JackOlsen

Having time trialed for many years, including instructing for the POC and a handful of other groups, I'm considering going to competition school this year and finally making the jump into wheel-to-wheel racing.

And it's hit me that I know almost nothing about it.

And in some ways, I wonder if five years of passing-zone and point-by traffic navigation might hurt more than help me in moving to open passing situations.

Not that it's any kind of subsitute for the real thing, but I'm interested in a preview. What does a typical racing school teach? What are the handful of fundamentals that racers all learn that the rest of us might not know?

Cory M

I went to the Driving Concepts race school at Willow Springs in February. There were things I liked about it and things I didn't like. Here is my experience there:

The race school is more advanced than the normal driving school and requires prior track experience. The amount of experience within the class varies, they let me in and I really only had a few track days at Streets of Willow and I went to the VARA school at Buttonwillow. I had never driven the big track at WS, which was a mistake because I spent the first 2 sessions learning the line. The cars within the class varied from Z06's to a Taurus rental car, lots of M3's, most people drove in, there were few dedicated racecars. I was driving a 1972 Datsun 240Z, it was probably the most underpowered car there. Most of the people taking the class didn't have big egos and were there to learn. The school was held on a NASA race weekend which made it kind of hectic, the run groups were 20 minutes long and there were 4 or 5 a day. The class room sessions talked about everything from preping your car to passing. Whenever you're not on the track, you're in the classroom, literally, you don't have much time to shoot the breeze like a regular trackday.

The Bad --- Even though you spend a bunch of time in the classroom talking about being prepared, you have almost NO time to make sure your car is ready (pressures, lugs, etc). We were typically let out of class 10 minutes before the flag dropped: just enough time to take a leak, walk to the car, and put on your helmet. I was late getting back to class couple of times, I think a few people complained because they gave us more time on the 2nd day. The instructors were really negative on the 1st day, basically saying that everyone sucked and no one had hit an apex all session. They eased up on the 2nd day and were more positive. If you did something stupid or spun they basically called you out in front of the class and made an example of you, including cracking a few jokes at your expense (thankfully I didn't loop it). Some of the instructors came across as very arrogant in the class, but were nice people one-on-one. I didn't do any ride alongs with the instructors, I wish I had because they are all good drivers and I think I could have learned a lot. There wasn't much personal instruction, basically the class was instructed and judged as a whole. I would have liked more personal instruction but it is a $500 class, not several thousand like Skippy or Bondurant. The book that came with the class contains good info but was missing a few pages here and there.

The Good--- I learned a lot in the class, I'm glad I took it. I think I am a better driver than I was before I took the class. A lot of the instruction was spent on where to look while driving and visual techniques that I found to be helpfull. The class taught you to be a better driver at any track and was not specific to WS. The driving exercizes, practice starts, and simulated races help you to get comfortable driving in traffic, passing (and getting passed) in turns, and driving off of the line. The time spent taking about getting prepared was good, although I'm pretty organized with checklists already. If you asked the instructors any questions they were helpfull. For $500 the price is right, and the class is worth taking.

Wreck Me Otter

Jack - I did the Skip Barber Race schools (many of them), the ARC Race school, and the SCCA licensing school before my first race. Each tought the basics of rolling starts, passing in corners, gridding procedure. It was all different than DE's (I had done +85 days in 2.5 years of supposed "open passing" but it was still very polite....). They had us do some braking exercises, cruising through corners side-by-side, and some artificial passing exercises.

I just completed my first race weekend with SCCA with 57 cars on grid. All of that stuff I learned may have been a little helpful, but the first race was something totally different. The aggressiveness, the close quarters, even noise was disorienting. I was slug slow (3-4 seconds off normal DE pace) but didn't really know it....

All of the seat time with driving the line helped me by having one less thing to worry about and gave me some ability to catch people WHEN there was some open track....which there was very little of. However, it was tough to defend your line when you're normally getting out of the way of anyone coming up on you.

I was not taught in any of the schools how to set up passe or how to defend your position. From what I gather, you go out and figure it out. I learned how to set up passes at the school on my own while trying to get by equal or slightly slower cars (or slightly faster ones when they made a mistake). I learned how to defend in the 2nd race this past weekend...the first race I was a door mat and welcomed pretty much everyone to go by....by the 2nd race, I didn't get passed and did a LOT of chasing...

For me, most of the politeness got lost after the first race. I'm by no means aggressive...yet...but you won't go by me without earning it...unless your a race leader who is lapping me...they get a free pass....

Qualifying is another thing...think of a DE, where you want to get a hotlap with double the amount of cars on track of varying speeds. I did a bad job and suffered at the start of 2 races because of it. You really want to qualify well as it is not easy to pass people in a race, particularly in a spec class.

I think you'll fair better than I did your first time out, but if you are in a competitive race, you will probably feel a bit out of place. But as I said, I was comfortable by the second race (fortunately I had a 2 race weekend...) and I can't wait to get back out there...only 2 weeks until the next race....

Have fun!

seege

I did the SCCA school recently and would say that it was a good indicator of SCCA racing. Very competitive,close proximity,intense and a bit dangerous.

Our school was closely aimed at understanding and obeying flags. During an early session a bunch of people blew through Reds, passed under full-course yellows, and generally were single minded maniacs. This led to everyone being brought in and chided as a group. Almost every session had flag exercises and they were always missed by the same folks, and followed by the same hollering. They leave the car-control stuff to performance schools.They're teaching you the rules and watching you for dangerous behavior. A few people couldn't get it through their heads that point-bys are not in the equation. It's racing. My instructor wanted me to drive hard and fast all the time. The practice starts and qualifying were good prep for the Sunday races - 2, 15 lap races. Really fun stuff. Like Kim was saying the DE experience is great because the driving is more automatic so you can focus on traffic and hazards.

Racing will ruin DEs for you - I promise. So far I've done 5 races and have seen way less carnage than at DEs. The people are fun, friendly and helpful.
I'm hooked and you will be too . Good Luck.

E. J. - 993 Alumni

Jack, I will be my usual short self.

If you want to learn to race with racing the goal, then go to a school that will help you get a license. SCCA school. Rent a SRF or a SM and have a crew maintain it over the weekend. You want to be able to go from the classroom to the car without worrying about any of the car crap. I always say that the SCCA regional schools are were you go to learn to race race cars.

I always say that other race schools (Skip and the others) is where they teach you to drove race cars fast.

The SCCA school will put you in a race environment from the start.

But remember, if you don't want to race in the SCCA, then maybe don't go to the SCCA race school. If I were you, I would do the SCCA school renting a car then do a few regional double race weekends in the same car. That is the best way if you want to go racing.

BTW - no school can teach you to race. You need to race. You will learn 1000 times more in your first real race weekend than you will ever learn by doing hundreds of DEs and a few race schools.

carreracup21

Just put a X on the back of your car, take out the passenger seat, sign up and go race PCA or POC. You will get the hang of it quickly and have a blast.

Wreck Me Otter

You got that right in spades!

Robert Henriksen

It's hard for me to imagine taking a p-car that I've fussed over for years & subject it to W:W racing. I think *I'd* be too paranoid about hurting it to have fun. Racing is such a leap into the deep end of the pool, it's challenging enough w/o being freaked out about the car. SRF or SM, even if it's just a rental for a few weekends while you acclimate, would be really worth considering.

One of the challenges of SRF is that the visibility to the sides, especially w. a HANS (you *are* going to race with a HANS, right?) is extremely limited. OTOH, what that visibility problem does is force your brain to develop & maintain a mental 'radar map' of the cars in your vicinity. You track them in your mirrors, and when they disappear from sight, you have to use their last position & vector to maintain a sense of where they're likely to be. Good thing is, the faster you get the less you have to worry about that!

Once you get over the initial shock of proximity (and the occassional love tap), you'll love starts - very stimulating.

EJ had a very good suggestion about doing the rental/arrive & drive thing - you should definitely consider that approach if your alternative is your black 911.

Geo

If you want to learn to race go out and buy a racing kart and have at it. You should have enough tracks near you to be able to spend virtually every weekend racing. Go racing this year in the kart and race cars next year. You will learn more in this first year than you would in 5 years of racing cars. Sell the kart at the end of the season and if you bought reasonably well and didn't break anything major you should get most of your money back.

Karting is an awesome environment for learning to race. And when you say wheel to wheel you MEAN wheel to wheel. After a season of karting you won't be nervous mixing it up in the corners with anyone unless they are outright wacko.

JackOlsen

Thanks for the answers. I'm lucky in that there are lots of good race groups out here, most of whom run schools. The Skip Barber type don't appeal to me. I'm more interested in learning the rules of the group I'm going to run with than go-fast theory (which I teach, fer gosh sakes).

More specifically, then:

How do you set up a pass?

How do you defend a line?

Robert Henriksen

As you're droning around the track behind the slug in front of you that really just ought to pull over & let you by, you'll start to notice that you're faster than he is through certain turns. If one of those happens to lead onto a straight, you can hang back before that turn in order to then get a head of steam on him through that turn & motor by on the following straightaway. I don't know how many times I've done that through T6 at TWs.

If you don't necessary have that situation to take advantage of, there's the Hail Mary pass under brakes. Slip to the inside, DON'T brake when he does, and hope you don't fly off the track when you go by.

Barring these, there's 'wait for him to screw up', which requires good mental focus & eternal vigilance, there's 'oops, didn't mean to tap you like that' (not that I've ever done such a thing), there's taking advantage of chaos when catching backmarkers, there's capitalizing on chaos during a restart after a double yellow, etc etc etc.

Defending? I'm not so good at that. I *have* had people try and pass me on the outside down a straightaway approaching a turn; that's pretty easy, you just go deeper than normal, hold them further outside as they enter a turn. They'll wind up in the marbles or otherwise run out of grip, and need to back off. Or if they go inside, take a low line. Be aware that excessive dicing will only slow you in your efforts to reel in the guys further ahead. You may be better off working together to draft as a team until you reach the pack ahead - then start stabbing each other in the back to get ahead!

Larry Herman

Get a better run off of the last corner, and hopefully you can have enough momentum to dive down the inside of the next braking zone. Don't telegraph your move...pull out to pass at the last possible moment, i.e. just before you run into the back of their car.

Go down the inside of every braking zone that your opponent may have an opportunity to dive inside of you. And hope that traffic catchs up so that he/she has to fend off cars from behind and you can get away.

Of course there's a lot more to it than that, but it's a starting point for more discussion.

APKhaos

Tons of great advice here already, Jack! The arrive-and -drive idea and the karting idea have a lot of merit.

Well before the start of last season I was in your position. Lots of DE time under the belt, and it felt liek time for 'what's next?', which was obviously racing. I picked a series first. That in itself is a subject that could drive a great thread. Sold the 911, bough the car I needed for the series. Next step was to get a race license. NASA is the series sanctioing body, so the NASA Comp License school was the way to go. From what I had heard about PCA Club Race licensing, I was not expecting much.

The NASA Comp License school was terrific. The point of departure was outlined early - if you can't drive your car at 10/10 without thinking about it, then you are not ready to race. You will need every ounce of attention for situational awareness, preparing to pass or be passed, and working on race tactics. A couple of guys dropped out soon after, in part because of this point and in part because they expected to have in-car instruction. The instructors were in their own cars. More of that later.

The classroom sessions were run by a team of instructors - six for our group of 15 drivers. A lot of the material was about setting expectations, and keeping out of trouble, and appropriate war stories. Great material on tactics, passing technique, pacing [when to go hard, and not; 'saving' your car & tires for the righ tpoint in the race; etc.

The track exercises were terrific. Here are a few:
- Starts. LOTS of starts. Standing starts, rolling starts, restarts - and maybe a lap of two of racing between each. Very realistic. Yellow flag on all tubs to stop the race, pace car out, form up, restart, etc.

- Half track. Drive half a session entirely on the left side of the track - do not cross the centerline. Repeat for the right side. Quite a shock for DE-trained guys. Felt totally strange at first, running on previously 'no-go' areas of the track. The point was that you could [and would] need to drive on every bit of the track, and that 'the line' was where there was racing room available. Good lesson.

- Leap Frog. Drivers teamed up in pairs [based on lap time in previous school races]. Drive no less than 8/10ths. Driver following his partner passes in every corner. Door to door passing in every corner. This took a bit of work to get right, and initally caused some hairy moments.

Throughout these exercises, the six instructors were out in their race cars. They were *******, dive bombing, bocking, and doing all they could to put pressure on the students. They set up situations were we were forced to pass them to continue the exercise. They were observing how the student handled the pressure, and how much aggression/passivity they showed. All of this was covered in detailed debriefing sessions after each exercise.

It was the most valuable day I've ever spent on the track. I've never done an SCCA school or a Barber/Roos style course, so my perspective was limited to DE- type events. I did the PCA Novice process at my first club race, and really felt bad for the guys that were going racing with a nice talk and no other real preparation.

This NASA school was run by the Mid Atlantic chapter, so other regions may be different. Given NASA is based on the left coast, they probably designed the course there, which is good news for Jack. Its another option to consider.

Robert Henriksen

That sounds fantastic, wish I'd gone through a school like that.

JackOlsen

I agree. As a novice, that kind of approach appeals to me the most. Learning to play nicely with others is more important, early on, than setting any lap records.