I grew up playing a lot of traditional sports, a few of them at a pretty high level. One thing that stuck in my mind was that the naturally gifted athletes quite often lacked the drive that the talented, but not quite prodigious level of talent kids had. Especially if they showed that extreme level of talent at a young age. Usually by their early teens, the harder working kids would have caught or surpassed them skill wise. Of course, every once in a blue moon, you’d see one of those prodigious talents, also have the drive and work ethic, and then he was damn near unbeatable.
From anectodal evidence of drivers I’ve coached, the drivers that get up to speed faster typically have a background in other sports.
Skills learned on a mountain bike will transfer in many ways, and even skills learned from almost any sport such as tennis, gymnastics, skateboarding, dance… Or like Dave mentioned about Piastri in the video… RC cars etc. are also likely helpful because the driver has learned to create mental representations and are aware of what their body is doing.
Of course the physical fitness gained from being active also helps… It’s difficult to work on driving technique if you’re getting tired after 5 laps.
Having the habit of working on a physical skill must also help - knowing to look at small details and then deliberately practicing them.
The friends you know that are good at “every sport” and seem like a natural at anything they try are probably good at every sport because there’s a lot of cross-over even from sports that at first seem like there would be none.
One of the first questions I ask new drivers I work with is what other sports they do - it can be useful to create analogies with driving technique.
… So my general feel is that “natural talent” is primarily having learned how to learn and having learned skills that are useful in karting from elsewhere.
Yes, natural talent is real, a combination of genetics and mental acuity. Sports requiring little up-front capital allow gifted (and focused) individuals to excel and are often supported at the middle and high school level (basketball, tracks etc.).
Motorsports, however, introduce a financial requirement that many can’t or won’t support. Karting, and auto racing in general, require substantial investments to compete. There are scores of people dominating at the local level, but the third place guy with a large bank account is the one moving to the next level. When told karting takes $25K+ annually to seriously compete just at a local level, it was a reality check for my son and I. He has the talent and skills, but that’s a lot of loot for a plastic trophy.
Intersting. Anecdotally, my years as a board sports guy translated directly to driving… the bottom turn in surfing, transitioning edge to edge on icy hard pack, carving the bowl…
This is basically driving: mass, momentum, flow.
I have a gymnast niece that I am convinced would be a hell of a wheel woman: fearless and balanced.
Interestingly, the prior skills thing does not always pan out. I worked with a guy who was an aerobatic pilot (presumably he was at least competent at it because he was alive), and he was also a pretty quick 125 shifter driver. However, when he went car racing, he struggled hugely; like 6-8 seconds off the pace.
And it wasn’t just a time to adapt thing, he was that far off the pace for something like two seasons, in spite of thousands of practice laps, famous professional coaching, etc. But once we figured out what was holding him back (an information processing skill issue), then he immediately cut his deficit in half, and started making consistent progress. He finished that season on lap record pace (on his best day, at his best track).
I would be willing to bet that if your prior experience is too close to your new discipline, it might be detrimental in ways. Being great at the specific skills required to drive a shifter kart fast might turn into bad habits that don’t work in a big car.
If you have trained yourself to drive to a certain feeling with a tire and an certain expectations of car dynamics for a given input, that might all be thrown out of wack if you are in a car which is similar but just different enough to react in an unexpected way.
A wholly different skill set like Dom’s board sport experience might give him a leg up on a normie because he has a better feel for balance or momentum. A more vague and general acuity for something might be better in cases than a very specific and honed skill set to a specific type of driving.
When I was 20 YO walked into Inglewood Kart Supply and bought a Red Devil copy (by Doug Henline) without knowing s**t about karting, except that laydown karting looked cool. This was a 50/50 venture with my buddy. We went to Willow International Raceway (WIR) I had so much fun but my buddy he was scared sh*tless and didn’t want to drive it all. The next week or so there was a race at Willow and I ended up 2nd out of maybe 15 or 20 karts (all the fast guys were at the Nationals). Was I talented? Nope. I’m just one of those guys who can get up to 80% pretty quickly in many ventures but never have any true talent. To measure true talent, it’s they guys who can string together wins, not always convincingly but always eke a win in a competitive environment for several years.
Surely Max has some innate talent and feel for driving, but hard to say what came first; chicken or egg. His dad started the SST series so he has more resources and knowledge than anyone else competing, and he’s been engrossed in racing since the day he was born. But at his age, it is impressive.
Also I absolutely don’t want to throw shade at those guys, but the SST field isn’t exactly the F1 grid. I imagine the limit for those trucks is real low with how poorly they handle. More impressive I think is ol’ Cleetus jumping into the truck for one weekend and basically winning (wrecked coming to the line while leading) that race. He battled, overtook, and hung it out in a vehicle he just learned a few days before. And he doesn’t have a background in circuit racing, he’s a drag racer. So to me, that is a prime example of someone who has a really good innate feeling for the limits of a vehicle. Cleetus probably doesn’t know the ins and outs of apexes, friction circles, threshold braking etc., but he seems to be able to jump into almost anything and be semi-competent quickly. That’s just seat-of-the-pants feeling for vehicle dynamics, which I think is what natural talent boils down to.
