Ultimate Speed Secrets Review

This book by Ross Bentley is the brand new update in his Speed Secret series, and is somewhat a compilation of the six books in the series.

Speed Secrets I by Bentley, along with Going Faster by Carl Lopez, are two of the books that most HPDE instructors ask students to read. The former is not too technical, and has simple diagrams to illustrate the ideas. The latter is far more technical and in depth, but equally informative. They both cover the same topics, so they're good depending on what reading style you prefer. However, they're both a bit dated now.

I didn't get my copies in time before my competition school, but it really drove home what I learned on the track afterward. I'm certain my learning could have been accelerated had I read any of these beforehand.

Ultimate Speed Secrets covers the performance driving basics like driving line, car handling and behavior, track conditions, and going faster as a driver. These are about the same as Speed Secrets and Going Faster. Beyond these, it also goes into things like the mental aspects, driver preparation and conditioning, using data logging, the business aspects of racing, and being part of a team. This is good if you plan to transition from high performance driving into a racing career.

There are little tl;dr (too long, didn't read) snippets called Speed Secrets scattered throughout each chapter to hammer home important ideas on going faster and achieving quicker lap times. These are quite useful since they're short and to the point.

The writing style is pretty easy to follow, as there's plenty of examples and the author's previous experiences. It's not a book that you can fully read and remember in an afternoon, as it took me several days to absorb the information. I imagine I'll be flipping through this book as I continually learn and experience more driving and racing events in the future for reference.

This book is a very good value, in that it covers everything a driver of all ability and skill levels would want to know or encounter during high performance driving or racing.