Adopt growth mindset to learn race courses

As we are making the final preparations for the 2019 RDQ MultiGP sports class championship in Daytona next week, my biggest fear is creeping up in the back of my mind:

What if I forget the course? What if I put in all this time, work, and money, and I don’t even finish a single lap correctly?

This is not an unfounded fear for me! In this summer’s FAI Qualifier race to determine which female would represent the United States in China, I got so nervous that I forgot the course. The same course that I had been flying on for hours a day!

This year for Daytona, I’m focusing on keeping a positive mindset for the course. Here’s how:

Use the growth mindset when learning the track

If you’re not familiar, Carol Deck wrote an incredible book called “Mindset.” This book explains that people have either:

1. Fixed mindset: They believe they were born with their skills and intelligence.
2. Growth mindset: That we can learn new skills with practice, patience and hard work.

Here’s a great video about this:

If you’re not sure where to start with the growth mindset, simply adding the word “yet” works great. This means when learning the track and you start to have negative thoughts, remember that you haven’t learned – yet.

On your first batteries especially, negative thoughts might come to mind:

• I’m never going to learn this track!
• I forgot that gate AGAIN! I’m never going to qualify top 40.
• I can’t do it. I totally suck, and this was a complete waste of time and money.

It’s important to reframe those thoughts in a more positive, growth mindset:

• Of course I don’t know the track yet; I’m only on my second battery.
• Oh boy, I forgot that gate again. Let me circle back and try that over.
• I’m struggling, but that’s understandable because this is a championship race. I’ll ask for a spotter next time to help me. I’ll get this!

Practice learning new tracks in the sim.

If you want to gain confidence about your ability to learn new tracks. try a different one in the sim every night. At first, it is confusing, frustrating, and you feel like you will never be able to do it. In fact, just the other evening one of the pilots I was flying with on the sim gave up on his second run on a new (and really cool track!) because he was lost. Of course he was lost; it was only his second time trying to learn a long, complicated track.

You’ll soon see that after a few runs, you will start to become familiar with the track. You might go the wrong way here and there; if that happens, practice those elements a few times.

By repeating this process over and over on the sim, you’ll begin to see about how long it takes you to learn a new track. Then when you go to the next race, put that confidence in your back pocket. Don’t expect yourself to know the course for the first couple packs. And staying in a positive mindset is so important for performing well in a race.

Do you have any tips on learning a race track? Share them below!