I have been racing for 20 years One of the items that I am working on this year that I have struggled with is focusing while driving. As ridiculous as that sounds my mind drifts into what I am going to eat later, going over a checklist of things I need to do when the race is over, “Is there something wrong with the kart, but there isn’t”, or just random thoughts. It is costing my the enjoyment, I am making mistakes on track, and devaluing my time on track. I typically am a team of one, so at times that can be burdensome, but I have also lacked focus on big teams, where my job is just to drive. I was previously a athlete and was able to get into “being in the Zone”, however I didn’t have kids, work, bills, ect… Any tips and tricks as I head into 2025 racing year would be appreciated.
Watching this one with interest!
For me when I get distracted and the Stig fails to take over I have to forcefully engage vision to be super active and intentionally look around a lot. It’s like giving myself a task to redirect my mental state.
Similarly if I get into panic attack mode when driving (sometimes happens in highway mode) I have to be super visual and take as much info in to flood the system with information to allow the anxiety to be forced to take a backseat.
Not ridiculous. There’s a reason drugs like Adderall are strictly regulated in racing. Moss won the Mille Miglia on pills Fangio gave him. Most likely methamphetamine. I am tempted to try smelling salts. This is not me condoning drug use, just highlighting that racers for time have been trying stuff to focus better.
I’d often be off in a different world and having existential crisis in some races.
For a pure tonic often being in races where ideas and developments are on the line ups the stakes a bit mentally. Just going round in spec whatever ain’t enough for me.
I think you hit on a topic that is relevant to a huge majority of drivers. My first thought is that Ross Bentley hit the nail on the head for your topic here Ask Ross/Speed Secrets: How to Get Joy Back
His idea of trigger words works really well. I’m a habit process person, so I look for a cue, action, and result. When I notice that my mind wanders, I use it as the cue regain focus on the task at hand, then I get the rewards of driving better (in tin tops so far). It gives me the reinforcement of doing well that helps.
I’ve also started to use the sim for this practice. It’s really easy to be on a sim and lose focus, but then I can use a trigger word to pay attention and get back into it. It’s practice for your driving, just not the type you’re used to. Instead of the hard skills of steering, brakes, throttle, etc., you get to work on the mental side. You can also do this in your normal life when you start to lose focus - use a trigger to bring you back in. I know I have to do it when I get interrupted from new emails, the phone, text, etc. Using the triggers helps me come back to being focused on one task and it’s the same skill of re-focusing that I need when driving.
The good news is you obviously have some excess mental capacity while racing. Could make you an excellent development driver. I find almost all the time I have capacity to think about anything else, sometimes its handling, sometimes its the winners speech I’ll give lol.
But by far my best performance have been when I’ve got into the zone and I literally cannot remember anything about those races, i didn’t have capacity even to log what was going on.
Some drivers (likely without knowing it) do things that keep them in the zone, like ducking once a lap, doing a little jump in the seat, flexing their hands.
There’s some good other posts about “Getting into the Zone”
This book is good too:
https://www.amazon.com/Overdrive-Formula-Zone-Clyde-Brolin/dp/0956473806
Totally normal as we age. I haven’t really struggled too bad as I’ve gotten older but definitely feel sometimes that I have to talk myself back into full focus while racing occasionally. But everyone is different. I’ve always been really able to drive subconsciously while also just thinking about handling, planning the race, observing around me, so I’ve practiced that for years.
Something as simple as a little shot of caffeine before a race might be enough to focus you better. Don’t need to get jittery or slam an espresso, but a small dose might be enough for you to not even feel it physically, but mentally help your brain hone in a bit more. Of all the “nootropics” and other fancy brain supplements on the market today, caffeine seems to be one of the few that actually works well and has lots of data to back it up.
I went through a phase where I tried supplements and things too to keep my brain sharper, because generally OUT of the kart, I have pretty bad ADD. I tried Alpha Brain which I thought worked well but eventually started giving me headaches and dizziness. CBD sometimes would quiet my brain down too and help me concentrate on things.
I knew a kid who had Tourette’s and had a lot of physical ticks but once he got behind the wheel of a kart, he completely calmed down, focused, and his ticks went away. So everyone has a different brain when it comes to how they can focus during pretty intense and mentally stimulating tasks.
I race karts partly to escape from my normal-life responsibilities, so for me my mindset going into the weekend is already trying to keep things like bills and work out of my brain until I come back Monday.
Fascinating discussion. For me this is, an apparently widely-experienced phenomenon, which I can’t relate to at all, but do very much appreciate from a humility standpoint (e.g., just because my mind works a certain way, doesn’t mean that all minds/people’s minds are working the same way at all - this is very easy to forget in day-to-day living).
Lol, guilty of this
I don’t normally get the chance to correct TJ, but my inner espresso nerd has to pipe up and mention espresso generally has less caffeine content. Check out This Coffee Writeup if you want to fast forward to the literal bottom of the coffee rabbit hole lol
Anywho…
To answer the OP, this is something I experience from time to time. Not sure if you’re just outright getting bored on track, but let’s exclude that one for now (solution is buy a KZ 
). I’ve found the best solution for me is to do more cardio related training. This will help to first reduce fatigue, as I find that if I reach a point of physical exhaustion it opens up doors in my head for my mind to wander. It’s always later in the run for me that the problem develops, never at the start when I’m still feeling fresh. The BEST way to train for this that I’ve found is through combining cardio workouts (run/bike/swim) with sauna, with emphasis on the sauna whenever possible. Longer & hotter sessions will be more difficult, especially at the end…both components can be very similar timing to that of a 15 minute race. Sauna works especially well because you’re not doing any physical movements that can occupy your brain, so it takes more of a meditative state to really lock in sometimes.
Something more applicable trackside would be to have specific goals for each time you go on track. This could be focusing on a particular corner or string of corners, braking points, using all the road, hitting apexes, etc…plan for what you intend to do as you go about your corners/laps, and also observe as you’re doing them. It’s a delicate balance, as drivers do need to be thinking ahead, but if you’re not observing while you’re driving then you’re less likely to make improvements where needed, even if just related to consistency.
Also, paging @speedcraft …
Evan’s right regarding training. Lots of times mental fatigue or becoming un-focused stems from being physically fatigued. Even if you aren’t feeling woofed physically, if you ever have to think about your physical condition on the track, that will take away from your ability to think about the race.
Also, I don’t drink coffee and in general don’t get along with caffeine except in really small doses, so my expertise on brown bean juice is pretty limited… I’ll make sure to talk about coffee more so Evan has lots to correct me on. 
Brake deeper, on gas earlier.
It happens to me some races, when I am not locked in. I just let it go and accept driving at 95% instead of a 100%. Better be slow on a one-off instead of crashing due to frustration.
Interestingly, my ADHD (not from childhood but due to head trauma, so it might be different) is not triggered while driving
Do you do any high intensity training? I found a massive increase in my ability to focus when I started mountain biking. I ride 2-3 times a week for around 1.5 hours each ride, and at least half of each ride is spent attacking technical trails as fast as I can. It helps me get used to focusing while my heart rate is averaging 150+ bpm, and makes it easier to drop into the flow state while I am driving.
I think dissecting the nature of the mistakes (related tasks or locations, magnitude, frequency, how well you are able to recognize and hopefully recover, ultimate consequence, etc.) would be an important first step in diagnosing what’s going on. That’s because, as @NikG pointed out, having excess mental capacity is not necessarily a bad thing, and letting the portion of you consciousness that is not directly involved in the driving process ‘wander’ is not an issue unless it causes mistakes… then you need to track back to figure out why & how mistakes are being made.
It’s kind of a strange paradox that once you attain a level of skill that lets you drive unconsciously (intuitively), you must NOT be too deeply involved consciously in the driving process or you WILL screw things up. So then, what is your consciousness to do when it’s along for the ride instead of actually ‘driving’? I would encourage you to redirect your consciousness into becoming your coach. That is, make observing your subconscious driving a priority when on track with the objective of deeply understanding what you are doing subconsciously so that you can influence (not control) the optimization of your driving.
I think of driving in levels or layers, so there is always a next level of feel, or precision, or understanding of the driver/kart/track relationship to be attained. For example, maybe you use your attention to observe more deeply the buildup and release of energy in your kart as it rotates in each turn. Or, you could focus on traction by imagining how much slip angle your outside front tire is producing (and how much it is changing) on the way to the apex, and likewise for the rear tire during the exit phase of each turn. If you do this, you may discover small improvements that could be made to your subconscious driving process and/or your kart.