jrgordonsenior

And scare the crap out of you. First time out in the R-seat with my coach Kris, whom you met at Miller, we were in my 6-cup and I was sure we wouldn't make it thru the first lap. The back straight leads to a high speed sweeper that I took in 4th at around 110. He never slowed shifting to 5th and keeping it floored. Remarkably we made it then he down****ed to 4th and went blindly up and over 'Lost Hills". It had previously been a 3rd gear turn for me. I think I dropped 2 seconds just that first day off my best lap there. As you know he helped me immensely at Miller as evidenced by the results. Great setup, and great coaching, it makes a momumental difference. Anyone listening?....

ProCoach

That's good enough to find plenty of time...

Circuit Motorsports

Good for more than 95% of the areas of opportunity in your driving.

onefastviking

JR - Yes, I saw Kris working with you and clearly saw the difference.

BTW to the others, since I already know JR knows the value in a coach, the 2-5 seconds I referred to wasn't a wild guess, that is based on numerous real experiences with your average PCA driver and even better.

The Traqmate system is a wonderful system, plenty to instruct and coach from.
Yes, MoTec and Aim and others offer more info although they require a lot more expense and knowledge to extract the additional information which many times means you actually get more info and better results with the Traqmate. I recommend the Traqmate to 99% of my customers.

As for why instruction and is it valuable ? - I always tell people that Tiger Woods, Michael Schumacher, and such prime athletes all have coaches, they all review video and data of different sorts. The coaches they have almost always can't do it better than the athlete can, but they can observe and offer points that can help improve the end result for that athlete.
IMHO,That is what you are looking for, not necessarily the fastest pro driver to coach you, but the best coach that can continually show proven results over and over again.

Hope that helps,
Viking

ProCoach

+1,000

While a ride with a pro driver can help expand your experience base and provide massive entertainment, a good coach can enter into an intelligent conversation with you to help YOU optimize your OWN performance.

Larry Herman

Yep, it would certainly scare the crap out of me if he down****ed in my car.

Larry Herman

It is not hard for a good coach to find time for most drivers. One of the problems is that without constant "touch ups" many will revert back to their old behaviour. It is easy to show someone what they are doing wrong, and help them improve. It is much tougher to make it a permanent change.

SundayDriver

I agree with that. A good coach must be a good driver but does not have to be F1 level. They need the combination of good driver and great communicator. Look for a coach with verifiable decent driving record and a commitment to coaching - tools, techniques, education (articles and/or employment at a pro school), etc. Tools is a biggie - do they bring something to the party besides the willingness to sit in the right seat and comment (some of the best coaches never even ride with you).

SG_M3

2-5 sec? geez, OSB people

Greg Smith

Holy crap, I agree with someone on RL. You can't put a number on something like this, the skill level of club racers varies TREMENDOUSLY. Some are as quick or quicker than 'pros', others are 5 seconds slower.

EDIT-Being able to take 5 seconds off a persons time doesn't necessarily make them a good coach, it just means that the driver sucked that much beforehand .

Mark in Baltimore

Why don't you ask Jack Lee who he uses?

wanna911

I personally saw VR help one of Rennlists own get 2 seconds of their best time on well used Hoosiers this weekend , If I'm not mistaken the tires had a 3 hr enduro on them, or were at least well used. I'll let them fill in the details, but I was very impressed. On some new tires, it could have probably been closer to 3 seconds on sticker tires.

BTW this 3 second better time would have been 1 second off a REAL pro driver in a little bit better equipped, but very similar car.

Mark Dreyer

I really had no idea of the capability of my car and although fairly experienced in DE's was not willing to push things until I had some top flight help owing to the fact that I'd totalled my car at the track a couple years prior.

I'll echo the earlier poster's comments in terms of the value of having the pro drive your car with you in it. Having Chris Hall do this for me helped me gain the confidence in terms of what kind of speed I could carry through corners. His pointers on refining my braking and his data overlay (he uses the Racekeeper system which is what is used at the Porsche Driving Experience) were very helpful.

I used him all day at Chin a few weeks ago, and have done a couple DE's since. Yesterday he was doing coaching sessions with Suncoast/Goldcoast DE. I hired him to ride along for a session, and after the session he told me I'd gotten to the point that he'd need the data to make subtle improvements (he didn't bring his data setup for the PCA event). He timed me at a 2:36 with him in the car and having to navigate through some slower traffic.

So a big thumbs up to having a pro coach work with you!

Veloce Raptor

I am coming to this thread late, having just returned from Road Atlanta. I agree that 5 seconds is unrealistic, especially for someone like Paolo who is already a pretty good driver, unless the client is just starting to come up the talent curve. That said, there are people who are just starting out, and I really don't understand some of the disdain expressed in this thread for them. We have all been there. A good coach, as Lolaman said, is a good communicator, and is empathetic, not condescending, to where the client is as a driver currently.

This past weekend, as Wanna911 indicated, I had the opportunity to work with some folks at Road Atlanta. One is a racer in a 911, who was already pretty good. He had no right seat, so coaching consisted of data, previous videos of him at RA, and also me co-driving with him in a 3 hour enduro on Friday to get a sense for the car & set up. I had never turned a lap in the car before my stint in the race. The net-net is his previous videos showed some things we worked on. My time in the car showed the need for some some significant set up changes. And despite 2 extra unplanned pit stops due to a significant electrical problem (which got fixed), we still finished 2nd overall in the 3 hour race, behind a faster & much better equipped car co-driven by another pro, Andrew Davis.

After making the set up changes, the client kept taking more and more time off throughout the weekend as we focused on specific corners and segments where his underpowered 3.4 could have an advantage. We also focused on qualifying strategies, and race start strategies when he was surrounded by full race Vipers and Corvettes on the grid who would gar-on-teed out-drag him to Turn 1.

Bottom line: the client did the driving. HE made the improvements. I just helped him see where they could be and how the car would be a bit better. And by yesterday afternoon, he had taken nearly 2.5 seconds off his previous all-time best lap times at RA.....and he became a much smarter, savvier racer.








Professional Racing and Driving Coach

mglobe

The phrase that runs through my mind is "Your Mileage May Vary". I'm hard pressed to say you will improve by X seconds after a day or coaching. It depends upon where your skill levels are, how you learn, and how well you accept coaching.

Over the past couple of years, I've been fortunate enough to have help from both VR and onefastviking. These two guys really know their stuff, and the input I've gotten from the two of them, both on driving and setup, has proven to be highly complimentary. What we've typically done is find a couple of obvious weaknesses in my driving, and focus on that without much concern about lap times. By the end of a day, we always see an improvement in the specific skills. It's often the next time out where I see the results expressed on my Traqmate.

You want numbers? Well over a two year time span since my rookie race, my best lap times have dropped by 8 seconds. Yup, eight. Not from one session, but several over an extended period of time. Some of that is car development and setup, most of it driving. As I said before YMMV.