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Racing Vision

What is Vision?

One of the most important aspects of racing is vision. No, not how good your eyesight is, but where you're looking when racing. Vision was one of the hardest skills for me to learn, but it's responsible for the biggest improvement in my pace.

Vision is, in essence, looking ahead to where you eventually want to go. However, unlike regular street driving, you have to look much further ahead than you're used to. This is because your car moves much faster on the track than on the street, so if you don't look far enough ahead, you'll definitely lose your racing line.

Examples

If you're shooting down a straight towards a corner, you should look past the turn-in point and locate the apex of the corner.

As you're about to hit the corner apex, you should have already located the area that you're tracking out to.

To be clear, you're not supposed to solely focus on the green dots. You need to check closer landmarks and make adjustments using your peripheral vision or by glancing back and forth.

The point of vision is to help you draw a mental map of the upcoming track, both near and far, so you can plan out your moves.

To sum it up

Vision is a tough skill. It's hard to focus on what's ahead because it feels like all the action is happening in front of you. For example, if you're charging down a straight, you feel like you need to focus on the straight or else you'll somehow run off track. Or if you're turning into a corner, you want to stare at the apex to make sure you're getting as close to it as possible.

Breaking this habit is hard. You need to trust that your car is going where you intend it to in the short-term. This frees up your eyes to look ahead and analyze where you need to go in the next section. If you can master vision, you'll see a huge improvement in your lap times.