Z-man

Thanks for the reply.

Your request sounds reasonable. If you are willing to put 'proven racer' & 'DAS experience' & 'one that supports trailbraking' as a "would be beneficial" but not a "definate requirement," I'd say that 90% of the DE instructors with PCA meet your requirements. Just this past weekend at The Glen, I overheard some instructors saying that many, if not most of the veteran instructors have a background in engineering. I think that's more than coincidence...

Regarding 'supports the concepts of trail braing,' why not take an 'early braker / early apex' type out and try to prove them wrong? A good instructor would be able to show you the difference and would be willing to listen to your viewpoints. Many times I've driven with an instructor and my technique was a little different than theirs - often they would say 'try this,' but if it didn't work for me, they would admit it. (Example: I had a nice rythm going through the Keyhole at Mid Ohio - an instructor showed me a different braking technique, and it totally messed up my smoothness there. He admitted that it wasn't working for me yet.)

It is ok to disagree with an instructor, but it is also good to try out different techniques.

-Zoltan.

JC in NY

Really? I read his requirements list and thought the opposite, very few meet most of these criteria as far as I am concerned.

Brian P

I tend to agree. There was a time when I used to drive in the "maximize my G-sum and heavy trail braking" sort of mentality. Everytime that I took club racers out in my car, they would continually harp on me about it and tell me that I was killing my momentum. Those guys really liked the "early-brake, early-throttle" style of driving.

Like CC, I thought those guys were bozos who didn't understand the advantages of trailbraking. Unlike CC, I kept those opinions to myself. As I learned more, I came to understood that I was the bozo.

Anyhow, if you really want to find instructors that meet your requirements, I'd suggest finding a professional school and also finding regions that bring in professional drivers. It's not cheap, but when you are spending $50K+ on a 996TT, I think you and I might have a different notion of what constitutes cheap.

Z-man

Allow me to clarify my response: the PCA instructors understand the concpets of trail braking, late braking, maxing the G-sum yadda yadda. I didn't say these instructors would actually SUPPORT CC's ideas, just understand them, hence my caveat. That's why I believe 90% of the instructors would be approved by CC.

It's all about semantics, and I guess I need to brush up on semantics.
-Z.

Geo

In fact, I'd highly recommend the Daly School. Every one of their cars is equipped with a Stack dash/DA set-up and I understand that they make use of them even in the beginning schools.

ColorChange

Geo, they only use long g now. There new cars will have lat and long g so I can get g-sum. When they have this, I will be going straight there.

SundayDriver

I'm a little confused on g-sum. I thought you defined that as the integral of combined g's. (Where combined g's is a widely used term which is the squre root of the sum of lat g squared plus long g squared.) If that is correct, then you are not going to be able to get g-sum in real time - as my understanding of the Stack is that there are no math channels, unless that is a recent addition. Even if added, are they going to allow you to write math channels or are you going to do that analysis after the school?

ColorChange

I am defining g-sum as the square root of the sum of the squares (particular value at any point on the track). The integreal of g-sum is just that, over a segment or the whole lap. If stack can export the data I can do my own formulas and graphs. I am assuming it can. I would do that analysis right there with the instructor unless he knew a better way. I can construct the data quickly.

DGaunt

Greg F, I agree about the truth aspect. We had a couple in our region that no one could ever clock at within 2 seconds of what they *said* they were doing. We postulated that it was cheaper to chip the stop watch than the car....

Chris: Amen to 100ths or less in DAC VS seconds in training the 'wet ware.' There is no fast track, many have tried and the body shops love them.

RJay

As we are fond of quoting around here...

"Slow In, Fast Out. Fast In, Dead Out" -Sir Stirling Moss

smokey

Stirling Moss, who was generally acknowledged as the fastest driver of his era after Fangio retired, did not spin or leave the track during his first two years of racing.