How Formula 1 saved my life.
One afternoon, two years ago, my friend Demilade is taking me to the hospital to get my COVID tests done for an international flight, and he puts me through an entire driving lesson. For someone who hasn’t driven before or is curious about driving, I found the lessons profound.
Demilade talks me into watching Netflix’s drive to survive, and just like that, I am hooked. I used to envy people who lovea hobby/sport to the point of almost violent obsession, and for all the “22 grown men running after leather” excuse I laughed at my football-loving friends with, I honestly craved something of my own, and this was it.
In my short 2-year experience following every F1 game from testing to qualifying to race day to post-race analysis, playing the official mobile games, and following the lives of the sportsmen, crews, and team principals, Formula 1 has become a new colored lens through which I view life from, and here are a few lessons I’ve picked up.
The next set of points was first formed in a conversation with my wife, she loved it in the way lovers indulge you halfway to affirm you, but wouldn’t care more than the occasional nods and “oh wow, that’s so good”, but I will take that. I try to make this out in simple language free of dense technicalities, and provide easily digestible explanations where necessary, but forgive me where I fail.
And so it’s Lights out, away we go!
The difference is in the number of laps.
The minimum length of a Formula 1 race is 305km, or 190 miles. A race must complete at least as many laps as it takes to get to that distance. For example, the track at Spa is 7km long. 305 divided by 7 leaves us with approximately 44 laps, which sets the Belgian Grand Prix at 44 laps. A lap is more or less a complete run around the track.
I’ve always wondered how F1 drivers are able to drive for extreme lengths of time in a hot very tight car moving at breakneck speeds and in uncomfortable sitting positions. The simple answer is that they’ve done it for longer than anyone else.
A new lap starts where the old one ends, never get so full of the last performance that you fail to see your new journey as a chance to be better. Keep going, the longer the journey, the easier it is to see who is really doing the work. Measure yourself or anyone on their staying power to go dozens of laps without throwing in the towel. Are you fighting for inches or are you fighting for yards is something I tell myself often when I zero in on momentary mistakes as a measure of my full journey. Go the distance, do the work, and maybe you will develop in yourself a staying power, that’s a good thing, and maybe you will learn how to navigate hard things better. So keep moving, be petty about each lap, try to be better on each new run, but keep your eyes on the long-term picture. You should read this;
Don’t lose the war while fighting small battles.
A formula 1 race we have established has many laps, and sometimes we see drivers go too hard and succeed, we’ve seen others go too hard out of desperation and lose the entire race. So when you say “ lost the battle but won the war” it means that even though you have lost in few parts you have won as a whole, this is how you should think about your life, small victories and losses here and there that compound into a win.
This is why great investors have a bone with day traders, they are in it for today alone, but the thing is over the long term if you have your head screwed on tight and are pushing, you just may win (no assurances). Big picture always was something Demilade taught me as he walked me through his model for choosing whether to overtake a car or not; will I make it out alive? yes?, will it be worth it? no? then don’t. Choose your battles wisely.
Fight the need to be aggressive at small turns when you can vest your resources into the long game. Don’t be in a hurry to prove yourself in the mids, keep sharp, maintain your mind, don’t argue over small things if you can afford to let them go, and keep your eyes on the big picture. People who fight for every inch, often lose out on the yards.
Analyze your Mistakes — Even when you are in front.
Performing with excellence does not mean that mistakes are never made. When something fails, analyse why it did, regardless of the result. Win or lose, holds debrief meetings with yourself with a focus on what can be improved the next time. Ask yourself; ‘Why did we win and how can we reduce the errors to make us consistently win”.
Autopsies are not only for losses or deaths, dig deep win or lose. If you surprise yourself with breakneck performance, ask yourself what caused it, and how can you replicate it seamlessly next time.
Watch the corners, and use the ideal racing line.
In Formula One, and even in the simulations, getting through a corner faster than another driver makes the difference between getting in the points or just making up the numbers. The corners are the true test of a driver’s skill. To corner efficiently, drivers need to find the perfect braking point, the optimal grip, judge the turn-in, apex, and exit all the time experiencing positive and negative G-force — and they have to do it consistently for around 70 laps.
An F1 car has an incredible power of acceleration, twinned with jaw-dropping stopping power through its brakes. That allows the car to approach a corner at 330kph and then slow to 60kph as it passes through the corner before taking off again.
You see corners, bends and detours are a normal part of life, we can’t always be on the straight. New turns test our ability to navigate change and build in a different direction. Life and its trajectories are always changing, and the best of us change with it. Corners will need you to slow down, make a skilled cornering, exit the corner, and find your speed again.
Navigate new journeys with grace, pace yourself, aggressive at the turn and you may lose it all. And so, having a child, changing careers, moving to a new country, getting married, or battling loss, slow down. You can’t hold it all together at 215mph, slow down and begin again, or hit the walls fatally.
Mode push.
Push-to-pass is a mechanism on a race car that provides the driver with the ability to increase the car’s power for short periods, usually via a button on the steering wheel. The system is designed to make overtaking easier.
The mode push is that time of the race when you are blasting on all your cylinders, and going after a rival is easier. Give it your all, exploit your advantage, go hard, and with everything you have. Mode push for me is not as competitive as the sport. It is that headspace you get into where the most productivity and visibility will drive the most impact for your long-term growth, use it. It’s not the time to be looking in the rear mirrors, it’s the time to push-push.
Admire others’ success. Hate and jealousy are useless emotions.
When we see someone get their big break, we sometimes ignore the ugly difficult path they took to get there. Why? Because you can’t see it! All you see is victory. And what’s hidden are the thousands of failures they suffered along the way.
That’s why envy and jealousy are such useless emotions. It’s a hopelessly desperate feeling of “I want that” without even getting a sense of what it is you’re actually looking at. You can’t envy someone’s success without recognizing the suffering (past and present) it took the person to get it.
So consider what it took them to get there. Don’t be envious, dispense with your cynicism. Be curious about the sacrifices they made, and ask yourself if you’re willing to do the same. You see, Good success takes time, so do the work that it takes, and appreciate that number one got there through sheer hard work that you can learn from.
You see, it’s such an important lesson, it is the second major story in the bible. Two brothers, one killed the other who he should learn from. Failure would always present you with two options; Tear it all down, or learn to give your next try a better shot. Choose a posture of learning over anger, resentment, and hate, even in the humility that failure presents. Do the long grunt work it takes to be number 1 before you criticize it.
Box-Box.
When barked as an instruction to a driver over the radio, Box Box means that the driver needs to pull into the pit lane during a race for quick maintenance, change of tyres, mechanical repairs or adjustments, and many other actions necessary during the race.
The pitlane is your friend if you can use it well. Take a break, and have a routine for refreshing. You don’t have to fire on all cylinders all the time. Critical engine failures are a thing, give your body grace. All good things flow from your mind and body, take care of them.
The stopwatch doesn’t lie.
F1 drivers swear by the milliseconds, and the stopwatch is an impartial judge to which you can judge your effort versus the outcome. And so, compare yourself to yourself first, every other comparison is secondary. Are you doing better than yesterday? what can you do better today? do just that and keep improving, choose small changes over a long time, rather than big leaps in short bursts, one is kind, and the other is backbreaking.
Be critical of yourself, that’s different from being hard on yourself. You are your best judge, and so when you set goals, be objective when you look at the outcomes of how you performed, and give yourself the grace to go again.
Complacency is the enemy, battle it with all you’ve got.
Nature is very scary because the once comfortable can be on the edge of extinction in a matter of years, even minutes. We can’t be comfortable. You must never, ever believe that the winning will continue. Instead worry that it may end. To stay in the game you have to be prepared for the contingencies.
Spend more time in the simulator trying to understand what changes life may present you, spend more time going through data analyzing what went right and wrong — everything is levels deeper if you just look. That focus is vital. You need to have the mindset that wants to chase every thousandth of a second.
If you keep winning several times, you become the one being chased. You are no longer the hunter — you are the prey — but you want to keep the hunter mentality alive.
Practice still makes perfect.
Formula 1 drivers are petty about practice, and deeply understanding the tracks, where they have an advantage, or need to work hard to improve. They exercise, moderate their diets, and practice a track so many times that it becomes muscle memory.
You need the muscle memory that comes from repetition and practice, and you need to be someone that goes the distance when it comes to practice. Why? so that you can do it and know it like the back of your hand.
The Jeddah track in Saudi Arabia, for instance, is a long track with good straights, lots of speed traps, and treacherous unexpected corners. I’ve played that track so many times on the simulation, but with every turn, I am learning when to brake and how to navigate the crazy turns. Same with life, the more you do, the more you know how to do it. Even better, if you can do it better than millions of people, get ready for the bank.
Helmets on, Protect yourself from the chatter.
Long ago, my worst course in university was Operational Amplifiers, and if there’s anything I took away is that when you amplify a signal, and the output signal goes back into the amplifier, and over and over, in the case of sound, you hear that screeching uncomfortable echo. This screeching sound also happens when someone uses a microphone so close to speakers. What’s happening here? the microphone takes your sound in, amplifies it through a speaker, and the microphone picks up the speaker and amplifies again, over and over, and boom, it’s uncomfortable for everyone.
Everyone can’t advise you, you can’t have too many people have your ears at the same time. Too many cooks still spoil the broth. When you play in public like we all are these days, too much feedback and information can lead to an overload and analysis paralysis, you only need a few people. This is why F1 drivers only have one engineer and the team principal on the microphone to reduce the amount of confusion that comes from too many people speaking at the same time. Same for you, reduce who provides critical feedback to you, reduce that number to a few well-meaning people providing a mix of critically corrective, preventive, yet encouraging feedback, and watch your life change dramatically.
There’s this famous quote Valtteri Bottas (I love him for how level-headed he is) shares. It’s a Finnish quote that translates to “the dogs are barking, but the trains keep going”. You can’t consider every feedback you receive.
For instance, for all the arrogance that Yuki Tsunoda can have, don’t talk to him while he is focused, or he will cuss you out.
Driving in the wet, brakes are your best friend.
Extremely slippery situations require that you drive with care. Trust in your abilities, but have a hand on the brakes, especially in the corners. Go life safe, especially in unfavorable conditions. When life gets slippery, being on the fast lane when you don’t consider consequences can become your very own undoing, because in-low friction conditions, you can lose control and lose it all.
What does this look like in real life? You will be presented with tricky situations that test you; a terrible boss, a greedy landlord, an unreasonable sibling or in-law? Take some time to consider all your actions, default to your brakes, hold off on abundant words, choose a few, tame your tongue, and more so, err on the side of caution.
You can’t refuel mid-race. pace yourself
I remember talking to a friend earlier in the year about her plans for 2023, and her response was from a place of exhaustion. For her, people have already started flying and she was still trying to get a hang of the new year. I felt her to be fair, when you play in public, you are processing your life from many viewpoints that may not all be fair to your process.
I used to have that problem with everyone going faster than me, even on my weekend walks, I have a lot of people run past me, and sometimes that can be some real pressure. I have to remind myself that my plan was to walk and not run, and most times, I find that after a few kilometers, I always catch up with the runners.
I told my friend to understand a few truths. First, there are 12 laps (12 months), you can’t be firing on all cylinders in all 12. There will be days for preparation, days of pure tiredness, days of unproductivity, days of high energy, embrace all of them as part of a whole. Second, “Nor be who first start dey first finish”,
Here’s a video of Sergio Perez going from last in the first lap to winning the Sakhir Grand Prix. Third, Pace yourself. Yes put some pressure on yourself, just don’t let it mess with you till it cripples you to a grinding halt. Fourth, Log off if you have to, if other people’s successes pressure you, and take a break to focus on yourself.
Fifth, there are a few constants in a race; your tires, your fuel, and your engine performance, watch those. Don’t burn your tires by driving recklessly at top speeds where it doesn’t matter for your overall success. Measure your fuel, you don’t have to throttle so hard to get the most advantage. Learn to be satisfied with cruise mode when you are not trying to prove anything to anyone, just being your best self.
Sixth, Don’t burn out. If you run out of fuel/lose your car/tires trying to chase someone else, that’s on you, be strategic about your journey, and don’t expend yourself chasing people when you should be chasing your long-term goals.
There will be days when you gave your best, and it just wouldn’t work out.
This can be a downer on most days. Everybody prays to be number 1, but in reality, even your best sacrifices may come up short, handle that with grace. The hurting part for me is always when a driver is giving his best and poof, the engine is gone, and just like that great effort, and great intentions, are all gone. Now you have to pull out your steering wheel, step out of the car, and plan for your next appearance.
You will have things in your life that you can’t control, for everything else give your best.
Use the slipstream, DRS
Along a long straight, a car following close behind another uses the slipstream created by the lead car to close the gap between them, or if they have a straight line speed advantage, to pass on the straight.
This may be a forced lesson, not my strongest to be fair, but hide under the wings of a car in front, and use that to your advantage. Always surround yourself with good instruction and people who have gone ahead of you, you are safer and faster under the wings of people who can groom, protect and launch you to faster speeds.
Life is a dangerous sport, you just might die.
My dad used to say “It’s risky not to take risks. Someone can say they are scared of getting on a plane because the plane might crash, and still have a plane crash into his house where he thinks he is safely guarded”.
In an interview Grosjean did about a year or so later after the crash in the video above, He talked about how at first the barrier was blocking him and he couldn’t get out. Once he knew he couldn’t get out, he recalled that he sat in the car at peace with himself and was ready to die. Then he thought about his wife and kids, this made him keep trying until he eventually got out.
It’s something my friend Kelechi says; And accept wounds as little deaths, a natural consequence of participating in life. To play in the arena as we all do is deadly, and that you are taking a stab at it one day at a time deserves some praise and noble mention. Keep bending life to your will, and if you still aren’t dead yet or haven’t been cut off completely by the knees yet, then maybe there’s something about you that’s defiant, keep going.
The higher you go, the sharper the knives.
When you are number 1 for so long, expect a target on your back, it comes with the terrain. People will always gun for you. In my experience, you can have your skills and integrity questioned, you can have people walk all over you just to see how you present yourself. People will make assumptions of your character in a bid to take your position, they will even make sure your exit from the stage is harder that your accent. Handle the hurt with grace but don’t be naive. Life isn’t a cheery walk in the park, it’s to be navigated fully awake. Show up daily and arm yourself with all you need to keep proving them wrong daily.
Take a bow.
You won’t be number 1 for long, or maybe you will. Love the podium, just don’t get addicted to it. Get used to not being in the spotlight all the time, be happy with the days when you are not a viral sensation, when you are not making the headlines. You will hear yourself in all that quiet, and that’s a good thing, maybe you will listen to some of that advice that your inner critic is always dishing out, maybe that will change you in some good, permanent way.
I hope you loved this as much as I did creating it. I would love to buy an F1 Simulator, and as they say, you never know until you try. Please leave a donation towards my new sim; 1100027007. Kuda Bank. I’d totally appreciate it.
