Today there was an interesting article about mental training on La Gazzetta dello Sport. I translated it, in case someone wants to read it. If you post the translation outside of Tumblr, please use credits. (: Also I did it kind of quickly so I’m sorry if there are mistakes. Enjoy!
X-rays of a champion: he has an uncommon mental strength and he’s working on staying calm. It was Todt junior who sent him to Formula Medicine when he was a kid, and he impressed in the evaluation tests: on 1000 drivers, only two as good as him.
Mental coaches? «I don’t need one» say Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton. But there’s someone who has built his own career on mental training. It’s Charles Leclerc, the young prodigy from Ferrari, grown up since the first seasons of his career under close control of a medical team. «It’s your head that counts. I analyse everything I do to understand where to improve», the Monegasque explained. Already as a child he started working with the specialists of Formula Medicine, an organization located in Tuscany and led by Riccardo Ceccarelli, a pioneer in this field. «It was Nicolas Todt, his manager, who took him to us when he was 13 years old and still raced in karts» remembers Ceccarelli, the “doctor of F1”. «As he had previously did for Jules Bianchi, he said: this driver is fast, let me know if he has the right mental attitude to become a champion. We only needed 4 or 5 days to answer him that he did…”
Leclerc’s skills were already then outside the norm. The evaluation tests of the drivers had five parameters: reaction time, focus; spatial visualization ability; memory; visual-coordination ability. For each of these parameters, Ceccarelli and his team had developed a scoring system from 1 to 5, from “failed” to “outstanding”. Drivers would sit in front of the screen and use two buttons. To score the maximum in one test was extremely hard, to do it in all the five tests on a streak (maximum 25 points in total) basically impossible. «During trainings, Charles scored 24 out of 25» tells us Ceccarelli, highlighting the score. «In around 1000 drivers we analysed during the years, only two or three managed to do that». It is not surprising, then, that the kid can almost always find the perfect lap during qualifying, adding up the best times for each sector, as his six pole positions in 2019 show.
The only limit that Leclerc had was a behavioural limit. He had a tendency to get angry and consume his energy this way. An aspect on which the 22-year-old Ferrari driver worked a lot, but that sometimes still betrays him: it is proven by his team radios in Singapore and Sochi, where he found himself behind Vettel and showed his annoyance with the engineers. «We had noticed that too: in every test he did, he wanted to win. And when he didn’t, he would get angry. I remember that once he was beaten by Philo Patrick Armand (a former Indonesian GP2 driver) in a focus and responsiveness test that Armand was particularly good at. And Charles simply couldn’t accept it. Rage is a sign of energy and motivation, but it becomes counter-productive when it is not controlled by the brain» explains Ceccarelli. «The perfect driver is an apparently calm person, but with a killer instinct. Charles needed to become calmer. And he trained a lot to improve. The key is self-analysis, the ability to understand and acknowledge your mistakes, in order to overcome them. This is what he’s doing». Just check the way Leclerc changes his attitude as soon as he steps out of the car.
In the 90s, when Formula Medicine started working with Ukyo Katayama and other F1 drivers, mental training still was in its early stages. The room where the tests were taken was called “the toys room”. Now it is the “mental gym”, an actual gym for the mind, that goes hand in hand with the physical one, where drivers train muscles and lungs. This approach is ready to be exported abroad (Asia and United States) and to become a model for other sports too: recently two of the best football teams in Europe asked for Formula Medicine’s help. «The performance of a driver has to be evaluated in relation to the waste of energy of their brain» concludes Ceccarelli. «A great champion can go fast not consuming too much. Charles is like that. Think about how he dealt with the pressure of Hamilton in Monza.»
In the five years spent training in Toscana, before entering the Ferrari Driver Academy, Leclerc has been subjected to more advanced tests, wearing a band to monitor his brain activity during physical effort. «Outside of the car he’s humble and grateful. On the track, he’s ruthless. In this, he reminds me of Ayrton Senna.»
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