Bertil Roos Racing School - Drive Your Own Car

[Lainey]

Thought I would put in a report on my day up at Pocono on Tuesday at Bertil Roos. For anyone looking for another angle on DE, I really recommend trying the "Drive your own Car" experience. I wasn't that interested (yet LOL) in the Formula Cars so I tried bringing Little White - fresh off my first DE at Summit Point. Let's say I'm jumping in with both feet and a smile on my face.

I arrived early like 7:20AM to find two other guys (Corvette, Acura NSX) and had coffee while our cars were being checked out. Kept waiting for others to show up but nobody did - so it was just us "three" on the track at Pocono ALL DAY LONG! We were in the classroom first with Dennis (the owner - great guy) and learned about "short eyes" and how the "steering wheel is your enemy" - that their entire philosophy is based on vision and looking up track. (something I needed to work on being so new) Anyway, it was off to the track after that. My instructor was Vince Majewski (again, I lucked out with another great instructor - shoutout to Sensei) and we took a few laps in their Malibu car to find the line. My heart was beating pretty hard looking at the banked angle on Turn 3.

The end of Turn 3 was a little too much to think about but I kept my emotions in check when we climbed into my car for the first of what would be 3.5 hours of driving time on the track. (1;1 instruction/coaching pretty much the whole time) Learned to brake more precisely (feel), "heel toe" at the turns, picking the visuals - in slow, out fast. You name it, I just sponged it all up. Their approach really helped me with the "radius" and where to find the line. What was different here was, Vince would critique me then let me go solo to sort it out on my own. With my "type A" personality, it was the right recipe for me to put it all together. Vince said I made a ton of progress, but needed to practice more (seat time).

My 2 other track buddies there also had a blast - the guy in the Corvette (who was also new to DE) burned up his brake fluid, while the NSX seemed to run like a top, with his driver being pretty experienced. My Little White CS never complained, just wanted to keep going for more -- what a car. We had a 45 minute final session (I pitted in 3 times to take a mental/physical break) then headed back to the classroom for a wrap up and chat about the day.

Dennis, Vince and the rest of the Bertil Roos crew were savvy drivers and really cool people. I closed the day, totally exhausted. All 3 of us thought we got our money's worth (probably more than that). Sometimes the chips fall your way - all that driving time helped so early in my learning process.

Can't wait until the 19th-20th to get back out there.