Storytime: Becoming Rainman

Let it rain (you know it’s going to eventually, right?).

Like many, if not most, drivers, there was a time when I did not like racing in the rain. For my second race in a Formula Ford, it poured… and I got my butt kicked. I hated that. At the time, probably the most competitive from of road racing in North America was club Formula Ford racing, so if I’d looked at it rationally, I’d have been understanding about how uncompetitive I was on a wet track, up against drivers with more experience in those conditions.

Sorry, I never did a get a photo of this car in the rain. Perhaps it was because cameras didn’t work in the rain way back in 1979?!

I raced at Westwood Motorsport Park, in the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C. Perched up on the side of a mountain, two things were certain. First, it would live up to its slogan, “Mountain High Racing.” And second, it would also live up to its nickname, “Wetwood.”

Up at the track, you could look down across what we called the Lower Mainland. On a clear day, you could almost see all the way to the ocean, where clouds would roll in and stack up against the mountains, and dump rain. To say it rained a lot at Wetwood… err, Westwood, was an understatement.

After losing my first wet race, I had two options: accept that I was not good in the rain, or make myself great in those conditions.

I chose option two.

Fortunately for me, Westwood was owned and operated by the Sports Car Club of B.C., of which I was a member. And on most Tuesday and Thursday evenings, any member could practice from 6pm until dark for what I remember as being only $20.

Over the next few months, I had my Formula Ford prepared and ready to be loaded onto my trailer, and hauled up the long hill to Westwood on every rainy Tuesday and Thursday. In fact, I can’t recall ever practicing on a dry track, but I sure do remember many wet evenings at the wheel of my Tiga FF, splashing around the circuit like a 4-year-old jumping up and down in a sidewalk puddle.

It was on one of these evening practice sessions that the rain magic happened. I had been trying to inch my corner entry speed up for Turns 1, 2, and 4, and with every lap I would ease my foot off the brake pedal a fraction of a second earlier, rolling a half MPH more, then one MPH, and another one MPH… more entry speed.

Then, it happened.

I knew I was carrying a bit too much speed as I turned into the corners, but it was not a surprise. After all, I had been deliberately trying to increase my corner entry speed, so I expected the car to slide a little. And it did, as the front tires were slow to respond to my request to change my car’s direction. Understeer. The deliberate kind that was not unexpected.

With the front tires sliding, the car in a definite understeer attitude, I could “play” with the throttle, increasing or decreasing the push. Ease off a little and the fronts would begin to grip more; feed in some throttle and the car would push on a wider arc. It was absolute play, as I felt confident that I knew what the car was going to do, because I was deliberately making it do those things.

Stopping to refuel the car, and taking time to talk about it with Ron (friend, crew chief, mechanic, logistics manager, timekeeper, transportation coordinator, and sometimes sponsors when we were hungry and I’d spent all my money on fuel and tires) about what was going on, I realized the difference: I wasn’t waiting for the car to begin to slip and slide, and then try to react to it. Instead, I was making it slip and slide, and therefore I was ready for it; I was being proactive with the lack of grip, rather than being reactive to it.

This was one of, if not the, biggest Aha! moments in my driving life. If I entered a corner wondering when the car would begin to slide, and tried to predict when it would, I was behind the car. But if I deliberately made the car slide, either under or oversteer, I was ahead of it.

Again, in the beginning I was inducing understeer, and then managing it, but with more practice I would make the car oversteer a touch on entry, and manage that. It got so that I could make the car do whatever I wanted it to. In doing so, there was no fear of the unknown, which is what causes so many drivers (and certainly me up until this Aha! moment) to be slower than they could be in the rain.

Most importantly, I was having a blast. Rain was fun! I felt confident and couldn’t wait for the next wet race.

A couple of months later, we had another rainy race, and you guessed it. I won.

Sure, I had developed a skill that helped me be faster in the wet, but it was my mindset that made the biggest difference. I worked at that, too. I spent many an evening visualizing driving in the rain, and each time I imagined being happy, calm but energized, and confident. I pre-lived my emotions, and they were all positive. I was in a great state of mind, and I programmed myself to love driving in the rain.

From that time on, I was a different driver in the rain. A good one. Now, to come clean, given a choice, I would usually rather race on a nice sunny day… unless there was a reason to prefer the rain, like when I was in a less-than-competitive car, in which case the rain often leveled the performance capabilities of the cars my competitors drove.

Through the years, I learned and developed many more “wet weather driving skills,” but it was those practice days at Westwood that built the foundation. And of course, I’ve coached dozens and dozens — perhaps hundreds — of drivers the “stepped” processes of how to practice and develop better rain driving abilities.

With this mindset, and the approach of “make the car do something,” I had many experiences that backed up my rain programming.

In 1990, my hometown of Vancouver held its first Indy car race; it coincided with me driving in my first Indy car race. The field, at the time, had some drivers you might have heard of: Mario Andretti, A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears, Bobby Rahal, Danny Sullivan, Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti.

On the Friday, for the first practice session, it rained. And I mean, it rained, hard. Danny Sullivan was quoted as saying that he had seen salmon swimming up the front straight! Coming into pit lane and getting out of the car after my first official Indy car practice session, in a 1500-pound car with 750 horsepower, driving between the concrete walls of a street circuit, I had been sixth fastest. When someone asked me how it felt, I said it was like “car dancing.”

To this day, when I’m driving in the rain, I think “car dancing,” and smile. Combining that with the wet-weather skills I had developed, it was my happy place.

My “Aha 2.0” was that everything I’d learned about being fast in the rain applied to driving in the dry. I will say that it took a bit of time and practice to get to the point where I could “make the car do something” in the dry as well as I could in the rain, but when I did, my speed took off to another level.

Rain is good. Car dancing is special. Bring it on!

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A few years ago, I raced a 3-Series BMW in a WRL race at COTA. I had driven a few laps in practice on the Friday, but it was pouring rain on Saturday morning, and I was going to start the race. Because of a random draw for starting positions, we were starting 18th, and I was looking forward to learning where the grip was, and how the car was going to handle. After the race, I took the in-car video from the first few laps, dubbed in the dialogue in my head — what I had been thinking — and posted it on my YouTube channel, where it’s become one of my most popular videos. Watch it here.

I wrote about my recent experience of driving a BMW M4 at Spa in the pouring rain, and playing with the electronic nannies in a piece (appropriately) titled Playing with Nannies.

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All of this talk about driving in the rain is at the front of my mind because I have an Art (& Science) of Driving in the Rain masterclass coming up in the first week of February. You can either participate in the live session, or you can wait and watch the recording (and access all the resources) on your own schedule afterward. But you do need to register, either way. For more info and to reserve your spot before the registration deadline, go to https://speedsecrets.com/product/driving-in-rain/.