To an outsider, a Formula One driver’s success rests entirely on their machinery. While there is some truth in this, other factors such as physical fitness and mental strength are also necessary for any driver competing at the highest level. But what if this wasn’t enough? What if there was something else that could make the difference between winning and finishing second?

Well there is. Most drivers will stumble upon this tiny extra boost at some point in their racing careers, but the problem is that 'it' is largely unexplained. When a driver (or any sports person for that matter) claims to have reached "the zone", they’re said to be engulfed by a sense of inner peace, where everything comes easy, bordering on invincibility. The effects range from bending time and space to out of body experiences.

Clyde Brolin's Overdrive focuses on this phenomenon and attempts to explain how a trip to "the zone" is more than just a cliché that is often spouted post-race by an overjoyed racing driver. Beginning with Ayrton Senna’s infamous qualifying run for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix, Overdrive takes the reader on a journey through the minds of some of the greatest sporting legends that are alive and present today.

A decade in the making, Brolin has managed to conduct a seriously impressive amount of interviews with a vast array of top flight drivers and sports folk who all recount experiences of entering the unfamiliar areas of the neurological and astrophysical. All without any reluctance through fear they may be seen as barking mad.

In practice, this means that every facet of information Brolin gives on the subject is cross-referenced by a quote from someone who has encountered the euphoria from being “in the zone.” As a result, a topic which would normally be seen as mumbo jumbo becomes truly fascinating and easy to relate to, due in part to well-known drivers such as Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso recalling their experiences and making it easy to digest.

Overdrive has clearly been a labour of love for the author and his passion for the subject shines through on every page. The full extent of this phenomenon is thoroughly examined, with no stone left unturned, but importantly, nor does it come to any conclusion on how one might be able to enter such territory at any given time.

You could complain that towards the end things become a little repetitive, but that would be missing the point. As Brolin explains: “it hopefully shows this effect is available to everyone,” and you know what? He’s probably right. We as humans are capable of much more than we’re given credit for and we all have access to another level thanks to our subconscious.

Fascinating as it is thought provoking; Overdrive is no ordinary sports book. Such dedication and painstaking research in collating hundreds of descriptions on a topic that is mostly beyond words should be rewarded. So go buy it. An essential purchase.

***** (five stars)

I first heard of the book Overdrive on the BBC Red Button Service during practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix. As a lifelong follower of motor sport and a keen student and practitioner of personal development I am intensely interested in the ways of the mind and how it can affect human performance. I was hooked.

The Zone is an often described state that many experience when performing at their very best. A paradoxical state where you are there but not consciously doing, where choices and actions become automatic and natural. Clyde Brolin writes a fascinating work recounting numerous interviews and anecdotes with almost all of the top people in motor sport from both the present and the past and their experiences of The Zone. If that isn’t enough he includes anecdotes and interviews with many of the top performers in other sports as well.

The author has described this book as a lifelong ambition and it has been 10 years in the making. As an F1 journalist for one of the world’s most prestigious motor sport publications and the PR man for a high profile Formula One team Clyde had access to everyone in the F1 paddock over a 10-year period and painstakingly assembled interviews and anecdotes from racing people about being in The Zone, what it means and what it is for all of them.

Too many to mention all here, the items that stand out for me are the detailed investigation into Senna’s out of body qualifying lap at Monaco in 1988, motor sport’s nirvana of being in The Zone, to Martin Brundle’s assertion that anyone and everyone is capable of achieving such states if they wish. Then onto Dr Claudio Costa’s testimony that the severe pain of broken bones can be completely eliminated when the love of a sport and the desire to compete are involved.

Written in a relaxing style, easy to read and constantly drawing you on to the next page this book is a very enjoyable and relaxing. In my opinion this book is essential reading for anyone interested in sport and human performance. If you’re a racing driver you should have already read it.

Spirituality and motor racing: it’s not a comfortable mix. Whenever Ayrton Senna alluded to his faith and its influence on his racing, many would squirm. Not very ‘Stirling Moss’, is it?

That’s why Clyde Brolin’s thorough, 10-years-in-the-making study of such an intangible is so brave. He risked being laughed at when asking a roster of racing drivers including Alonso, Schumacher and Hamilton if they have experienced ‘out-of-body’ sensations in their quest to find the ubiquitous ‘zone’ of ultimate performance. Instead, the majority were happy to oblige.

It’s a fascinating book that delves deep into the psychology of sport. At times, the navel gazing wears a little thin, but still it’s a remarkable achievement. The most original motor racing book of 2010? Without a doubt.

I really enjoyed this book. For years, I’ve tried to convince other race fans that motor sport was not so much about motor as it was about sport – a fight between humans and sometimes between a man and himself. Overdrive gives all the arguments needed.

I was glad not to find a boring philosophical essay relying on the author’s assumptions. This book is full of interviews, quotes and vivid memories from the drivers themselves. I’ve been boycotting F1 races for ten years and I was afraid to read stories of new drivers I don’t really care about. Fortunately not only did it also feature former legends like Moss, Stewart, Surtees and Berger, but as a WTCC, IndyCar and NASCAR fan I was pleased to find Andy Priaulx, Cristiano da Matta, Alain Menu, Jimmie Johnson and Carl Edwards. The quotes from rally ace Michèle Mouton make this book even more interesting and devoting the last chapter to Alessandro Zanardi is the perfect finish.

There are plenty of differences in the drivers’ descriptions of the Zone. Some call it extreme concentration, some call it God. I’m pretty sure they experienced the very same thing and only culture and education differ.

By reading this book, I understood the Zone can be extended to many other disciplines and I am convinced the same process is involved for all these people, including the racing drivers. This ultra-concentration reached when we focus hard leads to another state of consciousness. But the Zone may not be reserved to an elite, it’s a skill we all have waiting to be revealed, trained and used.

I am already waiting for the sequel…

Talk of being "in the zone" has become clichéd among sportsmen in recent years. It would be easy to assume their vocabulary has simply run short in trying to describe a good performance, but is it possible there is something much deeper and more meaningful to the phrase?

In Overdrive, Clyde Brolin examines the possibility that finding the zone could be a route to some sort of spiritual enlightenment as well as heightened performance. Fortunately, he's as cynical about the premise as you probably are and the book is more an exploration of the idea rather than an attempt to prove it. By focusing on F1 drivers' journeys to the zone he looks at what is truly possible from a man, two pedals (three in the good old days) and a steering wheel.

Brolin's investigation begins in the most obvious place: Ayrton Senna's jaw-dropping qualifying lap of Monaco in 1988, in which the Brazilian claimed to have an out-of-body experience while lapping the street circuit 1.427 seconds faster than any of his competitors. It's a good place to start, but of course you can't base a whole theory on (whisper it) a self-confessed bible-basher who might have got carried away in a press conference. Fortunately Brolin hasn't. In fact, he's done the opposite and interviewed around 100 other F1 and sporting personalities who have reported similar, if not quite as dramatic, visits to the zone.

This is the book's biggest strength but also a potential flaw. The accounts are almost endless. But, much like reaching the zone, the hard work is worth it as the book puts beyond any doubt the importance of psychology in sport. What's more there are some brilliant descriptions of the zone, most notably darts player Bobby George who describes the feeling as, "Like having a thousand starlings flying out of your arsehole".

So with the premise well and truly established it would seem logical to explore how it's possible to achieve such a feat. Unfortunately this is the difficult bit, and Brolin doesn't really attempt to address it. Instead he leaves it to the drivers to try and explain, and judging by their widely differing accounts, there is no single answer. But that's certainly not a criticism of the book, more proof of just how fascinating the subject topic is.

Masses of time has clearly gone into researching Overdrive, and the end result leaves you looking at some of sport's greatest achievements in a very different light. The fact that F1 hasn't embraced sport psychology in the same way as other individual pursuits such as golf or tennis means a lot of the content is incredibly fresh. While the book is not likely to revolutionise the sport, it will add another dimension for any F1 fan willing to open their mind to it.

**** (four stars)

Imagine piloting an F1 car at 140mph round the streets of Monaco. It’s a pretty frightening circuit, even for me who have been racing all their lives. The elder Nelson Piquet once said that driving at Monaco felt like ‘flying a helicopter around your living room’.

Now imagine that the car is still romping around those hairpin bends, but rather than watching the road through your helmet visor, you are looking down on yourself impassively from above. You can no longer feel your hands on the wheel or your feet on the pedals; instead, it is as if some third party (God? The id?) is performing all the mechanics quite independently.

Most alarmingly, the car seems to be moving faster than it has ever gone before. That is the sort of out-of-body experience that Ayrton Senna reported after his extraordinary qualifying lap at Monaco in 1988. That drive has gone down in grand prix folklore. After beating his McLaren team-mate Alain Prost by a second-and-a-half, and the rest of the field by fully two seconds, Senna admitted: ‘It frightened me because I realised I was well beyond my conscious understanding’.

This phenomenon of driving on autopilot fascinated the motor sport writer Clyde Brolin so much that he wrote a book about it. And after 10 years’ labour, he has produced ‘Overdrive’, an analysis of the mental states that top athletes – mostly, but not exclusively racing drivers – go through when they compete. Brolin’s main theme is the concept of ‘the Zone’, that oasis of heightened performance where time seems to slow down. Most of the drivers he spoke to could remember entering this trance-like condition a handful of times during their careers, but only the very best – the Sennas and Schumachers – made a habit of it.

The abandonment of ego, at least temporarily, seems to be one of the prerequisites. According to Jackie Stewart, his early performances in F1 were held back by the red mist that often surrounds the angry young driver. It was only after three years’ racing that he realised he needed to be totally detached, to the point where Stewart was almost humming a tune while his brain performed its calculations like a computer.

When Brolin consulted other drivers about such stories, many dismissed them as fantasies on a par with Luke Skywalker’s ability to fight blindfolded. But the author was reassured by the fighter pilot who told him that ‘breakout – where guys feel they’re sitting on the wing looking into the cockpit at themselves – is a well-known phenomenon in military aviation, particularly fast-jet flying.’

For the most, ‘Overdrive’ is insightful and leaves you with a fresh perspective on F1. Which is exactly what Senna experienced in Monaco all those years ago.

**** (four stars)

Racing drivers drive as fast as they can. An obvious statement, perhaps, but for a driver at the highest level, finding a tiny bit extra makes the difference between winning and finishing second. When a driver reaches that outer limit, he is in "the zone". It is an area almost beyond understanding but, once inside it, a driver – or any sports person – experiences a sense of calm and ease of action that comes close to euphoria.

Explaining how it happened is much more difficult, if not impossible. And because, say, a Formula One driver knows he has entered unfamiliar and therefore disturbing areas of the astrophysical and neurological, there is a reluctance to talk about it in case the listener thinks he is either mad or out of control when supposedly in charge of a vehicle capable of 200mph.

Ayrton Senna broke new ground when he described, without prompting, an "out-of-car experience" when claiming pole position for the 1988 Monaco Grand Prix. Senna said the McLaren-Honda was going faster and faster and with such apparent ease that the Brazilian reached the point where he appeared to be above the car, looking down on it. Such an admission from a highly respected driver prompted others to confess that, very occasionally, they had experienced similar inexplicable feelings.

The full extent of this phenomenon has become startlingly apparent in Overdrive. Formula 1 In The Zone, a paperback book that thoroughly investigates the subject. Clyde Brolin clearly has impeccable contacts and the respect of the racing community, judging by 100 interviews with top drivers and riders.

Brolin spreads his inquires to rallying (Sébastien Loeb), Le Mans (multiple-winner Tom Kristensen) and motor bikes (Valentino Rossi), but it is the F1 drivers who provide the meat for a revealing book on a fascinating subject. Gerhard Berger, the winner of 10 grands prix, provides a typical example.

"Qualifying was when you could really find The Zone," Berger says. "On some days you are fighting the car, everything hurts and nothing seems to fit. You have no lap time and you know it. But at other times you feel yourself reaching a higher level. Everything would be just like in slow motion, everything becomes very smooth and very soft. When you\'re really on it, it's absolutely the best feeling in the world."

Medical understanding of the processes going on within the driver is still at a primitive level. But in a fascinating new book, Overdrive: Formula 1 in the Zone, Clyde Brolin takes a more intuitive look at the subject. He searches out those who have experienced that magical feeling in a racing car where they can do no wrong, where driving absolutely at the limit is the easiest thing in the world. It’s a feeling of invincibility rarely attained even by the top guys, but it is generally accessible by anyone. When a driver reaches this zone, that is when we see pure, undistilled, 100 per cent of his potential. It’s the place of which Ayrton Senna famously and mystically spoke when describing his laps at Monaco in 1988.

Brolin has interviewed many of the sport’s greats, as well as lesser lights and sportspeople from outside motor racing, about the phenomenon and the consistency of the themes is striking. Whether we assign neurological, technical, astro-physical or spiritual explanations to the experience is open for debate. And it would inevitably be a fruitless debate, because of the fundamental intransigence people with expertise in each of those fields tend to have about accepting theories outside their own area of knowledge.

The book doesn’t try to reach a resolution on this, but it does record the views of those who have them. Ironically, it is those with open minds who have ready access to the phenomenon. The only real conclusion the book reaches is that the zone is ‘free to everyone with the correct decoder’ but it ventures no theory on what that decoder is – and is all the better for that.

Brolin took years researching the book and it would be nice if he were rewarded for such dedication to a complex, ultimately unresolved but fascinating subject. Buy it: you’ll have spent a tenner but gained a fascinating insight.

Overdrive is first and foremost a book about what it is like to be a racing driver 'in the Zone'. This is the state of mind in which a driver attains mental clarity, he feels at one with the car, and in which driving fast at the very limit feels effortless. This mental state requires the conscious mind to relax its control, and allow the subconscious mind to take over. At times like this, the conscious mind of the driver is able to sit back and observe, from an almost disinterested perspective, the actions of his own body.

It is a unique and fabulous work. The author has extracted a gripping and fascinating collection of lucid recollections from many of the most famous names in motorsport. Brolin has essentially unearthed a whole world of private experience which has received little prior attention. The accounts rendered of being in the Zone should be treated as a treasure-trove for psychologists and neuroscientists, and even the more overtly religious testimonies later in the book can be seen as an interesting anthropological study of the beliefs held by certain modern tribes. Buy it!

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Likewise, if you have any questions about the book, F1 or the Zone, do let us know. We will do our best to reply to every query we receive.