CrazyFast

Part 1: Introduction

This review is intended to provide an unbiased review of a few different paths to learning to drive fast. To provide a little background on how I ended up in three different schools, as well as HPDE coaching, here’s a short history of my journey over the last year.

As my first (and what I was hoping was my last) fast car, I purchased a 991.2 TTS early in 2018. One of my friends recommended I check out PCA HPDE as I could then take this wicked fast car to a track and drive fast. This sounded like a good idea, so I joined PCA and signed up for the first day of a two day event. By the end of that first day, I was absolutely hooked decided to come back for the second day.

My wife didn’t like the idea of me tracking the TTS any more, so I picked up a GT4 that was in the local dealer. (I know, she’s amazing). I then saw an opening for the 1-day performance school at Barber with Porsche, which I attended. During the year, I attended a total of 8 coached HPDE events spread across a couple of PCA regions, Chin, and Trackmasters (WGI specific).

In the fall I attended the AMG 1-day school at Lime Rock and took my father as a gift for his 75th birthday. I also attended the Porsche Masters and Master R courses at Barber. At this point, I realized that I really wanted to race, and attended the Bertil Roos advanced school to get my SCCA license, and have signed up for their race series for 2019.

For reference, I’m currently running in Blue with Chin and Metro NY PCA and Open track with Trackmasters. I would consider myself a good driver but fully understand I have a ton to learn and skills to improve (hence all the schools). Hopefully this guide can help other aspiring drivers choose the best path for their objectives, budget, and timing.

ProCoach

CrazyFast

Part 2: AMG Driving Academy
As mentioned above, I only attended the 1-day “Performance” school, so cannot comment on any levels beyond that. In case folks don’t know, if you purchase a new AMG vehicle, you get a voucher to attend the 1-day school, or as a credit toward one of the higher schools if you’ve already attended the 1-day school. I used this as an opportunity to bring my father for his 75th birthday, which was an amazing Father-Son adventure.

This also gives you an insight into who attends the AMG Academy. Because it’s included with the purchase of an AMG, you’ll get attendees who never would have ever thought of going to the track. They will likely never go back to the track, and for them this is their bucket list item. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it certainly changes the flow of the on-track experience as well as the exercises. I’m assuming this changes as you move up the school ladder, but I can’t comment on that.

The event I attended was at Lime Rock, which I would highly recommend as a venue for the school. The school is generally broken into two segments: exercises and track driving.

My group was fortunate enough to do the exercises first. Here are the exercises we went through: Wet skid pad (oversteer control only), Parking lot autocross, ABS braking and lane change, Lime Rock autocross course, Launch Control. During the exercises, you get to drive multiple different AMG vehicles (CLA45, C43, S63, SLC43) which is one of the attractions, especially if you own an AMG. You’re pushing an overpowered sedan or coupe WAY harder than you ever would on the street. Very fun to take these cars to the limit in a controlled environment.

In the afternoon, we were on track. For the track, I believe we were in the C43, GTS, and GTR. All of the track sessions are lead / follow, with the instructor in front and students rotating position behind. You’re alone in the car, but the instructors have radios to talk to their group of students. This is a great format to control speed and show the line. It does have disadvantages when you’re at the back of the queue and trying to figure out the line from the instructor 4 cars up.

We also had the parking lot autocross competition in the afternoon. The last event was a Taxi ride in the GTR which was insane to say the least.

Pros:
Driving AMGs: You get to drive a lot of different AMG cars. If you are an AMG fan, this will make you a HUGE AMG fan. There’s even a tech talk where you look through all of the cool features in the GTR.

Production value: The event is very well architected. Like absolute clockwork, with zero downtime. The catering is fantastic, audio-visual is great, and you walk away with a sweet goodie bag including AMG driving academy hat, bag, etc. The winner of the autocross even gets an AMG helmet to take home.

Coaches: The coaches are all ex-pro drivers. There’s a spectrum of experience, but some of them are selfie worthy. Kind of like getting your golf lessons from someone who just turned in their PGA Tour card.

Cons:
Size: The school I attended had 88 attendees (holy cow). While the student/coach ratio was okay, what this does is really reduce the amount of time on track or in exercises. They solved this by having you partner up and ride along when you weren’t driving. This was great for father-son bonding, but really ended up providing about ½ the seat time of a comparable program.

Clientele: As mentioned previously, anyone who buys an AMG gets to this school. As Mercedes ramps up the models with this designation, there is a very large variance in who attends the school. As someone who had been on track a dozen times before getting to the AMG school, I found the track time very slow (1/4 throttle in the GTR), and sometimes scary for the wrong reasons. For example, at one point I was following a driver who was in the dead middle of the track. The. Whole. Way. Forget apex and track out – he was treating the track as his own personal highway lane. Made for some very slow lap times.

Feels like advertising: The event very much felt like a pitch for AMG. As an example, there were AMG G-wagons on display. Not to drive, but just to look at. It’s cool and all, and I’m guessing the feel moves more towards performance driving as you move up, but for me this was somewhat off-putting.

The essentials:
Price per day: $1,195 - $2,247.50
Price to SCCA license: $11,885
Time to SCCA license: 6 days schooling – potential to go back-to-back
Track locations: Laguna Seca, COTA, Road Atlanta, Lime Rock
Unique offering: 1-day drift course (no pre-requisites)
Best for: AMG fans, bucket listers
Website: https://www.amgacademy.com/program

br911

Great write up. Exactly how I felt a few years ago when I went to Laguna Seca for the AMG Academy, after buying a new AMG I managed to convince them to jump the 1 day and could only do the Advanced over the weekend, which just worked for my schedule. The objective is to get you hooked on their product, but this is a Four Seasons of driving schools, with great meals and concierge services. More for the fun than for the driving itself. Still, for the price, I can't complain. Now I just bought a new M and am sure the M School will try to hook me up on their product as well.

thebishman

TRAKCAR

Matt Romanowski

Great write up. The GTR is a great track car (I was in one at Watkins Glen!)

GoBlue!

jmartpr

If you can do it....you will get a 10% discount for the whole package and I think that 3rd day is a must specially if you have limited seat time at Barber.....

zedcat

For me it was well worth it. The skid pad and cornering/drift exercises really helped. Track sessions were also great. I went last Nov and got to drive the new RS on a damp/drying track- wow

Steve113

Its was a lot of fun and not a bad helmet

CrazyFast

Part 3a: Porsche 1-day Precision course
I attended the Precision course with Porsche at Barber early last year, after only two HPDE days on track. At that point, I was very green but had a good appetite for the track. As a quick FYI, they’ve also renamed Porsche Sports Driving School to Porsche Track Experience (PTX), and they all take place at Barber. These are not to be confused with the Porsche Experience Centers in LA or Atlanta, or the Travel Experiences.

The logic behind attending the PTX school was to learn how to drive Porsches fast from the experts. I was thinking about getting a racing license, but had not fully committed at the time. So the logic was that if I wanted to, I could take the follow-on courses and progress towards getting an SCCA license.

The clientele at the PTX was a little more advanced than at the AMG school. Maybe a quarter to a third of the drivers owned Porsches, and some had been to the Porsche schools or tracks before. There were some Father-Son and spouse combos, but universally folks were Porsche and motorsports fans. There is no “free” day when you buy a GT4 or GT3 (PCNA – if you are listening, this would be an AMAZING perk) so everyone who’s at the school sought it out.

Group size was smaller than the AMG school, with ~32 attendees. The groups were also smaller, as we were broken up into 6 groups total, so 5-6 per group versus maybe 8-10 per group with AMG.

The day was structured with a mix of exercises and track time in the morning and afternoon. As an example, you would do 3x20 min track sessions followed by 3x20 min exercises in the morning, and the same in the afternoon.

The track exercises were similar to the AMG school: Wet skid pad (oversteer and understeer), Parking lot autocross, ABS braking and lane change, Launch Control, trail braking. During the exercises, you’re driving different vehicles (Boxster, GTS, Panamera, Macan) which is again quite nice.

The biggest piece that sets apart the Porsche school here is that there was a huge focus on car control. As an example, the Macan was used for trail braking because you could really feel the momentum of the car and how it moved weight to the front wheels. The wet skid pad had multiple figure-8 exercises, where we induced understeer through too much speed as well as too much steering input, and then got out of understeer through slowing down as well as through dialing out steering. There was always a coach with you in the car for the exercises, so you got real-time feedback and very high quality coaching.

The track driving was lead-follow throughout the day, and you were rotating through the Cayman, GTS, Turbo S, and GT3. So, for a 1-day school, you drove each of these models twice on track (I think we drove the Cayman once and GT3 once for this school). All of the cars were street prepped, but the tires were aired down for traction. Again, the biggest differentiator between the PTX school and the AMG school was the focus on car control. From the first lap out, you’re trail braking through select corners (obviously learning the line as well).

The other big differentiator between the PTX school and AMG was the pace. By the end of 1 day, we were cooking on track. It was very important to keep a tight grouping, as at one point I was in the back of my group and lagged behind. Trying to catch up I totally overcooked a turn and really understeered through. Not dangerously so, but by comparison at the AMG school, there was absolutely no way I would have gotten close to the tire limits.

Similar to the AMG school, there was an autocross competition and Taxi ride at the end of the day. Similarly insane.

Pros:
Coaching: The coaches are all ex-pros just like at the AMG school. The biggest difference is the amount of personal feedback you get and the focus on car control. This was the huge learning for me, and absolutely transformed my driving in one day. Unlearn the straight line braking only method from HPDE, and learn how to feel and control the weighting of the car with the right foot.

Seat time: Compared to the AMG school, as well as to a regular HPDE, you have way more seat time. About 2 hours on track, and a similar amount of time in different exercises.

Driving Porsches: You’re driving all different Porsches, and driving really fun ones on track at speed. Most of the folks at the school owned Caymans, Boxsters, or GTSs. So, the opportunity to get in a GT3 or TTS on track at speed is pretty special if you don’t have the money to buy one. Similarly, if you own a turbo but don’t want to track it, this is a great opportunity to drive their inventory with a low deductible.

Production value: The event feels white glove without being over the top. The facilities at Barber are wonderful, catering is great. But, if you want swag, you’ll have to pull out some plastic. Overall very well architected and smooth running.

Cons:
Track variety: I really searched for something to criticize, and this is what I came up with. As the school is only at Barber, you can learn Barber very well, and have no experience at other tracks. So, if you’re going to race or do HPDE at other tracks, you’ve learned to go fast at Barber without seeing different types of tracks and having the experience of learning a new track before race day.

The essentials:
Price per day: $1,800 - $2,400
Price to SCCA license: $13,800
Time to SCCA license: 6 days schooling – 2-6 months timeframe (no back-to-back option)
Track locations: Barber MSP
Unique offering: 4-day Competition Driving course (after SCCA license course)
Best for: Porsche fans, DE drivers wanting to go fast
Website: https://www.porschedriving.com/porsc...ck-experience/

CrazyFast

It's honestly about the coolest trophy ever. Congrats!

alexaqui

AMG school sells out very quickly, as evidenced by the comment above about the large number of participants. I was not able to make the dates work for me as Lime Rock was sold out ASAP and I couldn't get away from work on the other dates to attend at other parts of the country (COTA sold out fast too). I didn't mind skipping because I have a fair bit of track experience and the first day/intro days are not interesting. The 2 day school did not seem worth the upgrade price either as it seems somewhat limited with what they teach you and how they teach you (e.g., stability control is always on "sport mode").

As to the comment about Porsche including the school with the cost of the car, I guess Mercedes feels they need to make their customers feel better with the massive depreciation AMG cars suffer.... It is staggering... Also, despite the fact I love my AMG, I've never actually seen a non GT-R actually survive a full track day outside of the novice group without blowing through brakes or getting black flagged for the stability control cooking one or two corners.

Steve113

Thanks nice write up