As mentioned previously, my wife gave me a day of Performance Driving Training as an early birthday gift. On Tuesday this week I spent the day at Pacific Raceways road course in a class led by Don Kitch. The driving would be done my in my own car, a Corvette.
The day began at 8:00 am sharp (after signing off on a lengthy liability waiver) with an in class presentation by Don. Don went over the agenda for the day, what to expect and some general safety procedures. We also met our fellow students. There were about 20 folks in the class include Ben Slivka of the original Internet Explorer team members.
By 9:00 AM we were out in our own cars conducting a slalom course. I began the course at 25 mph, then 30 mph, 40 mph and the final time I accelerated up to about 50 mph making it through the cones. The flag man at the end of slalom course waved a flag to indicate that I needed to skip a cone, I blew it and wiped out the final cones. Oh well, all in fun. Nobody hurt accept some flattened cones. :-)
We continued on the morning getting familiar with our anti-locking breaking systems on our cars, learning how to work with oversteer conditions and crash avoidance. It was a lot of fun, but I was ready to get out on the track. ;-)
At noon we got our chance, for the first lap my private instructor drove around the course in my car with me in the passenger seat. Around the track he drove pointing out the apexes in the turns, breaking points, and plenty of advice. After the completion of that lap we swapped seats and I took a slow lap around the class. It was a lot of fun to make my way around the track. We then broke for lunch.
After lunch we spent from 1:00 PM until 5:00 PM on and off the track. After the first two rounds with confidence in our abilities growing they brought on about 10 other cars of lappers. These were regular drivers brought onto the track to race along side us (pass us is the more truthful statement) and helped get us used to having other cars on the track.
By the end of the day my skills grew. In the straight always I remember seeing my speedometer hitting about 115 mph and did learn to keep my speed up in the corners as well. In the beginning I was breaking really heavily in the corners, slowing way to much down.
Through it all I learnt how to feel my car, defensive driving maneuvers and how to watch for things in the distance. The reality of what we were doing set in late in the afternoon when a fellow student rolled his BMW M3 in turn five, totaling it in the prcess. Everyone was fine from the accident, but it did make me a bit nervous about returning to the track. We were back out though quickly, moving forward and got back into the groove.
The day wound up with certificates for all, a brief review with Don and an offer to come out for open racing days.
Now the question is will I be back out for those open racing days? :-) I think so.
Thank you to all the at Proformance Racing for an amazing day.
I learnt a bunch.
Postscript: I just remembered a neat part of the day. There were all sorts of cars. Lotus, Porches, Mercedes, Audis and Volvos. One of the Volvos was a station wagon and the driver was awesome. I think he passed me like three times in the day, proving it is definitly not the car, it is the driver that matters.
