quickxotica

Here's a tip: pick a recreation that is LESS dangerous than the one you are training for. Ping pong, sim racing, squash? Yes.
Isle of Man TT? No. You won't improve your racing by dying before your next race.

winders

Well excuse me.......

Scott

race911

Just think how your life would have turned out if you stayed in the GGR fold. Took me a few years to bail........

winders

While I wish that I didn't have that horrid experience with Galen Bieker at Werks II, I wouldn't trade my motorcycle racing experience with the AFM for anything. So much of what I learned racing bikes has transferred to racing cars. Racing bikes prepared me well for racing cars!!

Scott

93 FireHawk 968

Any sort of competitive sport will help with the mental aspect of competing but nothing can substitute time behind the wheel to improve overall skill.

nomembername

Skiing and mountaineering (ascent and descent). Both sports where you also need a strong physical connection with, and trust in, the equipment. you need to be able to read the terrain, think several moves ahead, and be prepared to react and adapt to changing situations quickly.

Technical hiking is also good because it makes you take the time to slow down and observe everything around. You begin to see and make associations, understand how each step leads to the rest... you set out with a goal and use or avoid what's all around you to reach that goal. You can't move a boulder to get to the next mountain, but you can find a better way if you take the time to look for it. You control muscles to conserve strength, control your breathing, control your water intake, etc... Definitely good for logical thinking and maintaining an even keel physically/mentally.

z06801

Skateboarding! all my Skate friends are fast, Bucky and Rune for example. good on the edge balance

ZSA Motorsport

watch the first 3 minutes. yeah, its drug induced . I frickin cant stomach the guy but, from a racing perspective, if you can get past the cheating...its a pretty wicked finish

ZSA Motorsport

btw, that's after probably something like 5,6 hours in the saddle and climbing like 15000 feet, 3,4 massive mountain passes. you know that because the peloton of 130 other massively talented riders are dropped well back.

like car racing...talent always comes to the top, even if laced with drugs and cheats.

bgiere

I'm gonna go with stacking hay on a hot August afternoon.

GT3 Techno

During our long winters... I go with powder skiing !

quickxotica

Sorry. In retrospect I see my post sounded proscriptive. I meant it to be a bit funny (no one had suggested doing the Isle of Man TT as training to complement amateur car racing -- that would be, at the very least, backwards). I'm sure you would agree the stakes were higher on your bike than in your car, no? So road racing bikes must have been an objective in itself... albeit with great benefits to your car racing skills. That's the only perspective I was attempting to introduce.

quickxotica

Surfing. I don't surf, but over the years I have been consistently impressed with students who surf. They get the balance, weight transfer and flow concepts intuitively and are not afraid of a little sliding.

winders

Here are the sports that I have been deeply into over the years:

Baseball, basketball, track, snow skiing, golf, tennis, racquetball, cycling, autocrossing, motorcycle road racing, and skeet.

Of those sports, only two stand out (in order of importance) as having had a significant and direct impact on my race car driving ability: motorcycle road racing and autocrossing.

I don't think that ball and stick sports help much, if at all. Certainly not the physical aspects of the sports. One of the best motorcycle road racers I knew was a complete disaster at traditional sports. The only benefits I see relate to conditioning.

Snow skiing helped me to understand the concept of lines, but not nearly to the extent that autocrossing or motorcycle road racing did.

I think golf is useless for road racing preparation.

The game that taught me the most mental discipline and toughness was competitive skeet.

But, the most important mental skill I learned was how to be calm and relaxed. I learned that from motorcycle road racing. You make too many mental mistakes if you are not calm and relaxed. Being calm and relaxed allows you to process more data. It slows things down.

In the end, though, the best way to get faster in a car is to drive a car. Once you start doing that, other sports aren't going to help other than with conditioning.

Scott

Dubai944

Drinking Beer. Helps with confidence.