Did you know that experienced drivers can get into your car, drive it and tell you what kind of handling qualities it has? They can tell you how much life you have left in your tires, how much horsepower and torque the engine has, if the chassis is old in age and design, and even what kind of miles per gallon you’re getting. No, it’s not a magic trick, it’s just called getting into the zone. Racing drivers can tell you everything about a car in just a few minutes. They feel the responsiveness of the car through the seat, steering wheel and the pedals. They live in the zone all the time. Normal drivers can slowly but surely enter into this zone as well if they dedicate themselves to learning about what their car is doing and understanding the messages it’s sending. So how do you actually do this?
Shut out the world
In order to get into the right frame of mind when driving, you need to shut out the rest of the world. Well, except for everything that’s going on in the road. But your worries about work, your family, friends, coworkers, your shopping list and general errands need to be wiped away from the front of your mind. To help you do this, put some music on with something like Apple Carplay. Here’s how you can learn more about connecting apple car play. It’s quite simple, you just plug in your Apple USB and you’ll get a notification on your phone. Accept the request for Carplay to be allowed access to your phone and then you can use your apps from the car’s touchscreen control panel. It will give you a list of what apps can be used but almost any music app is allowed. Put your beats on and get ready to focus.
Feel the vibrations and tremors
Cars are living beasts, they’re not just pieces of plastic and metal. Every action you make, will cause a reaction. The car will tell you what’s going on if you feel the vibrations and tremors through the steering wheel and pedals. The chassis communicates with you from your seat. It bends and leans through corners and the seat is usually the first to feel these forces working. The engine’s revs and power application can be felt through the hands more than the feet. The tremors of the clutch biting the flywheel and the speed of the driveshaft are felt through the pedals.
See the future
It’s amazing how fast our brains can work when we focus our mind on what parameters we’re operating in. Hold back from the cars in front of you, add one car length for every 10mph. You can see what drivers are going to do just by looking at the small movements they make. You can tell who wants to switch lane hundreds of meters before they actually do. You can tell when someone is focussing and when they’re not by gentle swerves they do subconsciously.
Driving is an experience that heightens our senses and accelerates our thinking speed. When you’re really at one with the car and can see things happening in slow motion on the roads, you know you have climbed into a zone.