Differences between racing and non-racing drivers: A simulator study using eye-tracking

Abstract

Motorsport has developed into a professional international competition. However, limited research is available on the perceptual and cognitive skills of racing drivers. By means of a racing simulator, we compared the driving performance of seven racing drivers with ten non-racing drivers. Participants were tasked to drive the fastest possible lap time. Additionally, both groups completed a choice reaction time task and a tracking task. Results from the simulator showed faster lap times, higher steering activity, and a more optimal racing line for the racing drivers than for the non-racing drivers. The non-racing drivers’ gaze behavior corresponded to the tangent point model, whereas racing drivers showed a more variable gaze behavior combined with larger head rotations while cornering. Results from the choice reaction time task and tracking task showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups. Our results are consistent with the current consensus in sports sciences in that task-specific differences exist between experts and novices while there are no major differences in general cognitive and motor abilities.

The Racer's Mind—How Core Perceptual-Cognitive Expertise Is Reflected in Deliberate Practice Procedures in Professional Motorsport

“…However, as a cautionary word it needs to be pointed out that people, including experts, typically have quite poor insight into one's own gaze behavior (Burr and Morrone, 2012 report data from an art painter who likewise claimed to “take it all in” in one glance, but when actually measured displayed extensive saccadic scanning when perusing her own work). Experimentally, there is still little quantitative understanding of the actual gaze strategies of expert race drivers (though see Land and Tatler, 2001 ; van Leeuwen et al, 2017 ).…”

“…Research on the perceptual-cognitive basis of task performance in this domain—which would give a more solid foundation for interpreting brain imaging data—is virtually non-existent. Land and Tatler ( 2001 ) used eye tracking to record the visual behavior of one racing driver on a circuit (van Leeuwen et al, 2017 , replicated their study in a fixed-base simulator with a larger number of participants, including both experts and novices). The main findings of this work were that (i) racing drivers visually “anticipate” upcoming bends—although both the mechanisms underlying this anticipatory behavior and the specific visual target(s) remain speculative, and (ii) a clear dependency between head rotation and subsequent car rotation—a “steering with the head strategy” (Land and Tatler, 2001 ) 1 .…”

“… 1 In comparison to experienced non-expert drivers, racing drivers' gaze seems to be less focused on the apex (or tangent point) region and to show more variability and anticipation (Land and Tatler, 2001 ; van Leeuwen et al, 2017 ). But the precise quantitative characteristics and theoretical nature of this “variability and anticipation” remain to be defined.…”

A Simple Mono-Dimensional Approach for Lap Time Optimisation

“…Race car drivers are expected to achieve a minimum lap time by exploiting all of the grip potential of a given vehicle [1][2][3]. Given a driving track, the driver should make optimal use of the available control inputs, mainly including the accelerator and brake pedal positions, along with the steering wheel angle.…”

Judge No Evil, See No Evil: Do People’s Moral Choices Influence to Whom They Visually Attend?

“…2011;Yeung et al 2016;De Pascalis et al 2017), children on the autism spectrum (Thorup et al 2016;Nyström, et al 2017) and people otherwise unable to communicate (Galdi et al 2016;Hong et al 2017;Lee 2017). It has been used to study differences in sensory processing between experts versus novices in a given area, such as art production and evaluation (Zhiwei and Qiang 2004;Rosenberg and Klein 2015;Mitschke et al 2017;Bauer and Schwan 2018), athletic activities (Krzepota et al 2016;Decroix et al 2017;Vickers et al 2017) and other physically related skills (van Leeuwen et al 2017), teaching (McIntyre et al 2017, and medical diagnoses (Södervik et al 2017). It has also been used to investigate ways in which pre-existing dispositional attitudes and attitudinal states influence socially relevant sensory processing (Kawakami et al 2014;Flechsenhar and Gamer 2017;Frazier et al 2017).…”