I was a bit hesitant to go through last night’s NASRS season 14 race replay from Zolder and pull out the highlights. I usually look forward to doing this the morning after the race, but I was worried last night’s race was pretty cringe-worthy. To put things in context, I qualified P3 and finished the race P5, which are both really good results for me so all good there. But, as I was racing, it didn’t seem like I was driving very well. However, after watching a lot of the replay, I think I did OK, save for a couple big-ish mistakes.

To sum things up, I never really felt comfortable in the car during the race. I think the main issue was that I got lucky and smashed my very last quali lap with, I think, the quickest lap I’ve ever done at Zolder. The main problem, though, was I was starting ahead of much faster drivers who I knew would quickly put me under a lot of pressure. Moreover, P1 and P2 both went wide in T2 so I found myself in P2 after a couple turns. It’s normally a good thing to be in P2 right at the start of a race, but I knew the guys behind me were really fast so it was just a matter of time before I was under a lot of pressure. And that’s pretty much what happened.

I should note, there are a couple chicanes at Zolder that make or break your lap. You need to really risk it and send it in the first one and, depending on your car, it can be a bit of a coin toss as to whether you nail it or end up flying off the track and spinning out. I was really struggling each time through that first chicane, holding my breath, hoping my car wouldn’t spin out. I think I was over-driving due to the pressure and was not slowing enough to get the car settled and turned in. As you’ll see in the highlights, I made it through without any issues 42 times. Unfortunately, there were 43 laps….

So, yeah, I hit the wall and messed up my car a bit with around 15 minutes left in the race. I lost a position right away and ten minutes later, succumbed to a good battle and lost another one. I don’t think I would have been able to hang onto both spots without the mistake, but I had a big enough gap that I think P4 was possible.

Anyway, the point of all of this “sim racing” stuff isn’t so much about the results, but the process. Having something you’re horrible at and then having to work at it to get better, is generally, a lot of fun. At the same time it’s also stressful racing with other humans, especially when you like them and don’t want to foul up their races if you make a silly mistake. So when you’re able to overcome your anxieties and fears and things work out, it feels pretty awesome. That’s why we race, I guess.

Next week we’re at Zandvoort, which is a really fun track to hotlap, but not the best for racing. It’s gonna be hairy, but should be fun.

Week 3 final results (Zolder)

• Qualifying: P3/41
• Race: P5/41

Here are a few highlights from the race.

Tuesday night was the second race of the NASRS season 14. The race (65 minutes, one mandatory pit stop) was at Brands Hatch and I qualified P10 out of 37, which was a little better than I thought I’d end up. Brands is a very tricky track and it takes almost 100% concentration for the entire lap. Any small mistake or loss of focus will cause, at best, a second lost or, at worst, a spin out. I had a decent start and was able to get into 8th for most of the first stint. I had some good battles so it was intense, but a lot of fun. I got hit going into the pits and almost lost it, but was able to recover with only minor damage.

The second stint was even more intense than the first as I was battling with a driver for over 20 laps. It was such good fun. I got into a big tangle on the last lap and the other driver had a major spin out. I think it was his fault, but haven’t seen the final stewards report so I might have an incoming penalty (hopefully not). Anyway, another fun race with a decent result – P6 out of 37. Looking forward to next week’s race at Zolder.

Week 2 final results (Brands Hatch)

• Qualifying: P10/37
• Race: P6/37

Here are a few highlights (and lowlights) from the race.

Tuesday night was the first race of the NASRS season 14. Things are a bit different this season as there are only 3 splits – Tuesday night, Wednesday night, and rookies on Thursday night. In the past there were bronze, silver, and gold splits, but all of those have been consolidated into just two splits. The weather is a bit more dynamic on Wednesday, but otherwise there’s no real skill difference between Tuesday and Wednesday – it really just depends on what night works best for folks.

The race was at Imola and I qualified P8 out of 50, which was a bit better than my actual skill level suggests. This is probably due to the fact that I’m driving the Aston Martin, which is pretty strong at Imola. I got lucky and finished the race in P4, which is a lot better than I was expecting. The start of the race was a little sketchy. I didn’t get a great start and banged doors a bit with the guy behind me, but nothing bad came of that for either of us. I did, however, get caught up a bit in a collision a few turns into lap 1, which set me back into P10. I was able to work my way back up to P5 and gained one more spot after the leader got a late 10 second penalty. I t-boned someone who spun out very late in the race, but thankfully I was still able to finish without any issues.

I’m really happy with how I drove and how the race played out. It was a pretty intense 65 minutes – looking forward to next week’s race at Brands Hatch.

Week 1 final results (Imola)

• Qualifying: P8/50
• Race: P4/47

Here are a few highlights from the race.

This week’s Brain Food newsletter had this little gem and it got me thinking about how this tactic has been successful for me over the past 20 years.

Here is something counterintuitive: it’s easier to do something daily rather than a few times a week.

For example, last March, I started going to the gym. I told myself I would go three days a week. And that worked for a few weeks, but then I found myself slacking off. Since I was only going three days a week, it was easy to tell myself I didn’t have to go today - I could go tomorrow instead.

As someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy going to the gym, going tomorrow always sounded better than going today. Within a month, I stopped going to the gym altogether.

I needed a new approach. One that didn’t involve willpower. I made a rule to go to the gym every single day. And that subtle change made all the difference.

Doing something every day turns desired behavior into default behavior.

When willpower is lacking, routine takes over.

– Brain Food newsletter 2023/01/15

To some degree I’m sure everyone has a different take on how to best change their behavior/habits – different stuff works for different people. But for me what Parrish mentions above is what I’ve found usually works pretty well. For example, twenty-plus years ago I wanted to reduce how much soda I drank. The only way I could really do it was to completely quit rather than just “cut back.” Same for not eating meat and all the other little experiments I’ve done over the years (just ask my wife, who sometimes gets annoyed at all the weird life hacks I’m willing to try out).

A huge motivator for me is to get a streak going. For example, if I haven’t had a soda for 80 days there’s really no way I’m going to mess that up by having one on day 81. If I did, then I would surely have one on day 82 since, “Why not, I had one yesterday.” Again, for me, momentum is a key factor (if not the factor) in motivation and habit formation.

I don’t know exactly when this happened, but I have this weird obsession with writing things down. Perhaps it started when I began working in IT. On a nearly daily basis I’d run into some type of issue and, obviously as part of my job, would need to figure out how to fix it. So I’d spend a few hours researching and trying different things out. After a while I’d stumble onto the magic formula and would be able to solve the problem. I’d then move onto the next issue and do the same thing (research-test-fix).

Then a month or two later an issue would surface, but this one would seem vaguely familiar. However, because there was this deluge of so many different issues/technologies to deal with I usually couldn’t recall the details. So I’d spend a few hours working on the fix and as I was wrapping things up I’d remember that, yeah, we did have this exact same problem two months ago and I fixed it the same way. Or, the more frustrating example would surface where I’d come across a problem I knew we had fixed before, but for the life of me couldn’t remember how. So again I’d waste a bunch of time and effort to fix a problem I had already solved. I hated everything about that. The feeling I’d have when I knew I knew something, but just couldn’t remember the details. And, of course, the feeling of wasting so much time and effort on already-solved problems.

Consequently, I got in the habit of writing down how I did everything. How I built systems from scratch. How I installed and upgraded hardware. Installed and upgraded software. Fixed bugs and resolved failures. Everything. And not just work stuff – I also documented and kept notes on most things in my life. I first started using Word docs and when I figured out that was a bust, transitioned to plain text files. I then got sick of managing all of those and moved to Evernote. Documentation systems finally caught up with the times and we started putting all of our stuff online in various wiki-type systems. But I still had a bunch of personal notes/information that I needed to maintain.

Evernote became expensive so I moved out of that and into Bear, which I’ve been on for the last 6-7 years. I generally don’t have any written document outside of that system – if it needs to be written down, I put it in Bear. It’s been a great piece of software and is reasonably priced. But I still feel like my information is locked up in a system and I don’t have full control over it. You can export your notes in various formats so it’s not that bad. But, there were some other features I was interested in (e.g., linking notes) so I started looking for alternatives and landed on Obsidian.

Obsidian’s killer feature (for me) is that it’s more like a notes IDE than a traditional notes application. Specifically, all your notes are just text files (in Markdown format) in your filesystem. So if Obsidian goes out of business you aren’t screwed because your notes are locked up in some proprietary format. They’re just text files on your computer (or in a cloud service), which should work as long as computers exist. There are a bunch of other neat features (e.g., links, tags, community plugins, YAML metadata, a very active community) that make it a compelling piece of software for your notes. It’s a little frightening how robust the software is and how “intense” some folks are with designing their “Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)” systems. I’m looking to make use of some of the PKM stuff, but I’m just starting to dig into it so we’ll see. Hopefully I’ll get my system set up so I can write more about it in the future. It’s kinda nerdy, but if the shoe fits, I guess.