Technology and Coaching
Words by Ross Bentley, photos by Ian Rae When I first started instructing high performance and race drivers, I relied on four things - my eyes, my butt, my ears, and my voice. That’s because most of what I was doing was sitting in the right seat, telling students what to do. As I began coaching (which is different from instructing), I added a fifth - my feet to walk to different areas around the track, so I could observe the car and driver from the outside. While today these are still the Traditional coaching sitting alongside the student.
58 - MotorWerks Magazine
main tools I use to help drivers perform better, I have added others. Technology provides us with many more tools. Over the past few years, the topic of how fast street cars have become, and whether instructors should be sitting in the right seat, has been discussed and argued over ad nauseam. As it should. It’s a serious topic. For a novice driver, there is no substitute for a good, qualified instructor in the passenger seat. Being able to instruct and advise a student in real time, and observe immediately what the driver is doing, is the best way. Technology cannot do a better job. With an advanced, experienced driver, someone in the car is more of a distraction for the learning process than it is a benefit. If I sit in the passenger seat with a driver of this level, providing commands and instructions, all the driver truly learns is how to follow my instructions. They’re not learning how to drive their car, based on what they see, feel, and hear. Let’s say you and I go to a track and I hop in your car, equipped with the latest and greatest data acquisition system, and set a sample lap. We look at my data - my
