paver

It's up on their website now:
http://www.porschedriving.com/Porsch...--GT3-Cup.aspx
$10,000 seems like a ton of money for a few track sessions where your time is split between C2S, Turbo, and the Cup car...ouch!

964C4

PSDS is fantastic, but if I would pay $ 10K for this course, I would expect it to be only in a GT3 Cup car, not mixing with C2S or TT...

Carrera GT

I guess they don't have more than say four, maybe six Cup cars, but a class of say three groups, so rotating out of Carrera and Turbo to keep people on track ... then again, if I'm on track in a Cup, I want to be at pace, not passing street cars. So you get to spend 30% of track time in the Cup.

Assuming you have your own fire suit and helmet with HANS. And there's no doubt some insurance to buy. Plus travel and accommodation.

The format needs to be three days -- you need the first day just to get oriented with the track and the program and the cars, plus you need to justify the trip since you lose a day just getting to and from Birmingham,AL because it's a difficult airport destination which is either fog bound or choked with air traffic from Atlanta, GA. These might seem like logistics outside the control of the PSDS, but it's the practical reality for the customer attending the school and can't be ignored as part of the real cost of attending.

All three days should be 100% track time in a Cup, with debrief sessions for data and video review and coaching. I don't need "down time" lapping in a Carrera or being distracted by the feel of the Turbo when the idea is to focus on the Cup. I'd much rather be in a debrief session with a coach and studying the data and video than getting into a street car. This course has the prerequisite of already knowing something about the Barber track and about driving a 911 -- the only "lesson" should be specific to the Cup and that boils down to safety, sequential shifter and not touching the shiny buttons.

They need a flight simulator to practice using the sequential shifter instead of making a real gearbox and engine suffer.

Imagine the time sink of strapping into a Cup for the novice -- it won't be an enduro race driver swap. Reading the schedule, actual "wheels up" flight time in the Cup is a matter of minutes spread across two days. One little mistake by anyone on track and you lose your session. One mechanical problem. Anything can happen.

At $10K for a couple of hours' seat time in a Cup car with instruction ... just a tad too expensive ... : )

cfjan

Probably cheaper to buy a Cup car, hire a coach, spent a couple of weekends learning and driving, then sell the Cup car...

Larry Cable

fractional cup car ownership????

CXC Simulations

I completely agree. A lot of our clients are cup drivers looking to replicate that exact experience (among others).

You can easily practice sequential shifter techniques in our simulator. You can even set the software to penalize you for bad timing with varying levels of mechanical failures.

I don't think it's enough to simply develop the muscle memory on a static desk system either. You need to put the student in a simulator that will get their pulse racing, feeling forces that you would in a race car all while trying to balance the car on the edge. If you can do all these things in our simulators, then you will be much more equipped on the race track. There is, of-course, no substitute for actual track-time, but you can sure get a massive head start in a real training simulator.


When I worked a the Bondurant School, I saw students do terrible things to cars while learning to shift in a racing environment. This was part of the reason why I started building simulators.

pissedpuppy

sure, why not....they do it with jets

malmasri

Not a bad way to get introduced to a cup car and then decide on buy/ no buy...
Who do we have to thank for this Savycup program hmmm

Carrera GT

I don't think $10K would get you too many days operating a Cup -- maybe five or ten days with some deferred maintenance accruing for someone to pay eventually. And the cost to acquire and dispose of it alone would be the challenge. Finding a good one, in a sea of them for sale and almost all of them have exchanged molecules with the railing, then reversing the process to put the "greater fool" theory into practice ... hard, expensive work.

What's a top flight instructor cost? $1K ... $2K for a day or a weekend? Plus expenses.

So a "DIY" weekend would cost maybe $6-8K if you really could do it yourself (rent a Cup, pay for track time, find a decent coach, etc.) I think that means the PSDS is the better solution -- in terms of dollars and sense. But it also exposes their price tag as being exorbitant.

Looking at the whole ball of wax, I think mikymu has the right game plan: get good advice and help finding a good car; go into with a realistic budget and the time to execute on the project, not just have a race ready trailer queen and three DE's a year (cough ... mea culpa ... cough ...) and then you get the experience and real achievement -- at the end, you'll know if you want to put in the effort to drive the Cup or if you're a weekend warrior who wants to drive an RS to the track sometimes and have a ball. For now, I choose the latter, but I applaud those with the means to achieve the real deal.

I think at $8K for three days and no time wasted in street cars, it would be something I might find myself doing pretty frequently. As a one-off "dude ranch" experience to just get in a Cup, I think I'd feel pretty silly.

cfjan

I don't disagree w/ the comment above, but the "DIY" that you mentioned (what I initially suggested) would give you a lot more seat time w/ a Cup car. vs. the PSDS school (2 days, and only 1/3 of the times on Cup car) I guess that's where I was coming from.

paver

All this talk about cost, time-in-car, superior alternatives, etc.....we forgot one major thing.............................................the free redbull

MJones

Heres the class details / schedule
http://www.porschedriving.com/Porsch...--GT3-Cup.aspx

cscrogham

Makes the $40 grand to do the Nurburgring Cup special event seem cheap by comparison...

Bob Rouleau

A cup car costs about $1,000 and hour to run, and that needs to be factored in. With newbies using the sequential (fragile) gearbox, you might double that figure.

cscrogham

$13.60/mile exclusive of tires, track and people is what it costs to move around under its own power. Give or take