Sports Car and Competition Driving

I do not believe that any book, or any amount of training of the kind given in competition driving courses, will make a good driver of anyone who does not possess a fundamental, inborn aptitude. Above a certain level, driving becomes a sport, demanding of its adepts instant and accurate reflexes combined with perfect judgement. In this sphere, only those who enjoy an outstanding natural gift, and who take a profound interest in the subject, will ever reach the top.

For this reason, I had some hesitation before writing this book— I thought, for instance, of Stirling Moss, Mike Hawthorn, Tony Brooks or Jim Clark, who all started winning races in their very first season of serious racing, at an age when they could have had comparatively little driving experience at all. But surely, they are exceptions, and between the two extremes of the born champion and the hopeless incompetent, there must be hundreds of good drivers who, even if they cannot hope to emulate potential world champions, might gain immense satisfaction from taking part in all sorts of motoring events.

These are the non-professionals who, as a rule, cannot devote much time to their motoring activities and who will surely greatly benefit from all the experience that can be passed on to them, thereby reducing the time necessary for satisfying results to be achieved, in whatever sort of competition they intend to enter. If they have analytical minds, they will probably also like to have a better knowledge of the basic physics governing the behaviour and the attitude of their car on the road, which, in turn, will help them drive it to better purpose.

The greater part of this book deals with racing, rather than rallying or any other sort of competition in which a time element is involved. This is not only because I consider circuit racing to be motor sport in its purest form (where few factors other than achieving the highest possible speed over a given distance are involved) but also because all the general rules of racing apply, basically, to any other sort of driving—after incidentals such as lack of previous knowledge of the road and the presence on it of other traffic and so on, have been taken into account.

I therefore think that a better knowledge and understanding of the factors involved in competition driving should be of benefit to any driver, even if he does not take part in any sort of competition, and thereby contributes to greater safety on the road.

P. F.

Brussels,
January 1963