The moment I stopped thinking

I’m a pretty ordinary driver, but my race car was a forgiving old thing - it would move underneath you, chattering constantly to tell you what it was up to as you tried your hardest to push the limits. And now, through the slow right hander before the pit straight, the car was wriggling gently as it struggled to put it’s power down through the skinny tyres.

But then it twitched.

And in the moment, I wasn't consciously thinking, or analysing the situation. There wasn't time. My hands had already caught a slide before I'd fully understood what had happened. From somewhere, years of experience had recognised the problem and found the right answer.

I corrected the car, backed off, cut the engine, coasted and pulled over. I’d stopped just in front of the pits and was soon out of the car. My race was over, and as I could just see my wife on the pit wall, I gave her a little thumbs up to show I was ok.  

I started to look round the car and it didn’t take long for the problem to reveal itself. The left rear wishbone had a great big crack in it. Not yet snapped in half, but nearly,

Wow, that was lucky!

I looked down the long pit straight ahead and the fast right hander that followed. We take that at maybe 90 / 100mph. A suspension collapse through there would likely have been a big accident and a 1950s formula one car doesn’t offer much driver protection.

And as I stood there watching the rest of the race roar past, it struck me how little conscious thought had been involved. The decision had already been made before I'd mentally caught up with it.

Playing the incident back afterwards and trying to understand what happened and more importantly why showed what years of previous experience had already built. That under pressure, I didn't rise to the occasion. And I didn’t fall apart either. I just fell back on the judgement I'd already built.

That's why the experiences we create in learning matter so much. Under pressure, people rarely have time to stop and think their way through a situation. They rely on the judgement they've already built. Good simulations don't simply transfer knowledge. They help people build that judgement before the real consequences arrive.