Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: You're listening to the Motorsport Prospects podcast.
Hey, it's Mark from Motorsport Prospects and welcome to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. This is where we dive into the world of motorsport with the people who live and breathe it. From driver coaches and sponsorship experts to team owners, pro drivers and more. You'll hear real stories, practical advice and insights you can actually use, whether you're just starting out or already chasing success on the track.
Now, people have asked me why I started Motorsport Prospects and actually and this podcast as well.
And I always tell them I found in Motorsport Prospects because I keep hearing the same question time and again from drivers, some aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. And the question is very simple but very complex. Who can I trust?
They had a real hard time finding reliable guidance on who they can trust. So I created Motorsport Prospects, the Motorsport Prospects Directory and the Verified by Motorsport Prospects designation to help these people make informed decisions. The professionals I feature on this podcast represent that trust.
This is the trust that drivers are looking to find and this is why you get a taste of that in the podcast.
So if you work with drivers or racing teams, building trust is one of the most important things you can do. Over the years, I found that being clear about what you offer, following through on your promises and genuinely caring about your clients goals makes all the difference. I put together some practical advice in my free white paper, the Three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which share simple ways to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, you can find it in the Show Notes or@motorsport prospects.com so enough with that, let's get started.
Today my guest is Karolyi Remlinger. Caroly is an expert in human potential and growth, career development and management, as well as mental coaching for pro athletes. She is also the co founder of Minds on Track, which focuses on mental performance and neurodiversity in motorsport. Welcome to the podcast, Karolyi. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with me.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Hello Mark. Thank you for having me.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: So, in this podcast it's very simple. There's one question to start and one question to end.
And the question to start is based on your experience and expertise as a motorsport professional.
What would be the one most important piece of advice you could offer a current or aspiring race driver?
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Well, this is a very interesting question and we could talk two hours only about this, but from my point of view, the most important is the acknowledgment that motorsport is not only about driving.
Drivers are the athletes, these are sport men, sport women.
So they obviously have to be physically fit.
And by physically fit, I mean proper training. And additionally, if not even more important, they have to be mentally fit. So if someone thinks about starting the career in motorsport or they are already in motorsport and they really want to be pros, they have to have proper mental and physical coaching. Without this, it will never be a real career with real wins, with wins of championships. This will be very, very difficult.
[00:03:57] Speaker B: You know, and it's interesting you mentioned mental fitness. People understand physical fitness, they understand the importance of that.
But I think mental fitness is something that, I mean, it is changing, but it is still something that people don't necessarily either understand or don't really know. How could you possibly train your brain, unlike, you know, a muscles, and I always say your brain is a muscle and there's just very specific techniques to tune that. So is that. So how. How is that something that you. Do you have that do you find? A lot of people don't understand the importance of mental fitness.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: I would say 95% still don't understand that mental coaching is not something that is last on the list, but actually it should be first on the list. Because if we think in every sport, but also in just normal business, everything what we want to achieve and we cannot is because of our mental state, nothing more.
If we can resist the stress, if we can hold our nerves, if we can break our inner limitations, is everything in brain. And you said something so beautiful. I wish many people had this understanding. Brain is a muscle. So as I am working on my biceps, on my beautiful six pack, on my belly, brain belongs to the training.
And people, because they don't see the brain, they don't know that there are actually ways of training this brain. And so many people mix here mental performance with mental health. I have heard many drivers telling me, oh, I don't need mental coach, I'm not mentally sick.
I'm not telling you that you have bipolarities, schizophrenia or any mental sickness.
This is mental health is something totally different and it belongs to the clinic, to psychiatrist. This is mental health. We are talking about your mental performance. So for example, if you are a runner and you want to run faster, you work on this with your coach. But what if your legs are only that fast and not faster? Who is telling your legs that they should move even faster? This is your brain, right? Brain will, especially in motorsport when there are so many things.
If you watch Formula one, it's not only driving in the circle, the tracks are very complicated.
You have to know when to push the brakes, how much to Push the brakes, when to release them, how to take the perfect line. Then there is annoying voice in your ear because your race engineer is talking to you all the time. Then you have all the noise from the fans and then you have something that is happening in your head, meaning the pressure from your fans, the pressure from yourself, the pressure from your team, the pressure from SP sponsors, the pressure of winning. Maybe like we have right now, the whole championship. We have three guys who might win the day after tomorrow, right? They have to be mentally strong.
It's not anymore about how can they now physically make the difference. Physically, three of them are super fit. They have all three very good teams, very good cars. So now this is the race of brains.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: That's. That's a great way to look at it. And it reminds me of something somebody said to me once. My sister is an Ironman and she was running in an Ironman triathlon a couple of years ago. And I went with my parents to, you know, cheer her on. And before the race started, everybody was milling around and I saw this gentleman, he. He had to be in his mid to late 60s and he was competing and I, you know, so I started chatting with him.
He actually turned. He was a Canadian. So I started chatting with him and I said, you know, I could never do that. I'm not in good enough shape. And he said, it's not your body that you need, it's that will make the difference. He said. And he pointed to his brain, he said, that's what makes the difference. That's what'll determine whether you can or can't do it. And I just, it just hit me in that, you know, it makes absolute sense and it ties in exactly to what you were just saying.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Exactly. This is 100% truth. All the limitations that we have, this kind of we can or we cannot, it's only in our brain, it's in our mind and it's in our nervous system. Because so many people think also that sports psychology will be enough. Sport psychology is already fantastic start. But this is the basics. People don't think about how brain actually works. And brain communicates with our body through nervous system.
So neuroscience developed so much last 20 years, how much we know about how our bodies work. So. So all the limitations are in our heads. And then the brain sends all the signals, this information to the body, and then the body reacts if we want it or not. So if I have the program and I will give you the best example, that very often happens in motorsport.
This is about qualification.
Many good drivers can drive fantastic races, but they are very bad in qualifications. So for example, instead of starting, I don't know qualification from first five places and then just climb a little bit to be on the podium, they always are like somewhere between 1520 or 1525 and then they climb 15 places up.
The question is what for?
Yeah, because I have bad luck. In qualification there is no bad luck.
You do something, your body force you to do something that you are either in traffic so you don't have the clean lap to go, or you will do a tiny mistake with breaking, with turning, with whatever where you will lose 0.1, 0.2 or what will already kick you far away from this first five guys, there will be always something. And this is not because you do the mistakes that you are aware of. You do it automatically, unconsciously, but someone is conscious and this is your brain. Brain dictates how you behave, how you drive.
And if you start working mentally on the problem with qualification. And why qualification? Because qualification is the most important moment of the weekend. Because we know from the qualification everything depends on it, right?
So let's do qualification badly. So then theoretically I have no pressure for the race and then I can show my power in the race and then I will make 10, 15 position.
This is kind of pattern that brain just loves. Because theoretically we don't have so much pressure than for the race. But if we work on the way how to deal with pressure and take the pressure out of qualification, then the guys start to be amazing in qualification. There is pole position, there is second, third place. And then because they know how to deal with pressure mentally, they go with this attitude of I can do it, I know I'm a good driver and this is how they start to win and win regularly.
But if we don't take care about mental state and always think, yes, I have bad luck because my team is like this and my equipment is like that and the weather was not nice and 100 million excuses, we will not move forward.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Now you're co founder of Minds on Track. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Yes, of course.
Dear friend of mine who herself is neurodiverse, she decided that people don't talk about this enough, that there is no education.
And when we talked together I said the same is with mental performance.
People mix it with mental health. And especially in motorsport, the guys seem always to be like little bit macho wise, oh, I don't need help, I can do it everything on my own.
And we thought like, what can we do about this? And we decided that exactly we will start with education.
So we went to LinkedIn, we did just a page and we started to write posts and articles trying to explain that first of all, mental performance is actually the thing that makes winners or losers.
Especially in Olympics, everybody works with mental performance coaches. Everybody. There is no discussion.
And yet in motorsport, still people think this is absolutely not needed. And then talking about neurodiverse drivers, or even not drivers, but team members, that this is absolutely nothing that we should be scared of because I don't know from where it comes from. When we think about people with dyslexia, with adhd, we think about people that have some kind of disadvantage. And with my friend Maya, we rather think this is advantage because those people are different. Yes, but creative with the way that another people will never be. They see patterns where another person will not see anything. So these are little treasures actually for, for the team. And we started this kind of educational program just few weeks ago and we were very surprised that people started to write to us that they were looking for something like this and that they thank us for this. So it seems there is kind of public who waited for it. So we will continue our education, we will continue showing people that this is absolutely not a subject that we should be afraid of, but this is subject that in motorsport should be very, very present.
[00:15:41] Speaker B: Yeah, no, absolutely. It's a. And I will. In the show notes, I'll link to the Minds on Track page, Caroly, if anybody wants to contact you. What's the best way to get a. To get a hold of you?
[00:15:54] Speaker A: The best is to contact me on LinkedIn or Instagram. It is just my name, Carol Iremlinger. It is the easiest way I always answer. So this is perfect.
[00:16:05] Speaker B: And I'll. I'll put all of that information in the show notes so that if you do want to find out more about what Karolyi is doing, that'll be the best way to contact her. I'm actually, I subscribe to the.
To the Minds on Track to the newsletter. It's great information and, and I think you're right. I think people were waiting and wanting that information and, and it's there and it's, it's. I always say the more information the better.
So definitely check that out.
Now, before we go, one last question for you.
What is your favorite racetrack? Current or historical?
[00:16:47] Speaker A: Well, it's not an easy question.
I love many, many tracks, but to be honest, in karting, I love Kristianstad in Sweden. And Franciacorta in Italy the most. Okay, Christian stat is just very special. One middle in the forest.
Franciacorta. I just love the layout. It was always one of my favorite racetracks for karting and for cars. I definitely love Spa in Belgium. This is one of my favorite race tracks. Obviously living in Monaco, I like Monaco track very well, very much.
Yet it's very special track. There is not really big amount of overtake in there, so for many people it seems it's boring. But it's again actually mental issue saying that you cannot overtake. We saw last year three cars in the road trying to overtake each other in one of the tiniest corners there. So everything is possible.
We just have to, you know, go out of this mental boundaries what is possible and what is not.
But yes, Spa is definitely the one that I like the most.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I gotta agree with you there. I love Spa.
It was, it was great to have you on the, on the podcast, Crowley. Really appreciate it. Like I said, the information how to get a hold of Curly will be on the show. Notes and yeah, well, that's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsport Prospects reminding you to stay fast, stay focused and keep chasing that checkered flag.
Thanks for listening to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. For insights, advice and the latest news racers can use, visit Motorsport Prospects.com.
