Speed is a
cognitive task.
For drivers who have more skill than their lap times show.
You don’t forget how to drive under pressure.
You lose access to what you know.
That’s not a talent problem.
That’s an availability problem.
Built from real driving, not theory.
More Than Speed comes from decades inside the sport — autocross, HPDE, and time attack — where the difference between a clean run and a missed one is rarely knowledge. It’s access.
40+ years in the sport
SCCA, HPDE, Time Attack — National-level Podium Finisher
Top-10 Overall — Optima Search for the Ultimate Street Car (2024)
Industry Veteran — Led motorsports tire development, marketing, and team/driver support for leading manufacturer
WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR
Every driver is somewhere on this path. This book was written for all of them.
More Than Speed recognizes that drivers come to performance driving from different places — and that the gap between where you are and where you want to be looks different depending on where you're starting.
The book is built around four driver types.
Builder
You're new to motorsport, or new to a specific discipline. You're building foundational skills, learning the language of performance driving, and figuring out what actually makes a driver fast. The Fundamentals Heat was written with you in mind.
Operator
You have real skill. You've had fast runs, clean laps, moments where it all came together. But in big moments — the ones that count — something gets in the way. You know more than your results show. This book explains why, and fixes it.
Sustainer
You've built significant capability over years of competition. But something has shifted — age, injury, illness, or a change in circumstances — and the access you used to have isn't as reliable as it was. This book helps you protect what you've built and find a sustainable path forward.
Master
You perform at a high level and can access your skills when it matters. You're not here because something is broken. You're here because the gap between very good and exceptional is narrow, and closing it requires understanding the system underneath your performance at a level most drivers never reach.
You don't have to be a certain kind of driver to use this book. You just have to know which one you are right now.
HOW THE BOOK IS BUILT
Five Heats. One complete system.
Most driving books give you information. More Than Speed gives you a build.
The book is organized into five Heats — each one adding a layer to what came before.
The progression follows what many drivers go through during a career: Autocross, HPDE, Time Trial, Multi-Discipline (Optima, Targa, LS Fest)
HEAT 1
Fundamentals
The foundation. Before autocross, before the track, before competition — the core mechanics of performance driving that everything else depends on. Built once. Applied everywhere.
HEAT 2
The Laboratory of Autocross
Autocross is the fastest feedback loop in motorsport. Short courses, tight margins, immediate results. Heat 2 identifies the eight factors that account for 80 percent of the gap between national champions and mid-pack competitors — and builds the capability to close them, one element at a time.
HEAT 3
The Flow of Track Driving
The road course demands a different kind of execution. Longer sequences, higher speeds, more variables. Heat 3 builds the specific capabilities that define the gap at this level — braking markers, trail braking, apex placement, corner exit — and addresses what happens to each of them when the session starts to matter.
HEAT 4
Performing in Competition
Everything built in Heats 1 through 3 gets tested here. Multi-discipline competition changes the environment, the stakes, and the demands on the driver simultaneously. Driver Development and Event Execution account for roughly half the gap between champions and mid-pack at this level. Heat 4 addresses both — and connects capability directly to access.
HEAT 5
Capstone
The closing Heat pulls the full system together. Not a summary — a synthesis. How the fundamentals, the laboratory, the track, and the competition experience compound into a driver who performs consistently, not occasionally.
Every chapter includes tools to make it stick.
Reading about performance and building it are different things. Each chapter includes three embedded tools:
Audits
Structured self-assessments that help you identify exactly where your execution is breaking down, before you can fix it.
Practice Drills
Specific exercises designed to build and compress each skill so it executes automatically when the pressure is on.
Driver Cards
Portable reference tools you can take to the event, use across the weekend, and return to across seasons as your driving develops.
The Audits tell you where you are. The Drills build what you need. The Driver Cards keep it accessible when it matters.
The structure builds capability. The framework makes it accessible under pressure. Both halves are in the book.
What actually breaks under pressure
Entering a braking zone, nothing about the car changed.
The inputs are the same. The line is the same.
What changes is your available workspace.
The moment the environment gets complex enough, your system starts making tradeoffs.
Vision narrows. Timing shifts. Inputs lose precision.
It doesn’t feel like a system failure.
It feels like a small mistake.
That’s why it’s hard to fix.
The framework behind it
More Than Speed is built on a simple equation:
Performance =
Capability × Availability
This book shows you how to access your capability when it matters, and build new capabilities across amateur motorsports disciplines.
Four factors govern what you can actually use in the moment.
When those are aligned, fast feels simple. When they’re not, everything gets harder than it should be.