va122

Made the decision to finally perform the driver upgrade and attend a 3d school.

I'd love to hear peoples experiences with Skip Barber, Jim russel, Bob Bonderant racing schools.

Lots of dough so I want to make an informed decision.

Gator_86_951

I have heard great things about skippy, probaby going to do one event just to have the open wheel experiece. Ask TD in DC. He will give you volumes!

cbracer

I'd do the Russel series as my first choice, Bonderant as my second.

Barfly

Why in that order? Have you done both?

grehalva

I went to Panoz at Road Atlanta lots of seat time, great instructors, Panoz race prepared cars and we played on Road Atlanta
After I went to the school I went back for lapping days using the Panoz school car then I did their race series to see if I really wanted to get into door handle to door handle racing. It was a cheaper way to find out before investing in building a race car.

Rich
#47 SP2 944

38D

Buy a car, get you license and come to a PCA, SCCA, NASA or POC race. You'll learn fast.

BostonDMD

Colin, I might take you up on it!.....

BTW, I did Skippy, very pleased with their program........

Frank 993 C4S

Skip Barber - hands down. Not the cheapest but in my mind the most professional.

TD in DC

It depends upon your goals. I really liked Skip Barber. That said, I didn't really view it as a "racing" school, as they tended to focus more upon driving than racing. Sure, you get to practice starts, which is helpful, but that's about it. It is not as if you learn racecraft. But, if you want to improve your driving skills, go to a track you otherwise might not get to visit, and drive open wheel cars, it is an awesome program with great instructors.

As far as racing schools go where you really focus on facing, the NASA Supercomp school at VIR is incredible. We walked in, a bunch of scared noobs, and before they said much of anything, really, he said let's go . . . we are going to have a 30 minute practice race right now. Talk about nervous . . . but you learn a lot more that way.

chrisp

Don't skip the Driving/Racing School step. I did several years of DE and then did a Skippy three-day. I learned a ton.

MomentumGuy

Once I decided, it really came down to logistics - I did not want to travel, and I had to find something that fit my schedule. The syllabus is probably very simliar for every school. I'm not sure about the instructors, but they may be the same, especially if they are drawn from a pool of "freelance" drivers/instructors around the area.

After almost 3 years of DE, I'm attending the Panoz 3-day school next month at Road Atlanta. My goal is to get familiar/comfortable with the wheel-to-wheel racing, but it looks like they do a fair amount of car control (skidpad/autocross) as well.

I'm doing the Track Days on March 3rd/4th, and then the NASA DE the weekend after the 3-day school St. Patrick's Day weekend. Given the same car, track and fairly similar weather conditions, the effect of the "driver upgrade" should be fairly evident.

Jason Judd

Mid Ohio has a very good school, too.

Jason

Geo

I've written this many times, but if you really want to learn to race, buy a kart and chase a points championship. You'll learn more in one season than 5 in cars. They used to tell me that when I raced karts and I thought it was just an exaggeration. I found out it wasn't. It's true. Just so you know the experience from which I speak, I've done (in order):

autocross
karting
commercial racing school
DE
SCCA licensing school
SCCA club racing

I learned far more in karting than all the others combined. When I went to racing school I certainly learned some things that probably would have taken me some years to figure out on my own. But, when I went to my SCCA school and when I started racing, I leaned nearly 100% on my karting experience. It prepared me better than anything else I had done.

As Todd said, racing school doesn't really teach racing. They mainly are concerned that your check or CC clears and that you don't cause damage to their car. They will teach you some basics and maybe a little more, but don't expect a "racing school."

IMHO you should choose based upon the type of car, the track, and whether they offer something unique. For instance, the Daly school uses data acquisition. I think that would be great for learning. Just go and enjoy the experience. That's mainly what the 3 day school is for - enjoyment.

cooleyjb

You might come out ahead of the game if you hired a good driver coach and went to a DE over a thing like Skip Barber.

I also second the kart approach. Open lapping days if you include food, gas etc are under 100 bucks.

JC3D

I did the skip barber 3 day class at laguna seca and learned so much. I did 1 track event first, then that, then a bunch more track events, then the POC. I don't think in this sport, you can ever stop learning.