[R81Honda]

I belive I do very well under stress I attribute this to my experince in Radio controles car racing. One of my elders and good friends would teach me how to be cool under pressure. During practice he we would put our cars out together, and he would set up several difficult scenarios such as passing in difficult turns, dealing with slower cars on the track and one of the most difficult things to do, which was keep a car which may be faster from you from passing you and doing it cleanly. Basicly what I had to do was when he would pull up behind me I would have to tighten up my lines and trry my hardest to go full wick and make few mistakes. Over time I found that a reasonable amount of pressure would help improve lap times and in the end get me race wins.

As far as the robot goes, it is fairly easy to keep stress to a minimum. What I think is a great asset to the driver is a good coach, simply someone who lets you know where you need to go, and that everything is going okay. At this point the coach and I have gotten along fairley well, and I trust that he is going to keep me and the operator calm.



I will be honest with you though, right after the qualifying matches ended and I saw that we were 2nd seed, some of the pressure started to catch up to me. Also the looong 2 hour break between the qualifiers and the qtr finals made me think alot. What really calmed and eased me was spending time away from the hectic pits, and the crowds and just sitting in the stands alone, listing to the music which was playing on the stadiums sound system (Simple kind of man by Lynard Skynard really calmed me down). So at nationals I for sure will bring a CD player to listen to.