Teachings from a Weekend Race Car Driver to a Weekday Marketing Manager

All of us have interests… some read, others play music or visit a tennis court on a Sunday morning… and some of us do what are called High Performance Driving Experiences (HPDE). Participation means subscribing to a HPDE organization, booking time on the racetrack that you want, driving hundreds of miles to that racetrack, and waking up at 6AM on the day of the event to meet up with the other drivers. Depending on your experience, you will be ranked between 3-4 different groups…. And then you drive and hopefully you have fun. Back in the late '10s and early ' 20s while in the US, I worked in marketing for a leading premium chocolate manufacturer during the week… and during (some) weekends, I drove a 2014 Subaru BRZ, also known as Scooby, on the tracks of Northeastern United States.

During an innovation meeting, I shared a learning from the track with my colleagues, in order to justify my approach on the project at hand. The R&D Director of my team mentioned that this feedback was actually very useful for the particular challenge that we were facing. That’s when it hit me – I realized how many track learnings I keep on bringing to my everyday life as a marketer and how much they have defined my career. So I thought to share them with my LinkedIn community in case they were useful to anyone else.

No car modification beats seat time

I was at Palmer Motorsports Park in Massachusetts, driving in a group that had many cars faster than Scooby… mostly Corvettes and Porsches with 2x and 3x the size of my car’s engine and horsepower. Despite my very decent performance that day, I was a bit upset that so many cars were much faster than mine. And, like most car guys, I started thinking that I should spend serious money on a Turbo kit or a Supercharger in order to become faster. Car guys love spending money on cars and working on cars… It’s a great subject to talk about and for most of us, working on the car is something like a “therapy session”.

While waiting for the other groups to finish their session, I saw that one of the instructors was about to go to the track with his Scion FRS (the “twin” car to my Subaru BRZ… practically the same car) which had very similar modifications to Scooby. I asked him if I could sit shotgun during his session in order to see if I could learn something new. Graciously, he allowed me to ride with him and I could not believe how amazingly he was driving. His turns were 10-15mph faster than mine and his breaking points were significantly later than mine, which allowed him to reposition the car with precision and minimal steering input. As a result, his lap time was about 15sec faster than mine. I was shocked what a car similar to mine could do, and at the same time I was very disappointed with myself as a driver. When the session ended, I chatted with the instructor and I expressed my disappointment, and that I was thinking about “boosting” my car. He laughed and asked me “How many track days do you have under your belt?” I replied approximately 20 days… he smiled and said that he had been doing this for 14 years with more than a few hundred track days in his career. “It’s not about how fast is the car… it’s about how fast can you make the car go. And that comes with experience and more seat time. There are things that your body doesn’t fully understand yet when you are driving your car, and only with practice and seat time you will. It’s easy to make a car faster, but it takes way more effort to become a faster driver”. Since then, I have driven the particular track a few dozen days and managed to drop my personal record by approximately 10 secs. I still have more to learn but I think that I am gradually getting there.

Every day, we receive a ton of LinkedIn Mails or direct mails from multiple agencies who are trying to sell us their shiny new tools that will revolutionize our team’s performance. Before you make that investment, make sure that you have gotten everything that you can from yourself and your team! Check if you are missing something, see if you are capitalizing on all the skills of your team members, then see if you have the budget for the shiny new part. You would be surprised by how much the car can still give you before getting it.

Keep your eyes open… what color are the seats at Watkins Glen?

While at New Jersey Motorsports Park, the Head Instructor of an organization I was driving with mentioned that one important skill that can change how you perform on the track is being observant. Recognizing key points on the track, corner stations, patches on the asphalt. My peers and I thought we owned that skill, until he mentioned a story…

A decade ago, he was driving on Watkins Glen. He had a great day, continuously beating his personal lap time record. When he came out of the car he asked a group of his peers “Did you notice that they painted the seats?” One of his buddies responded “Dude, they changed them 3 years ago and we have driven here at least 10 times since then. What are you talking about?”

The silence in the room kind of put most of us (Level 2 Drivers at the time) in our place. We started openly questioning the color of the seats at NJMP and we started exchanging information, if corner station at turn 5 was manned or not, and if there was a new asphalt patch on the straight between turns 2 and 3. And at the end of the day, most of us had managed to beat our personal record and leave the track with a big smile on our face, just because we were more observant and capitalized on minor details that we had ignored in the past.

There will be times that you think that you know your category by heart. That you know everything about your competitors. That by observing some consumption data from Nielsen or IRI, you can interpret everything. But you should always test that. Always keep your eyes open, even if you think that you know everything. Always check any available data that you have. Always talk to the person that stocks the shelf with your product since he is one the battlefield and you are not. Never dismiss an idea even from people that do not do marketing for a living. And always ask people what they think of your product or your campaign, even your accountant that you do not think that is very creative! It’s the minor details that you observe that will help you shave seconds from your lap time - or add a few millions to your top line.

Do not look only at the car in front of you

When you are new in HPDE you tend to be very tense while driving. All your senses get overloaded, so overloaded that you try to find some kind of a mental shortcut that will allow you to calm down. Typically, you look at the car in front of you and you start mimicking what they are doing; follow their line, break where they break, push where they push. However, that doesn’t mean that it is the right thing, given that most instructors will tell you that by blindly mimicking the car in front of you, you have significantly more chances to make the same mistakes as they do and even to literally just rear end them. The better driver you become, the more ahead you should look. Yes, there is a car in front of you, and the driver is doing his thing, but if you want to be better than them and pass them, your eyes and brain should be looking 2 and 3 cars ahead in order to be prepared for your next move.

That is not much different in the marketing world, especially when you are a follower. Multiple times I have seen marketers or their senior management get fixated with what the market leader is doing, but similar to the different drivers and cars on the track, your brand is not the same as theirs. Instead of trying to copy them, you should try to learn from them in order to improve yourself and your brand. Yes, always pay close attention the market leader, but not blindly follow them, because you might end up repeating their mistakes.

But sometimes you should look at the car in front of you… especially if it has lower power than yours

I spent 3 days in the Spring of 2017 at Watkins Glen International, and on the last day I wrote my Personal Record at 2:23.946. I was still very new to the particular track, so in order to prepare I spent many hours practicing this track on PS4 with my Logitech G29 Gaming Racing Wheel Kit, playing a game/racecar simulator called Project Cars. And all that practice paid off since I really learned the right line for the BRZ. That session was probably the best I had driven in my short HPDE career. At some point I passed a 2014 Subaru WRX, a car with significantly more power than mine. When the checkered flag came out, I drove to the pit lane and then towards the garage that I had rented for the day. While taking off my helmet, I saw the WRX approaching me. The instructor, who was sitting shotgun, an older gentleman, had already taken off his helmet and with a big smile said “Son, you were not driving… you were flying. I told him (the driver of the WRX) to follow that little blue Subaru that just passed him so he can learn something”. I do not think I have ever felt more proud of my driving skills. This came to confirm the saying that many Head Instructors use: “If there is a Miata on your tail, and you are driving a Corvette or a Porsche, then let him pass. He is clearly a much faster driver than you and you might learn something if you follow him”.

In the marketplace, we usually get obsessed with the Market Leader… the one with the best placement, the higher advertising budget, etc. and we tend to forget the even smaller guy that is right behind us in market share. You would be surprised how fast that “Miata” can push you to lower rankings if the driver is faster than you. And if they manage to do that, then you better pay significantly more attention to them instead the market leader.

There will be times that you need to run over the damn turkey

The mandatory drivers’ meetings are a necessity for every track day; this is where the rules of the day are established and all the drivers need to participate so we can all be on the same page. While very useful, the more experienced you become, the more you feel bored since you have heard most of the fair points that are being made. But there was one drivers’ meeting at Palmer Motorsports Park that was more interesting than others. The Head Instructor was going through the typical points and then he said “When we did a run this morning to check everything, we saw that there were wild turkeys on the track. If you see them, you do not try to avoid them… you run over the damn turkey”. Suddenly the room went silent with majority of the drivers looking at each other with extreme surprise. Some of us (especially the less experienced ones and the “city slickers” from NYC and Boston) were obviously a bit frustrated by that request. The Head Instructor responded very calmly “You may think that you can avoid a turkey when it appears in front of you and you are going 100mph right before a turn. I do not care how great of a driver you are, or you think that you are, but the odds are against you and you will lose control of the car. So it’s your choice if you want to spend $800 on a bumper repair after running over the bird or if you are willing to risk your life and your car to save the bird”. Thankfully no wild turkeys were harmed on the track that day, but that conversation put things into perspective.

There will be times that you will be asked to work on a project or make a decision that you do not feel comfortable with. Something that you wholeheartedly disagree with or even have the data to support why you shouldn’t do it. That’s when you need to think if you are willing to “run over the damn turkey” or if you are willing to risk it. I am not saying either is right or wrong, and, as a very passionate Mediterranean man, I am definitely not the one who will tell you to conform, but I will tell you to choose your battles based on the bigger picture and to do whatever lets you sleep at night.

It can’t always be the car’s fault

One common mistake that many drivers make is to accuse the car for their bad performance on the racetrack. No matter what car they drive, from a Miata or a BRZ to a Corvette or a Porsche, many times you will see drivers say that it is the car’s fault and that they should change this part, in order to improve their lap time. But it is when you see a more skillful set of hands and feet behind the wheel of a similar car setting up incredible lap times that you understand how much easier it is for some people to accuse the car than themselves. It’s my experience that big egos are attracted to the racetrack.

But big egos are also attracted to Marketing, or to the business world in general, where there will be many drivers (call them Marketing Directors, Heads of Marketing, CMOs or just Boss) accusing their marketing talent of not being good enough and giving them a laundry list of things to change when the numbers are not coming. Each car has its own specifications; its own pros and cons. You can improve them, but you should be prepared to spend a lot of time and budget, while being realistic. If you are expecting that a BRZ can get the horsepower of a Corvette in a couple of days in a shop, while doing it on a budget, then you are unrealistic at best -- and I hope that we will never be on the same racetrack together, because you are borderline dangerous to you and the rest of us. Same applies to marketing talent; each one of your team has their own specs, their own pros and cons that were molded many years before meeting you. You should spend time and identify them for a few weeks before distributing projects. If you see that there are improvements that can happen, you should spend time with them and even set aside some budget in order to get them to the right “shop” that can help them improve. And at the end of the day, if you see they are not a fit for you, as a manager, be the driver that you aspire to be and trade the car with another one that fits your needs. To put it another way: before running them down and hitting the tire wall because you could not drive them, trade them for another car. It’s very likely that there is another driver that would love to have the specific car. Think of this; if you like driving high speed Nascar style tracks like Poconos Raceway, you probably should not drive a BRZ… but if you give it to someone who likes to drive tracks with close turns like Palmer or Watkins Glen, I can personally guarantee you that that person will have a ton of fun with the BRZ that you did not want… and will also bring results!

Ultimately, everything will click together… and the smoothest driver will be the fastest driver

There will be times that you will hit a plateau on the racetrack. It happens to most of us and it happened to me… for the past 2 years I could not get even close to my Personal Lap Time records at multiple tracks, especially my favorite track at Palmer Motorsports Park. The timing made sense, to an extent. Life happened, so I had not spent as much time as I wanted on the track but at the same time I kept experimenting a lot with the setup of the car (kinda needed the “therapy session”) and new driving techniques like heel-n-toe breaking. The combination of all the new inputs was leading to results that were at least frustrating and disappointing… at Palmer I could not break under 2 minutes while my personal record was at 1:58.45… but couple of weeks ago everything clicked together. The setup started feeling just about right and complementing my significantly improved heel-n-toe breaking which led to a much smoother drive. Faster gear changes, less steering input, better weight transition; everything was much smoother and one of my first learnings at the track started making sense: “smooth is fast”… That day I went down to 1:55.03 and I am sure that I can still shave another 4”-5” seconds.

You will hit plateaus in your career and the more aware you are of this, the more chances you have to survive. Have faith in yourself and do not give up. Keep working on your skillset, be true to yourself, your team and your brand. Eventually everything will click together and will help you to have a much smoother drive… either with this company or with another one.

Thank you for reading and hope that it was worth your time. If you have any questions regarding HPDEs and how you can start in the sport, please do not hesitate to send me a message or drop a comment.