Inside the brains of Victor Martins and Isack Hadjar

It all started with a joke, a discussion about Isack Hadjar with the DTN (National Technical Director) Christophe Lollier, last fall, near Zandvoort. “I would really like to be in Isack’s head, just to see what’s going on there,” we said that day. For what ? Because after an F4 race which he felt he missed out on, the young man fumed and railed against himself, almost insulting himself. Wednesday June 2, 2021, our wish expressed in a joking tone would come true. The FFSA Academy, under the leadership of Christophe Lollier and President Nicolas Deschaux, has invested in an electroencephalogram headset. The goal ? Help drivers progress by allowing them to increase their brain skills, particularly those essential in motorsport such as reaction time, concentration or the ability to get a negative idea out of their head. “We have been convinced for years that everything linked to information processing and attentional networks is fundamental in motorsport,” analyzes DTN, a high performance specialist. In the past, we tried to implement psychotechnical tests, but the evaluation remained too subjective. There were so many external parameters involved that it was difficult to identify in which areas the athlete was being developed. »

The helmet in question, created by Antony Branco Lopes and his associate.

Previously, to judge a driver's concentration, there was little other way than to scrutinize the timing data of the laps completed and the inconsistencies from one lap to the next, or unusual technical faults. However, there was no