Do you ever find yourself struggling to visualize the track and laps you’ve done so you can do some imagery?
I went to a new track over the weekend and put in about 100 laps but I find myself now struggling to visualize a lap
Those sidewalk ‘slowdown’ penalties are a b**ch! 
I used to make the ‘turn’ out of my room (at my parent’s house) and bounce off the wall ala Keke Rosberg in his Chevron Formula Atlantic Car, and then zoom off down the straight (I mean hallway). 
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Warren has a mental exercise that he had me do. It’s sort of spooky how close to irl you can get.
Imagine the lap and time it.
(Once you remember)
Shawn @ohasha , in what way are you struggling?
Just FYI, when I use imagery training, I don’t actually ‘see’ much if anything in my mind’s eye… it’s more a combination of ‘feel’, ‘timing’, and sometimes almost a calculation of where I am on track and what’s happening.
I have some info about imagery training here:
http://www.intuitivespeed.com/training-techniques/training-techniques/imagery/
Ultimately, imagery relies on you having a solid mental model of the track, so perhaps you don’t yet have enough laps to have confidence in your mental model. However, if you made it around the track 100 laps (and you’re still here to talk about it ), the information is probably there, we just need to figure out how to access it.
Definitely try doing some imagery laps with a stopwatch to time your mental laps… the goal of trying to match your actual lap times with imagery laps might help bring your whole ‘system’ together.
If that doesn’t help, describe the struggles your having, and I’ll do my best to help.
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I practice lines and stuf while walking, pretty religiously actually, but ive never thought of imagining the rest of the immersion like steering, throttle, slip angle etc. Ill give it a try. Brains are weird.
Not that it teaches you anything but it’s sort of funny to feel… Put on a YouTube video of one of your races on the big tv, sit down on a couch in a driving position, legs out front, hands up. Drive along with yourself, trying to race the course like it was a sim.
It’s interesting to try to drive along with yourself. Yes, it’s you up there and your reactions are going to be very similar. But, sometimes you will say, huh, why did I do that when I just did it this way at home. What was going on?
Maybe someone else has a version of this they do that makes more sense. (Imagery).
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Does it matter how far off I am in terms of lap time?
My standard lap around Hamilton is a 37.5 - 38.
Visualizing I got:
45.02
44.10
41.33
41.38
How am I meant to visualize different lines and feeling around different corners when I’m roughly 10% out of timing?
Shawn, don’t worry too much about the lap times, being off by a bunch could mean that your mental model of the track could use some refinement, but it also could just be that you’re having a hard time estimating how long you’re in the ‘down time’ (straights). That is the hardest part for me, and I usually just recall the rhythm of the track and use that to ‘count off’ how long I spend on the long straights.
Remember the object of imagery training is not necessarily to exactly match IRL, but to strengthen & deepen the neural pathways created by IRL driving. Likewise, using imagery to try different ‘what if’ scenarios can help broaden the neural connections from IRL… your imagery does not have to be perfect to accomplish that goal.
BTW, nice consistency on your last two laps! 
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