Moment with Mike: Pre-race rituals and superstitions

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4/22/2013
By Mike Garrison
LiveRC.com

While attending the Shortcourse Showdown Nationwide Tour this past weekend at Trackside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I felt as though my truck was working good in practice and was confident that I would be on pace with the rest of the field. As qualifying got under way I changed NOTHING on my truck except putting a freshly painted body (same body style) on the truck. After two rounds of the truck working great, and my driving skills failing me to make the top six, I decided I needed to change something. What that something may be, I wasn’t sure of.

As I headed back to the pits after Round 2, good friend Dave Duncan of JConcepts, said to me, “You should put that nasty all-white body back on that you ran in practice. You looked a lot better with it.” Instantly I thought to myself what a dumb idea that was, and that a paintjob on my body wasn’t going to make a difference in how I drove. After he and my father consistently told me to run by broken white body I decided to give in and race the third round with it.

While I didn’t make the top six, the run was my best of the weekend and put me tenth overall (starting fourth in the B-Main). The shocking result with a simple change of paint schemes got us all talking about pre-race rituals, and the little things that mentally make a difference in racing.

As I began to look around I realized that numerous drivers have little mental confidence builders that to others may seem dumb, but really do work for them! This weekend I saw headphones being used right up to the start of the race, jumping jacks on the ramp to the stand, meditation and prayer on the stand, energy drinks, LOTS of wheel wiggles and arm shakes before the tone sounds, and many more. More specifically if you are Dave Duncan it’s chewing Juicy Fruit gum, if you’re Homer it’s not ever touching your Slash after a good run (except to charge the battery) as touching it might magically change something, and if you’re Greg Hodapp it’s doing push-ups in the pits (not sure this is a pre-race prep, but he was doing caught doing it).

For me this weekend, I apparently was unaware how comfortable I was running an all-white body as opposed to my actual paint scheme body. I ran the white body until it self-destructed and forced me to run my new painted body in the B-Main. I missed the bump position to the A-main thanks to a few dumb mistakes on my part…but I’d like to blame it on the painted body instead.