comments sectionCheck out Tweak: https://www.tweakuk.com/🔗 Follow Us:Instagram: @Roadtosuccessofficialpodcast@benedictfowler
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