2: ACTUALLY LOOK WHERE YOU’ RE GOING

The biggest thing I took from this year was that previously I was using my eyes all wrong.

For the first two rounds I lagged behind Brandon, mostly as I was staring too hard at braking points and the apex of corners.

A trip to izone Driver Performance was a breakthrough. Coach Neil Riddiford hooked me up to their digital eye-tracking system, giving me a physical demonstration of where I should be looking when racing, opposed to what I was doing.

Looking as far ahead as possible transformed my driving, and my mentality. For the rest of the year I was within a second or so of Brandon, and that gap came down to a few tenths in the Brands Hatch finale. To the point when he even called me “a totally different driver to last year”.

Obviously, seat time helps, but I hadn’t exactly been spoiled with that either. We tested before each race, but as I was sharing a car I only ever got half the track time my team-mate Attard did, and was often playing catch-up each time I got in the car.

However, remembering the simple rules of driving with your eyes in the right place meant I got up to speed much faster. Sims’ tip of ‘driving with your fingertips’ – where you only hold the wheel very lightly instead of white-knuckle squeezing it – also helped me feel the chassis a lot more and made me more comfortable with the car moving around at speed.