It's been a couple of years since I dropped Speed Channel, and so what little motorsports I see on TV anymore is just what I happen to stumble across.

The other night I stumbled across the 125 National at Bud's Creek. I watched the first moto half heartedly as I worked my way thru Ross Bentley's "More Professional Race Driving Techniques". I did manage to note that the leader James Stewart was adding to his lead at a rate of 5 seconds per lap.

I started paying more attention at the start of the second moto after some of the post first moto interviews suggested the points race had little to do with the racing. When Stewart tangled on the start straight and wound up dead last thru the first turn I figured I'd enjoy watching him work thru the pack and wondered how far he'd get. Well, DAMN, he won that race and in the process made some of the bodest and most masterfully executed passes I've ever seen - I was in awe.

It was quite a pleasure to find myself discussing Stewarts performance with Jim Hill while sitting on the hill at PIR today watching Robbie Montinola in the Barbur Dodge race - a race lacking somewhat in passing.

We can go to the track, we can go round the track, we can take home checkered flags and trophies, but if there isn't any passing it isn't much of a race.

One of the things I do miss about TV race coverage is the human side of racing. What with the finishing school treatment most racers on screen performance reflects you don't always get much insight into what they're feeling, but every once in a while.... I do miss Eddie Irvine.

Anyway, later today, as I watched the CART race on TV, I kind of enjoyed the more natural style of the interviews - until Paul Tracy, who was obviously putting on a bad boy front. All I could hear in his words was a crude and insulting demographic based marketing ploy.

Thruout the race as Calvin talked to the racers, and as the cameras caught what really can't be managed second by second, I saw and heard honest emotions from drivers I don't know and don't really care about - or didn't care about till they showed me something real.

I've been wondering if maybe I'd showed too much of my feelings after the Rose Cups - and the older I get the more emotional I seem to get - but after watching some of the CART drivers I don't think I've got anything to be embarrassed about. There's a world of difference between single minded pursuit of personal performance and victory itself, despite the fact of their being intimately conjoined. So many racers, and only one victor is possible. I think there's room to empathize with a racer facing the realization of his failure - and after all, as long as you come back for another round any failure is only a short interval in your education.

I turned back to education after the Rose Cups, and sought fresh guidance in Ross Bentley's latest book. As usual with his writing, I've got mixed feelings. This book doesn't break any new ground like his earlier writing, and yet I found it useful reading.

I'd forgotten quite a bit about the whole "integration" thing, and I can see that more than anything else this was my problem last weekend.

Ross writes very little about what he calls Racecraft, and really nobody else does does much better. That's the part you can hardly talk about short of stories and situations, none of which I believe helps much compared to experience. Thing is - racing, actually racing for position, is significantly concious, and as such interferes somewhat with fluid subconcious operations.

I tell people that racing subjects me to the highest mental loads I've ever encountered in life, and other racers I talk to about it often nod and say it's when they feel most alive and turned on. Obviously the degree to which people intellectualize over this varies greatly, but their experience itself varies far less.

Ideally, passes are to be made quickly and neatly so that we can return to the zone and our peak personal performance. But if you wind up in a long running battle, you've got alot of problems. The sweet spot of the tires being what it is, when someone's slowing you down a little, they're interfering with the calibration of your senses as it were. The longer you're back there the worse it is.

In aerial combat there was a long lived doctrine of slashing strikes from altitude - hit and run. This is our preferred tactic too. If you have the opportunity and the presence of mind you must set up for a single decisive pass and then run away with it. If you get bogged down in a dogfight your chances of success are diminished. This is what happened to me despite enough advantage over my opponent to have done it right several times over.

The limit to what a coach like Ross can do for you is to train you to seamlessly use your whole brain. The quality of your concious thinking is entirely up to you.

Scott, who obviously needs to race s'more....