The best thing a driver can do is to ignore everything, and only think of yourself as the robot. Visualize yourself as the robot, and imagine that the arm can power itself.
Last year I was a co-driver(meaning I was the arm handler) and I noticed that when me and the robot driver zoned out, and ignored everything but the robot and the match we did a lot better. Especially when you have an annoying mentor who inserted himself into the match. This year I am the main driver, since I spent the most time on the robot. We finished the robot a few days early, so we would show up the last few days and we had a training session. We had two of our old robots up and working, a side note: Our robot from last year was one of the few that could pick up the huge yellow balls, so this year we were picking up tetras with the arm that shot out and we could cap the smaller goals, for a picture of that robot go to
http://sjharobotics.org/?page=robots . So we had out lab room that we work in set up with a lower goal, and two robots running around and playing against this year's robot. The self declared knower of rules, otherwise known as the self-inserted mentor, was standing behind me, and annoyed me so much I was about to turn around and leave. But, after a while another of our mentors took me aside and told me to ignore everything and just pretend I was the robot. Soon after I was driving the robot faster, with greater accuracy, and we we capping tetras faster, and higher.
My freshman year we were doing really well, and during the last few preliminary matches we screwed up royal. So when the driver came back from leaving our robot at our pit we chewed him out so bad that he left for a while and came back. I felt bad for the guy because I had him in a few classes and he had helped me out with a few problems, so I took it upon myself the last three years to try and eliminate a lot of criticism.
Even if they critic me, I will just turn around and walk off. The Silicon Valley Regional is located in a nice school, and you can always walk outside of the event center and go and sit under a tree and watch squirrels
So just ignore any comments, unless they are good, and you will do a much better job, with a lot less pressure.