Three months as a racing driver

The last three months have been pretty big. I've started living like an Aston Martin Racing driver, tested a Formula Renault at Silverstone and made my Le Mans 24 Hours debut. Not bad for a journalist who spends his time writing about motorsport because he never had the talent nor resources to make a profession out of driving.

The last three months are the probably the closest I'll ever get. Those of you who have read the magazine's driver-dedicated quarterly supplement AUTOSPORT Performance will know all about our work prising tips from the experts. Over the summer, we put our money where our mouth is.

The upshot of that bright idea was this writer - this 23-year-old, 15-and-a-half-stone, car-racing rookie of a writer - teaming up with Prodrive and Base Performance Simulators to establish a professional training regime with some sim work on the side.

To make matters worse, we also brought junior single-seater racer and 2014 McLaren AUTOSPORT BRDC Award finalist Sennan Fielding and 2013 British GT champion Andrew Howard into the fold as well. We enlisted Fernando Rees, Aston Martin's uber-fit GTE driver, as a benchmark. The AUTOSPORT Performance Challenge was born.

Cue embarrassment, and a "mate, your body fat's far too high for someone your age" from a colleague, when the fitness results were first published in May...

Professional as I've tried to be, the introduction might require an element of context. The Formula Renault tests were on a simulator. The Le Mans race was the karting version. But the AMR bit is true, honest.

The point of this was to be able to do more than just explain the benefits of exercise and nutrition, but to be able to demonstrate the discipline required to be a professional at any level.

Using AMR driver Fernando Rees as a benchmark, Mitchell's physical weaknesses were clear - though the right-hand column indicates how much progress was made in three months © LAT

It became clear very early on that whether you think you know what professionals do away from the track, or are trying to do it yourself already, there's plenty more to it than is expected.

Sports science, for want of a better phrase, has made big strides in other disciplines in the last decade or so. But motorsport, as it has been in many areas for some reason, has been slow to catch up. That doesn't help the inaccurate perception that it's 'not a sport' or 'not hard work' - or, to piss off Jimmie Johnson, 'drivers aren't athletes'.

Bollocks to that. I'd have said it three months ago, but I really mean it now. If nothing else, burning over a thousand calories and averaging a heart rate of 160bpm at Le Mans rammed home just how physically exerting racing is - and that's just in a kart.

I've crammed in three or four days a week in the gym around my job, and it's not enough - if you were going to be a professional, this would be part of your schedule, not a 'I could take it or leave it' bolt-on.

I thought there was a crib-sheet for getting fit for motorsport. I was wrong.

The more experts learn about fitness and the more they apply those lessons to motorsport, the more you realise how tailored everything needs to be.

OK, to a point racing is the same fundamental physical requirement insofar as there's a steering wheel that requires turning and pedals that need pushing. But it's like someone following a footballer's training programme when they want to play rugby. You wouldn't do it; you'd exercise in a way that would best suit the physical requirements of the sport you intend to participate in. Racing is no different.

Do you need to have better upper-body strength to deal with a lack of power steering? Are you driving a car that subjects your neck to higher g-forces? Is your race format short, sharp 20-minute sprints - or do you need to be conditioned for maximum performance over a 90-minute endurance?

Those are just a few questions. When it comes down to it, there's a limited pool of information to work from, so you apply the most relevant parts of resistance training or cardiovascular exercises to your own programme. But there are some essentials.

A 90-minute Le Mans (karting) stint burned 1100kcal at an average heart rate of 160bpm © Drew Gibson

Exercises that Prodrive's fitness expert John Camilleri flags up are the stability leg curl (to develop hamstring strength, which in turn helps maintain hip stability and reduces the likelihood of experiencing referred lower back pain); kettlebell lunges (to develop gluteal strength, the muscles involved in braking and the transfer between pedals for racing drivers that right-foot brake) and the TRX row (which focuses on shoulder retraction that helps counteract the rounded postural position of a race seat).

Driving Base's Formula Renault simulator made me realise I'm prone to carpal tunnel-like cramp in my right hand, while my physical examination revealed a hugely inadequate level of core strength - which, Camilleri says, "racing drivers are reliant on their core strength for tolerating lateral g-forces and g-force under braking".

In this case, the plank planked - the most basic of exercises, but a core part of any racing driver's programme because it works the transverse abdominis muscle, which is a deep-lying core muscle that helps provide trunk stability.

A driver tweeting about cycling is nothing new, and it's not (only) a fad. Cardio exercise is crucial, whether it's constant training or higher intensity, interval work. I did four days a week - two days running while maintaining a steady heart rate and two days doing Fartlek Speed-Play training.

Camilleri says: "This type of CV training encourages the heart and lungs to adapt to different physical intensities and can be manipulated to mirror the physical output drivers experience when racing.

"Similarly, high-intensity interval training - comprising up to 10 'sprints' - are a good addition to a cardio programme. This works on a 2:1 ratio (that's 60 seconds sprinting, 30 seconds resting) and is particularly beneficial for raising lactate threshold and improving oxygen utilisation at a high physical output. This is particularly appropriate for single-seater, sprint racing."

All this meant I lost over 10kg (unsurprising, I was overweight to start with) and I also developed substantially in other key areas. Ending up with the lung power of an NBA basketballer was a personal highlight!

Exercise is only part of it, though. As significant is nutrition, whether that's a day-to-day diet or monitoring your food intake and hydration on a race weekend. The bottom line is you wouldn't knowingly put diesel in a petrol-engined car, so why pump your body full of anything other than the optimum fuel?

This is something in which we went into more detail in the magazine. Though it's fair to say Fielding won't be travelling abroad in the future without consulting someone first. The MSA Formula race winner had gone to Taiwan and America (for Formula Masters China and USF2000 races respectively) without seeking advice - which, Camilleri pointed out, is exactly the sort of thing his service is about.

If you were absolutely on-point with your preparation you'd make sure to bring a few litres of water on the plane with you (recycled air leads to dehydration) and you'd steer clear of processed meat in the States (it takes a long time to be properly digested). Then there are all sorts of tricks to make sure you adapt to the time-zone changes as effectively as possible.

Fielding has won three MSA Formula races since the Performance challenge began © LAT

Of course, the whole point of this is to maximise on-track performance. So I'll shamelessly take the credit for Fielding taking three wins in MSA Formula since starting the Performance programme, while Howard has vaulted into British GT title contention alongside Aston Martin Racing's Jonny Adam after a string of poles and two wins.

Driver training ultimately boils down to testing. That's a luxury not everyone enjoys because of the rising costs involved. The upshot of that is a similar rise in the use of simulators. Prodrive's relationship with Base meant this was an area we could also tap into in the pursuit of driver performance.

I was nowhere after our first session, in the FR2.0 on the Silverstone GP circuit. I was well adrift of Fielding, and massively uncomfortable in the car. Given I'd finished on the podium at the same track on my racing debut in a Ginetta last year, I was particularly disappointed. But it did offer a telling insight into how you make the most of a simulator to target your weaknesses.

I needed to focus on my braking technique, that much was clear. It goes without saying that by being technically good and confident in how you are achieving any laptime, it becomes easier to do that mentally and physically.

My initial data trace was very square because I was hopping off the brakes quite early (a karting habit, I suspect). Our return to the simulator on another day was devoted to alleviating this problem. Feedback with my engineer (Base's Matt George) gave me a decent idea of what/how to improve, and there was solid progress on my first run, even if the times were still uninspired.

After the session we sat back in the engineering room and analysed the differences in efficiency between a good brake shape and a bad one, talking through what to do when the technique is good and what could then be done to further maximise what I had learned.

I spent the next few laps with feedback on whether the technique was being maximised or not. When left to my own devices, I was immediately two seconds quicker and wound up 1.2s slower than Sennan - compared to over four seconds initially. Come my three-lap qualifying simulation, I was half a second off.

Given I had the most to gain in all aspects, it's unsurprising the changes on-track and off it have been substantial over the past three months. But I like to think it's also the reward for a professional, motivated approach with a clear goal in mind.

More fool any driver who thinks they can make it to the top without similar application.