Pole Position: There is no 'I' in team, and real racing drivers know it

A top driver understands, and acknowledges, that he is only part of a group that work together to compete in races.

Our GulfSport race team recently had an extremely busy time running four cars in the last round of the UAE GT Championship in Dubai (where we won both the driver's and the team championship in our class) closely followed by three long days of Formula Gulf 1000 training and testing.

We then ran two full days of testing new drivers in the factory Maserati GranTurismo Trofeo cars at Yas Marina Circuit.

Seeing the wide range of age and experience we were dealing with got me thinking about who is the popular role model for our new generation of young racing drivers? Interestingly, many of the youngsters still look up to Ayrton Senna as one of the greatest drivers ever, even though he last raced 17 years ago. In the same way, you find so many young people who love the Beatles even though the group disbanded 30 years ago. Perhaps we instinctively know what good looks like.

Having worked with many seriously talented and experienced drivers over the years, what fascinates me is how their character develops in complete contrast to the typical wannabe racer who is out to impress.

Experienced drivers tend not to talk about themselves and when being interviewed about a race will talk about how "we" won the race or how "we" had to solve problems. Over time, they learn that the driver is just one member of the race team trying to win a race.

Listen to the post-race interviews of any senior championship, for example GP2 or F3, and you will hear this language. They rarely use the word "I".

There is a common characteristic of top drivers - modesty. You may well have met a top-level racing driver and would not even know what he does. Similarly, successful businessmen do not bang on about what they do at the office all day; they humbly and smartly accept that they do not know it all.

Racing drivers work with professional driver coaches and race engineers and are continually testing out changes to their driving style and their car's set-up. Of course, some things work and some don't. It's not exactly trial and error, but then it's not an exact science either. This reinforces the notion that they don't know it all, in complete contrast to some of the wannabe racers who, of course, do. Or at least think they do.

Perhaps even more valuable is the ability to be patient and to stay calm when everything is going wrong.

I have known a successful driver sit in his race car in the garage during the whole of the qualifying session when the mechanics were trying to fix something on the rear left suspension.

They managed to solve the problem just as the session finished. Instead of getting out of the car and storming off in a fit of rage, he calmly got out of the car and thanked every mechanic personally for trying so hard.

If only the more inexperienced drivers could behave in this way - the mark of a true professional.

Barry Hope is a director of GulfSport Racing, which is hoping to produce the first Arab F1 driver through the FG1000 race series. Join the UAE racing community online at www.singleseaterblog.com