One of the most common reasons for beginner and intermediate drivers to crash is hesitation and uncertainty. If you're not 100% sure of what you're going to do, your moves become extremely unpredictable and imprecise. And this can cause serious problems both when driving alone or when racing others.

Understanding Commitment in Racing

The opposite of hesitation is commitment. And you can commit on doing something just as well as you commit to not doing it. Either go for it fully or don't go for it at all.

Proper commitment is taking a calculated risk and taking the right decision and sticking to it. It doesn't mean going full sand recklessly, it just means taking a chance in a move and then making it happen as much as you can following your plan.

The Danger of Half Moves

The worst thing that you can do that will most likely make you crash is to do a half move. When you start going for it and then you give up. This is the kind of scenario where you end up becoming side by side with someone for an unnecessary amount of time and probably causing context. It's much better to just wait, think, and then fully go for it when you know that it might work.

Commitment vs. Hesitation: A Comparison

Because what do you think is better? A risky move that you fully commit to and are predictable the whole time? Or a safe move that is hesitant and confuses other drivers because they don't really know what you're going to do.

If they know you will probably go for it because it's an obvious decision. But you still hesitate and hover around during the corner. They might not be able to anticipate your actions and just not have enough time to react to what you are doing.

Why Drivers Change Their Minds Mid-Move

So changing your mind after starting to make a move is the biggest cause of crashes. And again, this comes down to whether you have a clear idea of what are the options and what you should do. If you don't really know what are the options then you're going to try something because you're racing and you're nervous and you really need to try something otherwise you were going to lose time, right? So you just go for it regardless of whether you know what you are going to do or not. You're just going to send the car on the inside and see what happens.

Building Experience and Understanding Battle Dynamics

That's the thing. The more experience you get, the more you understand the battle dynamics. The more you can take a calculated risk, the more you can really try one specific thing that you know worked because you have already done that move several times in pit parties. Or because you have tried that already a lot of times with teammates or even races and you're starting to watch your replays and understand that this kind of move on this kind of speed like a medium or high speed corner, this kind of move will work on a low speed corner, this kind of move will work. You start building that vocabulary and your commitment levels improve a lot more.

Developing Your Racing Vocabulary

This lesson doesn't teach you anything specific or actionable. It's just to tell you that commitment is important so that you try to avoid as much as possible doing half moves and also understand that you do need that experience so that you slowly build your options and so that you can choose them more specifically with a lot more awareness so that you can take the right decisions in racing.

What to Expect in Future Lessons

The next video analysis and lessons that I add I'm going to always refer to the techniques of racecraft and battles for position but also the mental part of it, the psychological part of racing and how that plays a role in the decisions and the moves and how we can improve as drivers. I hope you enjoyed the next videos. The next videos might be a little bit long because we're going to be analyzing lots of fights for a position, lots of crashes, lots of incidents, lots of good defenses, good attacks and so on.