Daniel McKenna
Rally Driver (former British Rally Champion)
Having competed for 10 years in national and international level in Ireland and the UK I was making the step up to European and World Rally Championship (WRC) events. Therefore I had to up my game and start to work on new areas that an athlete would work on for any other professional sport.
Part of this was being introduced to Richard Shanahan to see if he could help enhance my performance in any way to improve results. Being a hardened competitor already with WRC events under my belt, I was quite sceptical that he would be able to help in any way as I thought my psychology was strong and I had been quite successful up to that point.
So after an initial meeting Richard really started to open my eyes as to how important my psychology was over the course of a WRC event and ultimately a championship campaign. Basically my psychological state on any event was a massive factor on the final result and I didn’t even realise it.
A typical WRC event takes place over the course of 7/8 days. Usually travel on a Sunday to the country where the event is being held, Monday would consist of a pre-event test in the rally car on roads similar to the nature of the roads on the event to find a suitable set up. The Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the reconnaissance (recce) of the special stages. Myself and my co-driver traverse the stages at road speed in a standard car to make pace notes of the road. Over the 3 days we will make 300kms of special stage pace notes from scratch with only 2 passes of the stages. The Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the competition days where we have to drive the special stages as fast as possible with only my pace notes to guide us.
It’s a very intense week with long working days, minimal sleep and a very high pressure environment with extreme time constraints.
Richard identified areas where psychology could play a crucial role. The first area was working on visualisation techniques. This is a massive area that I wasn’t aware of. The pace notes I make on the recce are called back to me at speed on the competition days and this is the single most important thing about rallying. Richard spent weeks with myself and my co-driver going through visualisation techniques where the idea was I could take in the information at speed much easier and be able to apply the proper driving techniques for each section of road to be as fast as possible.
I have to say that on our next event with weeks of working on visualisation techniques, the results were remarkable. I was able to operate at a much faster level and I didn’t feel as mentally drained at the end of a day. It also enhanced our pace note making process on the recce which in some ways is even more exhausting mentally and can really impact the competition days of the event.
The other area Richard worked on with us was individually speaking with us and making us realise the potential of our talents. How and why we were able to compete and be successful in this sport and really making us realise that we had something special and actually we were very good rally driving and co driving. I can’t tell you how important this aspect of this sport is. The confidence levels of the driver and co-driver has a direct connection to the stage times that are produced for each special stage and ultimately the final result.
Richard instilled the belief in myself and my co-driver that when we sat in the rally car at the start of any special stage in any rally, if we performed to the best of our ability, our car performed to the best of its ability and there was no outside interference with our performance, we could not be beaten.
He turned a sceptic into a massive believer in Sport Psychology and I would rank this area of my competition for rallies as one of the most important thanks to Richard.
Rally Driver (former British Rally Champion)
Having competed for 10 years in national and international level in Ireland and the UK I was making the step up to European and World Rally Championship (WRC) events. Therefore I had to up my game and start to work on new areas that an athlete would work on for any other professional sport.
Part of this was being introduced to Richard Shanahan to see if he could help enhance my performance in any way to improve results. Being a hardened competitor already with WRC events under my belt, I was quite sceptical that he would be able to help in any way as I thought my psychology was strong and I had been quite successful up to that point.
So after an initial meeting Richard really started to open my eyes as to how important my psychology was over the course of a WRC event and ultimately a championship campaign. Basically my psychological state on any event was a massive factor on the final result and I didn’t even realise it.
A typical WRC event takes place over the course of 7/8 days. Usually travel on a Sunday to the country where the event is being held, Monday would consist of a pre-event test in the rally car on roads similar to the nature of the roads on the event to find a suitable set up. The Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the reconnaissance (recce) of the special stages. Myself and my co-driver traverse the stages at road speed in a standard car to make pace notes of the road. Over the 3 days we will make 300kms of special stage pace notes from scratch with only 2 passes of the stages. The Friday, Saturday and Sunday are the competition days where we have to drive the special stages as fast as possible with only my pace notes to guide us.
It’s a very intense week with long working days, minimal sleep and a very high pressure environment with extreme time constraints.
Richard identified areas where psychology could play a crucial role. The first area was working on visualisation techniques. This is a massive area that I wasn’t aware of. The pace notes I make on the recce are called back to me at speed on the competition days and this is the single most important thing about rallying. Richard spent weeks with myself and my co-driver going through visualisation techniques where the idea was I could take in the information at speed much easier and be able to apply the proper driving techniques for each section of road to be as fast as possible.
I have to say that on our next event with weeks of working on visualisation techniques, the results were remarkable. I was able to operate at a much faster level and I didn’t feel as mentally drained at the end of a day. It also enhanced our pace note making process on the recce which in some ways is even more exhausting mentally and can really impact the competition days of the event.
The other area Richard worked on with us was individually speaking with us and making us realise the potential of our talents. How and why we were able to compete and be successful in this sport and really making us realise that we had something special and actually we were very good rally driving and co driving. I can’t tell you how important this aspect of this sport is. The confidence levels of the driver and co-driver has a direct connection to the stage times that are produced for each special stage and ultimately the final result.
Richard instilled the belief in myself and my co-driver that when we sat in the rally car at the start of any special stage in any rally, if we performed to the best of our ability, our car performed to the best of its ability and there was no outside interference with our performance, we could not be beaten.
He turned a sceptic into a massive believer in Sport Psychology and I would rank this area of my competition for rallies as one of the most important thanks to Richard.