ProCoach

Agree with Bob. Dating back years, most clubs assigned two students per instructor, at least around here...

jdistefa

How come VR always asks me to sit on his lap?

Is this the right thread for this question, or should I ask my rabbi?

Confused.

ProCoach

Far less than 20% of DE folks move on to Club Racing, and of those that do, less than 20% stay in Club Racing longer than three years.

jdistefa

Interesting.

I get the narrow end of the funnel from DE to CR but what's the explanation for low retention rates in CR?

Boredom?
Checked the experience box?
Money?
Lateral transfer to other CR organization?

Presumably the rate of moving on to pro-am series is less than 2% (guessing).

Veloce Raptor

Haha! Because you're so cuddly!

Another reason or two for slowly shrinking instructor pools are more and more events seeking the same instructors...people have lives too. And...as cars get astoundingly fast right off the dealer lot, and right seat injuries and fatalities get reported on line within minutes...self preservation kicks in

T&T Racing

The moral of the story Goose That Laid Golden Egg is the folly of being over greedy which leads to destruction of the source of benefits to a person. In this story the owner of the goose that lays golden eggis not satisfied with with just the golden eggs that the goose lays from time to time.

ProCoach

All of those things.

Yes. Less than 2% for folks who go to pro-am for more than one or two events.

The “racing” thing really should not have anything to do with DE structure and instructing. Most of the folks I know in DE in the CI/classroom level may have had some racing experience, but not a substantial number.

I cringe when I hear someone doing DE tell me that an instructor shared with them “the racing line” or began talking about “driving defensive line.” That said, some of the best DE instructors I know are long time racers, folks who have a super solid and evidence based foundation of knowledge well beyond many of the higher ups in their respective DE program.

Manifold and Matt have great posts in this thread, for sure. When VR talks about the instructor corps being spread too thin by multiple, competing organizations, he is on the money, too. A lot of folks are just aging out, too. It’s a complex problem.

LuigiVampa

I do about five PCA club races a year and attend almost every CVR DE event, both advanced and as an instructor. I am always amazed at other club racers asking me why I still bother with DE. To me it is a completely social event which I enjoy even more now that I race. When I only drove in DE I wanted to "win" - now it is a vacation.

Club racing is a great experience but if you are competitive, as is almost 100% of the paddock, there is a certain level of stress that comes along with the weekend. DE is a chance to hang out with friends and fund that one buddy who is matched in a similar car and skill level and mix it up. I don't understand why many club racers stop going to DE once they race.

Lastly, in keeping with the theme of this thread, I really get a lot of personal satisfaction out of instructing. This is my 12th year since I started going to the track, 5th year of racing, and 2nd year instructing. I always ask my students what do you hope to learn today and what are your long term goals. I finally had a student last year who said his long term goal was to race. That was me 12 years ago - it felt good and he did well on his first day. I hope he makes it. (So he can finish in back of me because I need the points!)

DCP

Fast cars with sophisticated nannies masking errors until the student hits something at a far higher speed than would have happened without the electronic correction. If I could make rules: Require nannies be off at DE's after the first level.

ProCoach

Great post, great perspective.

I continued to instruct at DE’s long after I started club racing, because doing so accelerated MY learning and understanding. Made me a better racer!

Manifold

We can look at this issue with a simplified mathematical model to get a feel for it.

Say a driver does 20 days as a student, 20 days as an intermediate solo driver, 20 days as an upper run group driver, and then starts instructing. So it has taken this driver 60 days before he starts instructing, and he needs to instruct for 20 days to 'give back' the 20 days he was originally instructed, meaning that he needs to log 80 days to reach that break-even point.

- If he instructs more than 20 days, he's giving back more than he received, and those extra instructing days enable the sport to grow.

- If he instructs less than 20 days, he's not giving back enough, and the number of students which can be accommodated goes down, which contributes to the sport shrinking.

- If he instructs less than 20 days and then switches to just driving, he's taking up space in an upper run group, and possibly displacing an instructor and therefore a student also.

- And if he quits the sport before he begins instructing (the 60-day mark), he doesn't give back any of the 20 days he received as a student, which hampers the capacity of the sport to accommodate students even more. Since some people will never get to the point of instructing, those who do instruct need to compensate for them and give back more than they received in order for the sport to not shrink.

Of course, the numbers I've used here are just illustrative and I don't know how accurate they are. But I think this model illustrates the factors pretty well, and we can see how the factors could work in a way that the viability of the sport is impacted.

A remedy is to actively recruit new instructors and lower the threshold for them to be accepted as instructors, but of course that remedy has some problems.

Maybe instructors can be incentivized by being assigned only one student and having free registration along with some other perks (breakfast, lunch, etc.), with the lost revenue being made up by increasing student registration fees, but it would be a shame if the registration fees become so high that only the well-heeled can do track events, and even then there may not be enough of those well-heeled people around.

As ProCoach said, it's a complex problem.

CCA

Manifold, maybe I'm reading an undertone here you didn't intend, but I don't think DE participants should be expected to progress to become instructors. They should not be pressured or guilted to "give back", they have paid their entry fees and sometimes instructor fees. They are paid up as far as I'm concerned and only need to progress as far as they wish. If they wish to instruct and are capable of doing it well (many aren't) then we need to make it worth the effort because, when done well, it is work. Work which is done in a stressful and dangerous environment.

T&T Racing

Difficult call because pro racing also uses nannies. Having said that, DE is a different animal. But 25 years ago there was the,1st gen of ABS. What was the experiences of risk for driver and instructor in that era compared to 2019?

Manifold

Agreed that not every DE participant should be expected, nor feel obligated, to eventually go on to become an instructor. Some may not want to do it, and some aren't cut out for it.

That said, in my experience, the majority of drivers who attend DEs regularly and rack up sufficient DE experience do have what it takes to become instructors, and would enjoy doing it. So when I instruct, I assume that my student may one day become an instructor themselves, so part of my job is modeling the role of an instructor.

I think we should also consider that, when DE participants pay entry fees, those fees are somewhat subsidized by instructors being compensated at a relatively low hourly rate for their instructing time (through reduced or free registration). IMO, that does strengthen the argument for promoting a 'giving back' mindset at DEs.

Matt Romanowski

I don't think this is true. Their are people here who have done this longer than me, but in the North East, it was after 2000 that instructors drove for free because they were having trouble getting enough for the regions I know in the NE. It's a region decision as to what/how they charge participants.