David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

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David Vizard
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David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

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Well, as you see, Mike has given me a platform to pass on hopefully interesting stuff that is sometimes mechanically technical and sometimes tactically or psychologically technical.

I have at this point been around for 76 years and as such I have accumulated much that may well be of interest to others with like interests to mine.

I participated in my first race, a wholly unsanctioned event where pretty much everything goes, at the age of 14. The car? It was a 1172 cc side valve Ford Popular of about 1952-ish vintage. The track was dirt and gravel and very bumpy. The engine had the CR raised and a bigger carb modified to deliver the alcohol fuel to the engine. At best it made about 40 hp. Yes, I realize that is not much but countering this lowly output was the fact the car was gutted. It did not even sport a roll cage. So where did I finish after racing around this approximately 250 yard track? Well the truth of the matter is I have no idea. There was not an official start or finish – we just all rushed around until we had had enough.

Well I came away from that experience feeling elated but also critical of my performance. I realized that as an invited driver I could not be too picky over the technical quality of my ride. This quickly lead me to the conclusion that if I was ever to win a race I would need to become knowledgeable in a wide number of fields of endeavor.

With very little thought I realized that I had to learn what it takes to make power from an engine. But races are not always won on superior power alone. Added to engine know-how I needed to acquire good skills in the chassis department. That implied a good working knowledge of not only suspension dynamics and brakes but also what it takes to endow a race car with that seemingly ill defined, dimensionless but very important quality known as handling. That was just the mechanical tech aspect of winning races. Added to this there is the job of goal defining and sticking to that goal. Also, there is the psychological side. This involved understanding where your competition is coming from, what they are prepared to do to get that checker flag. Finding their weak spots and making sure I understand my mental position here.

There was always one thing I could be sure of and that was, unless I was incredibly lucky, I could not count on having the finances to buy the skills needed. Two world wars have seen much of the Vizard family fortune to disappear up cordite smoke and more than the occasional body.

OK, let’s look at goal seeking here. Just about every one of the students I get to my performance lectures are looking for ways to make more power so that they can win races. Their end goal then is to make more power. Sure more power than the opposition is always a good plan but it is only just one means to an end. The real goal here is to pass the finish line first so you have another trophy to put up on the shelf plus what ever prize money goes with it.

As an example of what I am trying to put across here let me ask how many of you have gone out and bought a ½ inch drill? You no doubt bought it because you thought you needed s ½ inch drill but the reality was that you needed a ½ inch hole! The drill then was just a means to an end. In the same vein building more power than your competition is only one avenue to achieving that first place.

With out a doubt motor racing is one of, if not the most, challenging sports on the face of the planet. Real success here means thinking outside the box in almost any aspect that is involved. Finding power inevitably involves money, brain power, and a relentless commitment to the goal of putting on a race winning performance. In other words you have got to be highly competitive. Will yourself on to do better next time by looking for those little things you may have overlooked. Not blaming others for the failure of not winning. Whenever I did not win a race you can be sure it was always my fault. Just so that we are clear here I am all for a good clean fight out on the track. I don’t like winning by default and I certainly don’t like cheats.

Here’s a win-by-default example. Silverstone, I am the current lap record holder for the class but I have some fierce competition in the form of two past champs. The three of us pull out a very substantial lead over the rest of the field and by lap 7 we are well over ½ a mile in front of the rest of the field. WE are swapping positions sometimes as many as three times a lap. I am really enjoying this race. It’s door-handle racing at its best. I have a plan for how I will handle the last corner before the finish line so I feel reasonable confident I have a real chance of taking a win on this one. I’m in third spot and it’s a little over two laps to the finish and the three of us are piling into a corner when I realize the inside one of the pair in front is going too fast for the line he is committed too. From my prospective I can see this crash taking shape well before it actually happens so I take preventative measures to see that I am not involved. Sure enough the inevitable happens and they have a coming together for what transpires as a spectacular crash. I sail through the corner at a little less speed than I could have done and I am now in the lead by over ½ a mile to what is now the second place car. I just catch a glimpse of the crash itself in one of my rear-view mirrors. In the brief moment they were in sight both cars were well over twenty feet above the ground. In my mind I did not earn that win but was handed it by virtue of the demise of my main competition. I felt no elation what-so-ever. That night I gave my crew their share of the prize money and they went out and celebrated. I stayed at home and watched TV.

Now the question is what subtle points did I see that allowed me to avoid entanglement in that rather scary crash. In short it was intensely focused global situational awareness. Let me put this another way. I am sure you have all heard the expression ‘target fixation’. A term usually applied to fighter pilots who are closing in for the kill. The same thing happens to many race drivers although they do not recognize it. Target fixation with race drivers takes a different form than for a dog fighting fighter pilot. The fixation here takes the form of what can be best described as full throttle fixation – that is a psychological reluctance to lift the throttle. If you know the symptoms to look for you can see this throttle fixation happened a lot more times than you might expect. The unfortunate thing about it is that sometimes it leads to fatalities and always to expensive car repairs.

A throttle fixation situation that has stuck to the fore of my mind since it happened about 5 years ago occurred at the Indy 500. In this instance a well-known IndyCar driver lost his life. I can’t remember the name but I am still finding holes in my memory from my brain surgery. The crash took place right under the camera taking the aerial shots. This gave me about the best view to analyze the situation. An up-front driver (our big time guy) spun out and was hit by a driver some 5 cars back. It was a broadside impact and fatal. The deal is that the car that made the hit had about 2 seconds warning that this spin out was going to need some avoidance action. When the back marker did put the brakes on it was too late.

Now I know somebody is going to say it’s all very well for you to criticize you are just a spectator. That’s right – I am, but I have been a spectator to such while driving my own race car and have been the recipient of several throttle fixated drivers. An example here comes to mind straight away. Because of some braking issues of another competitor in practice I failed to do a complete lap at race speed in what was almost certainly the pole setting car. Result – I started in 11th spot. On the first lap coming out of the hairpin bend into Graham Hill corner a couple of cars in front spin out so I brake to avoid hitting them. Because this part of the track drops quite steeply the drivers behind the lead group have a semi birds eye view of the track that was part of the reason why I found I had plenty of time to avoid whatever ensuing melee may occur. However, the two cars that were about 40 ft behind me and had a better view of the track drove straight into the back of my shiny, near flawless $75,000 Cosworth Sierra seemingly without touching the brakes. I observed this mostly via the many rear view mirrors the car had. The trunk of my car was totally caved in and the impact did nothing to help the rear suspension geometry. Just so that you know that is not the only incident of ‘throttle fixation’ I have been involved in to a greater or lessor degree. It is one of many and it is a very real thing.

Taking notice of subtle things like I have outlined here got me involved in two unusual projects. Back when all this was going on Playboy magazine was paying big bucks for ‘different’ features. This was about the time when race car drivers started to get paid well for their services. Because it takes such a big financial investment to find out if a person has the skills to be a successful race car driver I reasoned that many potentially good drivers simply did not get to shine because of the lack of money.

Over a few of the ensuing months I put together an article which would run the reader through a number of tests to see if they were race driver material. The magazine I targeted, Playboy, would have paid, if accepted, about $5000 in the moneys of the time. Today the value of that payment would have been about $15,000 so you can see it was well worth my putting time into it. I tested the articles content out on good race drivers, indifferent ones, and non-race drivers. Though not perfect it turned out to be a good indicator of a person’s potential as a driver on any type of track other than a drag strip.

Unfortunately, that story got turned down – it missed publication by just one vote!

Well the manuscript went into my archives and there it stayed for some years. Then I met a psychiatrist who was putting together a university team to study the mental make-up of successful race drivers. I gave him the copy of my Playboy article and the next thing is I find I am part of the team – both from the subject point of view as well as helping organize things. On several occasions I was literally the lab guinea pig wired up to all kinds of equipment to test this that and the other. A lot of the tests were a carry-over from my Cosworth Sierra days. In addition to gathering data of the cars dynamics also was wired for oxygen consumption, blood pressure and pulse rate. The blood pressure was the worst of this as it took a long and relatively large diameter needle in a vein on the inside of my leg just above the knee joint. Anyway the result of these and subsequent events meant that, over a period of some 3 years, I was both analyzed and given tuition in the subject at hand. I have used both aspects of this experience to help win races. If the interest is there I will delve into this down the road awhile.

Please let me know any questions you may have about Target Fixation, and how it relates to racing.


David Vizard
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Re: David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

Post by CamKing »

The fixation here takes the form of what can be best described as full throttle fixation – that is a psychological reluctance to lift the throttle.
David,
Do you think some rules packages can help bring on this psychological issue ?
A few years ago, the NASCAR restrictor plate engines were so down on power, that with their aero package at that time, if a driver lifted, they would lose the pack completely, and the only way they could rejoin the pack, id if a yellow came out.
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Re: David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

Post by David Vizard »

Mike,
You have a good point there.

However I have witnessed plenty of occasions where it appears that drivers mid pack back often get the spotters warning but do nothing for a couple of seconds while the gravity of the situation takes hold. This delay can be summed up as the reaction time to a yes/no decision.

My Play Boy article described how to do a simple test for this decision making reaction time. The interesting thing is that it was not always related to the absolute reaction time. That is the time it takes to react to a situation you already know will happen. That''s pretty much like the reaction time seen on that machine they inevitably have at SEMA and PRI. If any of you guys have been on that reaction timer then PM me with your no BS time. I would like to see how the numbers look across a typical bunch of hot rodders/drivers.
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Re: David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

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For some reason, HotPass members were not allowed to post on this thread, but they can now.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Re: David's Monthly Musings for July: Target Fixation

Post by GRTfast »

I sent this as a PM to David when he first made the post, and we couldn't reply. He suggested I post it.

David,

Super interesting stuff. I grew up racing MX and dirt track karts, then raced shifterkarts at the regional and national level, racing professionally in 2002 in the SKUSA promoto tour. From when I was 8 years old until I was about 28, I was racing 20-30 weekends a year. I never had an issue with target fixation, I was taught at a young age to look where you want to go, and look as far ahead as you can. Situational awareness is paramount. The end result is that I usually gravitate to the "holes", not the obstacles (other cars, people, etc.). These days, it is just a completely natural instinct to avoid obstacles. I don't race anymore, but I live in florida, so you can imagine that there are a lot of obstacles to dodge on a regular basis. :lol:

Also, I tend to go around whatever obstacle instead of automatically hitting the brakes. If you get on the brakes hard, then have to make an evasive maneuver, it can easily end badly.

All that said, I have seem some horrible instances of target fixation, in some cases from very fast drivers/riders. In the cases I observed, it was my impression that they offender simply wasn't looking ahead enough to be ready. Once they saw the obstacle, they became fixated on it due to the shock/surprise. Anyway, super cool topic, I always enjoy reading your posts.
Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way. -Hitchens
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