Car Control-How is it taught?

[ninjabones]

I am by no means an expert in car control ("turn 10"), but the best car-control learning experience I had so far was a two-day Skip Barber Driving (not racing) school at LRP that was given to me as a present a few years ago.  The school is a bit pricey and a lot less popular than the more glamorous schools where you drive the high performance cars.  About 95% of our time was spent behind the wheels of dodge neons and dodge pick-up trucks.  However, I think we got a lot more bang for the buck as we were not only allowed, but encouraged, to throw these cars around with reckless abandon.  They don't let you do that with their high-priced performance cars.  Most of the exercises were very simple, and could easily be practiced near home in an empty parking lot:

Some of the exercises I remember:


- an absolute ton of skid pad time in an overpowered rear-wheel-drive Dodge pick up with shaved rear tires. The shaved rear tires and SRT 10 front engine made the experience challenging to say the least.

- autocross-like competition with a a salad bowl mounted on the hood.  The goal was to push the limit while at the same time keeping your inputs smooth enough to prevent a tennis ball from flying out of the bowl.  It was absolutely amazing watching what some of the instructors could do while still keeping the tennis ball in the bowl (drifting, threshold braking, etc). They made the exercise fun by turning it into a competition for best lap-times. This was all done in a dodge neon.

-  we probably spent a half-day just working on threshold braking (again in a dodge neon).  They really made what could have been a boring exercise, a lot of fun.  we lined up in a loop and just repeated over and over and over again getting up to speed (65 mph) and threshold braking. We had radios in the cars so the instructors could give us constant feedback based on their analysis of our reaction times, looking at our brake lights, how the nose of the car was dipping/bouncing, how we responded to wheel lock-up, stopping distance, etc). 

-  emergency lane-changing / obstacle avoidance drills at speed. This was a nice drill for understanding weight transfer and how to react in code-brown tank slapping situations.

-  a very short autocross competition in dodge vipers  It was a lot of fun, but they kept us on a short leash.  I think this part of the program was mostly to make the school sound more glamorous in the advertisements.

- There was plenty (perhaps too much) of classroom time to reinforce everything. The quality of the teaching was excellent.  However, I think Jack's lectures are as good or better.

The overall theme of the school was repetition in order to make the reactions instinctual.  They also made a point that these skills have to be practiced regularly.

I think it would be a lot of fun to put together a car control clinic for the club ... we could even make it somewhat competitive using some of the drills that Skip Barber used.  I'd be glad to work with our limey autocross chair on this (you listening steve?)

Later in the month, I'm taking the Skip Barber 3-day racing school in the formula cars with el presidente (graham). I'll report back with comments from the experience.