This is the first of a planned series of short articles on race drivers' techniques and how they can be applied to make everyday driving safer, more efficient and more comfortable.

One of the first things every race car driver has to learn is to pay attention to the track ahead. It's hard, when you're inches away from another car or a concrete wall at 150 mph or more, to remember that the most important part of the track is hundreds of feet -- or hundreds of yards -- ahead. Even at highway speeds, there's very little the driver can do about things that happen within 100 feet of the car, virtually nothing he can do about things that happen within 50 feet. While it's important to know what is happening in that space, the part of the road on which the driver must concentrate is the part that's going to be driven next.

Racers attempt to drive their cars to and through precise spots on the track, lap after lap. One of the hardest things for the novice driver to learn is not to look to see how close he or she is to each point. Well before each critical point is reached, the driver must be looking past it, down the road. Fixating on any particular location, but particularly on one close to the car, is a sure formula for slow lap times, at best, or an accident, at worst.

Successful race car drivers develop a constant visual scanning pattern. They use only their peripheral vision to note what's happening on the sides of their cars. They automatically and constantly scan all mirrors, the car's instruments, the track immediately in front and the track far to the front. Then they scan back to the mirrors, the instruments, etc. This same technique should be applied to driving on the street or highway, where the scan should not include the passenger's seat, the back seat, the radio dial, the cellular phone, the scenery that is going by the car or the attractive person in the adjacent car.

There are several reasons for looking ahead. It's obviously important to see what traffic is doing, to anticipate slowdowns, congestion, accidents, pedestrians and stray animals. Of equal importance, and perhaps not as well understood, is that looking ahead gathers information about where the road is going as well as what's happening on it. A quick look (remember, don't fixate anywhere) brings the driver a road picture, a mental map, that is stored and processed after the visual scan shifts to somewhere else.

Looking as far ahead as possible on a curvy road or a curvy track will reduce the number of steering changes necessary to negotiate those curves safely and smoothly. Looking 100 feet ahead instead of, say, 25 feet ahead on a winding road canl reduce wheel input (the number of times one moves the wheel for steering corrections) by about half. On the street, that translates into safer, smoother and more comfortable cornering. On the track it translates into cooler tires, higher cornering speeds and faster laps.

One looking ahead problem that race car drivers don't, typically, have to deal with is larger vehicles. You can't look at the road ahead if you're behind a truck, a bus or a passenger vehicle you can't see around, over or through. Any time your forward visibility is limited to the vehicle in front of you, you're in danger on the highway or the street. Whenever possible, even if it requires slowing down or moving from a faster lane into a slower one, stay with vehicles your own size on the highway. The back end of a truck or bus doesn't give you the visual information you need to stay safe and comfortable.

Copyright © 1998 by Tim Moser of Silhouette Racing. All rights reserved.