Vision: where to look, and when.

Why the eyes come first

A 2014 column in Ross Bentley's Speed Secrets series on Winding Road, written by ProFormance Racing School chief instructor Don Kitch Jr., describes the eyes as driving every control input, because drivers tend to steer where they look. Bentley makes the same point in a 2021 column: coaches keep saying "Eyes up!" because that instinct can work for you or against you. Blayze coach Dion von Moltke calls "eyes up" the most-used phrase in high-performance driver education.

Driver61 adds a useful distinction. Good vision, in its terms, means taking in as much information as possible, not having good eyesight. Its basic rule is to look one stage ahead of where the car is.

High eyes

Kitch describes a "high eyes" approach that divides the windshield into two zones: a lower zone showing where the car is now, and an upper zone showing where it is going. The faster you go, the more of your time should be spent in the upper zone.

Where to look through a corner

Driver61 and von Moltke both give a sequence. They are close, but not identical:

The main difference is at the start. Driver61 has you looking at the apex while braking, with the brake marker in your peripheral vision. Von Moltke moves in steps, from brake marker to turn-in point to apex to exit, with each earlier reference kept in peripheral vision. Your instructor may teach either.

Shallow vision and deep vision

Joshua Allan, writing in NASA Speed News (2018), separates two habits:

Shallow vision

Fixing on the next reference point only.

Deep vision

Looking two or three steps ahead. Allan says this lets a driver work with a smaller safety margin and lose less speed.

Rather than locking onto any single reference, Allan recommends stringing several together, including "sight pictures" and pairs of references that line up. Learning those references for a specific circuit is covered on learning a track.

Signs of poor vision

The sources list these signs of poor vision and the mistakes behind them:

• Allan (NASA Speed News): wheels dropping off the track, abrupt inputs, and constant small corrections while still below the grip limit, often leading to turning in early and over-slowing.
• Driver61: looking too short and too narrow, only looking at the apex once you have started to steer, tunnel vision in faster cars, and "lazy" vision when the driver is mentally overloaded.
• Driver61, braking: it attributes most braking mistakes (a slow change from throttle to brake, uneven pressure, braking too early or too late) mainly to poor vision. See braking.
• Driver61, oversteer: it says snappy lift-off oversteer is usually a sign of not looking far enough ahead. See understeer and oversteer.

Driver61 puts tunnel vision in faster cars down to a natural survival instinct.

Vision and nerves

Allan connects stress and where the eyes go, summing it up as "Anxiety up = eyes down. Eyes up = anxiety down." Put plainly: as anxiety rises the eyes drop, and raising the eyes brings anxiety down. The mental side of driving is also touched on in driver fitness.

Mirrors and other cars

Vision is not only about the corner ahead. Driver61 recommends using the straights at track days to check the mirrors for faster cars and let them by. How passing is arranged in driver education groups, with point-bys and passing zones, is on passing and racecraft.