bcrdukes

Hi Rennlisters,

Hope you all are well!

I'm looking to get some recommendations some driving / racing schools to try something different. For context, I do HPDE days with my local PCA and the program is fantastic, and I'm still very new, but I also want to learn from someone else and try different cars

I see that Porsche has a track experience program at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL. I see there are also schools like Skip Barber. Is that still a top choice? I'm looking for a program that covers vehicle, instruction, etc. Willing to travel to make a vacation out of it. Thanks in advance!

bcrdukes

ProCoach

Porsche Track Experience at Barber is terrific. A well-oiled program, great cars, very experienced instructors, good foundation building exercises. Likely to hold your interest all the way through, coming from a HPDE background. Most variety of cars, I think.

Skip Barber, out of all of the top-tier professional schools (Radford, formerly Bondurant, Allen Berg, Lucas Oil School, BMW M School at Palm Springs or Spartanburg, Bridgestone Winter Driving School, Dirtfish, Team O'Neil, Ron Fellows at Spring Mountain, Danny McKeever's School in Colorado) is still the best for teaching rock-solid fundamentals in GT cars as well as formula cars. The school went through a rough patch between 2009 to 2017, but the new owner has built the school back up to be even more than it was, with a fair number of the original SBRS instructors back along with a new cadre. They just built and moved into a new headquarters that you can see from my office at VIR https://www.skipbarber.com/2024/01/2...racing%20venue.

Everyone who goes through these schools starts at the beginning, although PTE takes into account track experience, so some of the introductory stuff might be a little repetitive, but if you've not had or never had time on a skid pad with a trained instructor, done slaloms, stop-box exercises, threshold braking and turning, those are skills that could definitely give you more confidence and perhaps even save your bacon when you get back into your own cars.

Have fun and congrats for looking outside the box to improve your skills!

zedcat

Porsche Track Experience at Barber is a great choice.

NC TRACKRAT

I'm a SBRS graduate way back in '84 at Lime Rock and, while it was a great experience, I think I'd have gotten a lot more out of it had I waited and done a few more HPDE events. I'm a big proponent of BMW CCA HPDE events in that they are much more rigid in their requirements to go from one level to the next. In order to get your money's worth, I wouldn't suggest that a student to go to a professional race school until they were at least a BMW CCA "B" level or PCA very comfortable White Level student. Heel & Toe and trail braking should already be in your tool box.

zedcat

The intro courses at PTE are ideal for someone who is still new to HPDE events. I think I did the first course after about 10 PCA DE days. Quite a few in the course had not been on a track before.

ProCoach

Interesting observation. I did my first three-day SBRS school in 1989 at LRP and graduated their instructor school many years later.

Could be that with the early programs (old friends Mike Zimicki and Bruce MacInnes would concur), the curriculum was too much and too advanced for novices in the formative 1977-1985 time frame.

It was refined and revamped later in the Eighties to emphasize and incorporate "best execution of fundamental skills" exercises to help inculcate the basics. The current curriculum is distilled from decades of analysis of what works and what doesn't for the broadest range of student.

It's not been my experience, instructing and now having worked with quite a few (thousands) of BMWCCA "A" and "B" level, PCA White, Black and Red drivers, that even most are executing the basics at a high level, one that might indicate that they had received rigorous training in those areas and available from a professional school.

The required tools in those driver's tool boxes are not, for the most part, well demonstrated. Heel and toe is often punctuated by modulating pressure on the brake pedal, hurting the efficiency of their braking and upsetting the stability of the chassis. Trail-braking (or as SBRS calls it now, brake-turning) is nearly non existent.

Almost every advanced solo and most instructors do not brake consistently enough, are usually done braking WELL before where they should be (obviating even the ability to properly trail-brake, since there is no more energy in the car to make it work) and have the most to gain in crisis management, solvable by serious skid-pad work.

So much of the work I and others have done as professionals focusing on track day, DE and club racing driver development could be streamlined if our clients had attended a professional school with a recognized, vetted and practiced curriculum, WITH rigorous car-control exercises.

For those not interested in going to a pro school, there are now opportunities to do private tutoring at skid-pad facilities with pro instructors on both coasts now, so there's that.

This is not to say good skill education is not available in well-run CCA Chapters or PCA Regions, it is.

But the proliferation of events and the ease folks can access the track now, as opposed to forty years ago (you and I started around the same time), has allowed many of the drivers entering the sport to bypass good, professionally presented and serious fundamentals training that was more common in the past.

bcrdukes

@zedcat Thanks for sharing this. It's been a solid year since I've been on track. I did something of a PTE event at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant several years ago organized by Porsche Canada. It was meant for newer Porsche customers who recently purchased a vehicle and they slotted me in with my lowly Boxster 986 S. While the day was packed and I learned a lot, I felt it wasn't enough as there were a lot of participants. Worth considering? Or pony up for coaching instead? Thanks!

ProCoach

I'm not @zedcat, but I think the LCMT event sounds more like a promotional event than the type of event you would get at PTE/Barber. Most of the events at Atlanta and LA Porsche Experience centers are like this.

From a coaching standpoint, most club-run DE schools and for-profit track days don't have access to highly targeted drills and exercises like skid pad, autocross and stop boxes. This means you're limited to riding around the track with a coach right seat or intensive brief/debrief with data and video, same as you've been doing.

Personally, advanced coaching for DE/track days would be more usable after a PTE Barber or SBRS Intro and Advanced (yes, you can tack on two more days to the three-day intro program and really get some serious practice and feedback in executing fundamental skills the best) that lays the MOST firm foundation on which to build.

bcrdukes

Wow, thanks ProCoach. You nailed it. The event I went to at LCMT was exactly that - mostly promotional in nature. There was no skid pad but a very brief autocross and stop box limited to about 20 to 30 minutes each, about about 40 students running in each run group (it was packed!)

While I really like my local PCA UCR team, we do one day of fundamentals as a green group when you start your DE journey, and then off you go on the track where you get a coach with you for the weekend, but I feel the fundamentals aren't drilled into us. They focus on perfecting the lines first, then focus on fundamentals.

Pardon the ignorance, but what does SBRS stand for? Thanks in advance.

ProCoach

Yep, seen this for decades. The organizational staffing required, costs, limitations of various facilities and the schedule don't often allow for these fundamentals to be practiced in club DE or track day settings. This is why what you want to do is SMART! A great investment in your DE driving future.

SBRS stands for Skip Barber Racing School. You don't want their one day or possibly their two-day High Performance driving programs, you want the race school, preferably the three-day, where you use their car, their gear and they supply everything. Only a small percentage of attendees go on to "race" but the skills required for DE driving at a higher (highest?) level, a detailed focus on the physics involved and the frequent turnaround of repetitious exercises is GOLD and something that could get you out of jams on the track and on the street. The people that get the most out of SBRS stay for the Advanced school, usually tacked onto the three-day racing school.

Super well done program, just like the PTE at Barber Motorsports Park.

bcrdukes

Thank you, ProCoach!

I'm on the SBRS website and they have three flavours of their race school - Formula, GT, and Touring Car. For example, this is one example of what's available in March 2024 at Laguna Seca - https://skipbarberracingschool.regfo...rs-m-ls-030424

Is this the program you are referring to?

zedcat

bcrdukes, you may want to try a search on driving schools here in this forum, I can't recall the authors or titles but there have been some posts within the last couple of years with detailed descriptions of experience at PTE and others. I usually recommend to drivers considering PTE at Barber to consider booking the 1 day intro followed immediately by the 2 day Masters. There are a few times per year they run these back to back for a total of 3 days. You can check the website for the schedule. It's not cheap including travel and lodging, but in my experience it's worthwhile

Compared to the LCMT event you described, the PTE program would be much more intense. Students are grouped in small groups 5 or so I think. The group moves to different exercises and then rotate individually through the exercise. There is some wait time, but there is typically an instructor with the waiting drivers to observe and discuss. The on track sessions in the intro are lead-follow, then in Masters drivers are solo. the cars have radio and video/data. Not sure what they are using now, it was Racekeeper last time I attended. There is a pretty extensive debrief after each track session. Several instructors are stationed around the track and give each student feedback. It's remarkable how much they can pick up observing.

Hope that is useful. Feel free to ask further questions.

zedcat

Here is one of the threads I was thinking of: School comparison: AMG vs Porsche vs Bertil Roos vs HPDE - Rennlist - Porsche Discussion Forums

bcrdukes

Thanks, zedcat! The PTE program seems more cost effective and the schedule is better suited for me. The three day program at Skip Barber is $7K USD which roughly converts to roughly $10,355 CAD, so that's a lot to swallow in one go.

I've come to learn that life is short, and I'm hitting an age milestone, so I want to make the most of things. I'm well and healthy, but you never know when that day comes and I've seen that in recent years with friends and family, so while I do not consider this as a bucket list item, I do feel that this experience will be tremendously valuable in my lifelong learning goals.

ProCoach

Your link takes me to the GT program, which is what I'd recommend. The data and video add would be useful (you'd get a lot more feedback) and always think about at least the least expensive insurance option.

Yep, the One day followed by two-day Advanced is the ticket. Cass Whitehead and all the instructor corps are amazing. They have been using VBOX for a few years now. That and the trackside feedback relayed by radio is the ticket!

The "father" of PTE is Jeff Purner, who's still there. He ran the Road Atlanta School, worked for SBRS before starting and running PTE. Fantastic program.

You can't go wrong either way. But do as many days as you can afford.