yeah. I think the private organizations and country club groups have more flexibility, especially in places where there are few covid positives.

 

Only PCA White group and above are considered solo, however many Green and Blue students get soloed for the last two sessions on Sunday. So having solo Green and Blue students on the track must be covered by the current insurance. What would prevent soloing select Green and Blue students with sufficient experience from the beginning of day one?

Personally I don't want an instructor in my car the rest of this year.

I am soloed by NASA and Track Daze at Summit Point based on my number of track days there, so they will be my alternate to PCA.

 

Just got an email from SCDA that they are proceeding with lead-follow instruction at their events this year

 

As far as i'm concerned Green Solo = Lazy/Bad Instructor, Blue Solo (Yellow Solo in some PCA regions) run without an Instructor but usually should have one...

 

Our region (Rocky Mtn) doesn't have access to a skid pad. It'd be nice if we did, that's one of the reasons I love auto-x so much, you can drive at 11/10's and learn car control in a relatively safe environment. We got an email the other day saying most of our events are cancelled, they hope to run track events starting in late July but right now no novice groups.

I was already backing away from instructing just due to the capabilities/speed of the cars paired with the lack of capabilities of their drivers. The risk wasn't worth the reward. At this point you couldn't put me in a strangers car as an instructor, period. This is something we do for fun, not for pay. Definitely not worth the risk at this point.

There's a strong possibility that a vaccine will *never* be produced for this virus. At that point we deal with it until it's run its course...

 

I agree that more time on the skidpad would be preferable. A lot of students in newer cars are relying heavily on the nannies. When they either turn those off or get into either an actual race car or older car without the nannies, they are sometimes ill prepared and the speeds are generally a lot higher.

I've been to 1 car control clinic put on by a PCA region, but at that time my "instructor" didn't have any interest in me finding the limits of grip (in the pouring rain no less), so it was something of a wasted experience.

 

Skid pad is IMO some of THE most valuable training anyone can get. However, they seem to be relatively rare

 

Agreed. I feel that time on the skid pad was one of the biggest aids to improving my car control and comfort with car sliding around.

 

I may have been at that CCC.

Giants Stadium maybe 4 or 5 years ago? Monsoon Rains?

 

Is that when the fire truck ran the slalom course?
-Paul

 

Possibly.

It was raining pretty hard the whole time and I was drunk and high, so possibly on the fire truck...

Just kidding.

I do not remember a fire truck running the course, but that woulda been really cool to see...

 

In addition to skidpad, most tracks have some slower corners with plenty of runoff, where you can safely 'play around' with the car to practice car control, as long as no one is behind you. I've encouraged students to do that, and I do it myself. You can also practice car control on wet tracks (I've never skipped a wet session), but definitely be cognizant of the runoff areas when doing so.

 

+10000

Abusing a Miata on a skid pad has been some of the most useful time I have spent learning car control. It is amazing how much of it translates to driving faster on track.

 

SCDA has skid pad control clinics at Lime Rock, also Lime Rock Drivers Club offer skid pad control on the roval skid pad and wet skid car control on the Oval skid pad.
The roval skid pad provides the Best opportunity to learn car control, practicing trail braking, and looking ahead with no barriers to hit.

 

I am 100% convinced I would have either hit a friend's car or the T8 flag station that infamous day at TWS when some P-Car 4 cars up dropped oil if I hadn't been playing on the skidpad at a car control school two weeks earlier. The memory for me is still very slow, but it happened quickly and I was aware of what I could get away with and what I couldn't in the moment. I figure I left the pavement sideways at about 90MPH - the skid pad stuff prevented the stuff that followed from being a lot worse than it turned out.