Writing and Formula 1

Racing and Writing in the Zone

The link between my “twin passions: motor racing and writing” #... WHAT!!!
(# other than my dear family, of course!)
“Rough petrolhead meets arty-farty, airey-fairey creative type”
"There are only three sports: bullfighting, mountain climbing and motor racing; all the rest are merely games."
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
– Ernest Hemingway

"Driving fast is like playing great music, but you also need an instrument."
Sharing some thoughts about the Zone: Getting into the flow in another dimension, when it all seems so effortless.

"The Zone is where you find your best performance and everything flows. I believe you have to push the limit of an activity to get this kind of experience.
You have to practise to find the Zone. If sportsmen repeat this often and practise going step by step into a spiritual state... a lot of sportsmen have worked hard on their mind and many have worked on a spiritual path.”
- Clyde Brolin writing in in his fascinating book ‘Overdrive: Formula One in the Zone.’

"This happens when finding the right words is no longer a struggle. Words simply flow into your head faster than you can write them down (or press the keyboard). You read what you have just written and say: ‘Bloody hell. That's good. Did I really write that? Wonder where all that came from?"

A 'nony-moose' writer (no,I ascertained it was Mark Hughes, former racing driver, now Autosport journalist and writer on F1)

“Writers, like racing drivers, challenge themselves and their readers in new ways. They find new niches ‘writing on the edge’. I want to continually test my own writing ‘limits’, the ‘boundaries of my imagination’.”

"Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."
- Albert Einstein

“I want to write the way Australian Super-car driver, Craig Lowndes drives and power-slides his powerful V8 Holden Super-car… with wild enthusiasm and a sense of abandonment, yet combined with the artists craft and smooth style of a Jamie Whincup (craig’s team-mate), a Stirling Moss, a Jim Clark, and especially that of the great Ayrton Senna, living on the razor-blade edge of life.”
(thanks Craig and Jamie, for the great pleasure you give me watching “you guys” race here “across the ditch” on TV)
“a petrol-head (and definitely not an “arty-farty airey-fairey type”) writer”

"You think you have a limit. And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high."
- Ayrton Senna

"The world would have you agree with its dismal dream of limitation. But the light would have you soar like the eagle of your sacred visions."

- powerful and fine writing by David Cohen
also from my book Racing (and Writing) in the Zone.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig is a "passionate petrolhead", who has been following motor racing (and studing the mindsets of the greatest drivers) for much of his life.

* “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”

~ Franz Kafka

All our dreams can come true…if we have the desire (burning), courage, passion, persistence and patience* to pursue them…long enough.”

-c

“Together, one mind, one life (one small step at a time), let’s see how many people (and lives) we can encourage, impact, empower, enrich, uplift and perhaps even inspire to reach their fullest potentials…and strive for and perhaps one sunny day even achieve their wildest dreams.”