In the back of the July 25th edition of National Dragster, Bruce Deveau writes an excellent column regarding winning and losing and how much of it is dealing with attributions. The bottom line is that you must take responsibility or ownership for the reason you lost. Don't blame anyone or anything else for your losing, accept the responsibility that you screwed up. Then you must deal with the analysis of what you did wrong and how you are going to correct it. Bruce is a psychotherapist, mental skills coach and author of The Racer's Mind. If you haven't yet, read the article.

So much of the difference between winning and losing is mental. I'm not trying to discount that you must have a good race car but you must be prepared as well. I know for a fact that when I feel confident in my car and have a positive mental attitude, I win many more rounds. The mind is a powerful tool to either work for you or against you.

Michael Beard at the Staging Light, wrote three papers for his psychology class while at Bucknell University. All of the papers deal with the psychology of drag racing and are very worth while reading if you are trying to improve your win loss ratio. The first paper is