You’ll probably not be surprised by the results of this research: “When travelling at high speed and in a state of high focus, racing drivers’ brains performed up to 40 per cent better when it comes to ignoring distractions than yours or mine,” said Dr Elias Mouchlianitis, neuroscience researcher.
“The interesting thing we found, however, was that when normal people performed some simple mental exercises, they were also able to reach this higher level of performance.”
Simple breathing and meditation exercises, plus a visualisation technique that uses keywords to describe the task ahead, saw normal drivers improve focus and performance by as much as 50 per cent.
“When things get tough and the pressure’s on that’s when you need to get in this zone, and successful racing drivers are able to do that whether that’s on the track or off it,” said Priaulx.
“Racing drivers aren’t necessarily born with this skill; our experiment showed simple mental training ahead of a task can help anyone to improve focus and ignore distractions, making them more successful at the task in hand.”
That’s all good, but what’s the point of this research? It’s all being done to develop an EEG-equipped racing helmet for its professional drivers, where brain activity data can be transmitted back to the team during a race alongside other in-car car telemetry.
A spokesman told Avon Tuning: “While physical attributes such as hydration and heart rate are already monitored, Ford believes that understanding the driver’s mental state during a race – and making decisions accordingly – is the next frontier in performance.”
