DK83

Hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving with their loved ones.

I've been pondering about attending a race school as I am a beginner at the track. I currently have 5 track days under my belt(two with the c5).

I'm located in NJ and the season is pretty much done. Can you guys give me some direction on which school I should attend? I've seen a couple such as, skip barber, bondurant, and so on.

Thanks!

TrackAire

The Bondurant 4 day course is excellent. If you call when they are at SEMA, Barrett Jackson, etc and tell them you want the show special, it saves you about $1000.00 off the price.

Cyber Greg

Bondurant is great but in the Phoenix area (Chandler to be precise). The four day course is fantastic. I believe there is a Skip Barbour school in NY though. So, you would save on travel expenses if that is a concern. But, if money is not a concern and you're ready to go now. Check out Bondurant! You'll learn a ton and have a great time!

Bluefire

Spring Mountain Motorsports - Pahrump NV.

Josh67

If you go to the Skip Barber website and get on their mailing list they almost always have discounted courses. Their three day racing school can get you an SCCA competition license.

I have not been to a racing school yet but Skip Barber tops my list.

Hi Volts Z06

I personally went to Bertyl Roos (and the run schools all over the East Coast). I found Dennis Macchio's teaching style and communication skills to be excellent but will comment that being as spastic as I am found the non-synchronized transmissions in the Formula cars to be an impediment to learning. (Although once someone simply said to me "take it out of gear BEFORE you heel toe", I got it!)

Bill32

That's very strange..............

Bill32

DK, you don't really say what your intentions are, If you just want to go to a racing school so you can drive your Corvette better in the HPDE's - fine.

If you really want to race (way different than HPDE), read this:

https://www.scca.com/pages/i-want-to-road-race

Note that these not all these schools get you a full competition license, with some you still need to run some races as a novice.

https://www.scca.com/pages/driver-s-school-w-table

The east expensive way to go is to already have your race car (or rent one) and go thru an SCCA licensing school.

Contact the New Jersey region, they will be glad to help:

http://www.scca-nnjr.com/

The other way to go is with NASA (also very good) if you want to get into competition.

If you just want to drive better, take the High Performance Driving classes rather than the race classes, Spring Mountain is excellent.

lobsterroboto

exactly, your goal needs to be clearer, personally I would locate a full SCCA licensing school nearest to you, rent one of their prepped race cars. The full schools will also have you participate in actual races to meet that criteria.

0Anthony @ LGMotorsports

All of them?

I don't know of one school that is going to teach you everything or one school that is going to be 100% right for every car/condition. Take a few of them and apply it all to your own driving style.

I know Lou would still go to a school here or there, especially if it meant learning a new track.

Kamran

If you are currently a beginner, you may not benefit from a racing school just yet. Once you are a high intermediate or advance HDPE, then you can start looking into spending big $ to sharpen your skills.

At your level, your best bet is to attend your local Porsche Club Driver Skill day, which is about $100 and includes a full day full of fun with one on one instructing that you can learn a lot. Other clubs such as Beemer or Audi may have similar and they are open to all walks of life. No ego, and since it's typically in an old airfield or similar, you are encouraged to push hard enough and go over your limit to find where the limits are.

Some people actually take a couple of these classes before heading for track. Some,including myself, take our new car there to fool around and familiarize ourselves with the strength or weaknesses of a new car before we try out the limits at 150mph +/-

It'll be at a least a year or two before you are at the level where you can actually take advantage of "racing" school. Right now, just go out and have fun in Driver Skill days.

TrackAire

In this situation, I would venture to say that the term "racing school" is just generic.....more like high performance driving school. I think it would be a huge mistake for a beginner that is really interested in driving HPDE or eventually doing door to door racing (SCCA, NASA, etc) to just start doing HPDE's to get experience.

What I have found is people get bad habits doing this....sometimes they have a car with excessive horsepower and use the power to cover their mistakes and not be smooth and fast.

Only perfect practice makes perfect. Practicing wrong sets you back years and it's hard to break bad habits. I've done Bondurant. The one advantage they have is the track is built as a learning track...it has sections of constant radius corners, increasing radius corners and decreasing radius corners. It has curbing designed to be run over and curbing that you are not suppose to run over since it will upset the car. They have the huge advantage of having skid cars with hydraulic control of all four corners. You just practice learning to control a car with oversteer and understeer over and over again. You can't efficiently do that in a normal car or on a wet parking lot. The class where they teach heel toe downshifting is great....you just do it over and over again in repetitive sessions and it becomes very natural. I can't speak for other schools (and the ones mentioned are all very good) but if one has a desire to start HPDE, going to a 3 to 4 day school puts you so far ahead of the curve it pays for itself.

You'll understand your car better, what you should expect of it and what needs to be adjusted if your car is not handling like you want.

Even if you're from the East coast, Phoenix has some of the cheapest flights into it because of Southwest Airlines....the casino hotel across the street from Bondurant is new with great rooms and restaurants. Plus there are tons of hotels and eateries within 5 miles of the track if you want to stay at a non casino hotel.

The next school I want to go to is a rally school. Trying to make it happen for 2017.

Poor-sha

Unless you are looking for a comp school I'll add a vote for Spring Mountain. I went there the first time after many years of HPDE and instructing others. I did it because a buddy was going and I had the Corvette buyer discount. The instructors were able to pick up some bad habits I had developed (getting back to the gas too early) within minutes of being in the car with me. It gave me an opportunity to work on that and I definitely learned a lot from the experience.

Jimnc

Skip Barber.

TrackAire

Although this is a little off topic, just about all of these schools offer a "Teenage Survival" or "Highway Survival Class" for young drivers just getting their on road licences, etc. Most are a one day course and they teach accident avoidance maneuvers, anti lock brake control, skid pad, wet traction, SUV center of gravity issues, skid control and so on. If you have kids or grand kids that are just learning to drive, this is a very worthwhile gift to give them.

Both of my kids went to Jim Russell Racing school at Sonoma for the one day class. My son and daughter both attended at the same time and my daughter did NOT want to do this but I made her do it or no driving privileges. When I went back to pick them up at the end of the day she couldn't stop talking about how great the class was and how much fun she had. To this day, she claims that she has avoided serious accidents by applying what she had learned in the class about 5 years ago.

Inexperienced drivers are a leading cause of injury and death for our kids....any pro driving instruction/class you can give them increases their odds of being much safer behind the wheel or dealing with all the idiots they have to share the road with.

Bill32

I'm an instructor in these programs.

http://streetsurvival.org/

Sponsored by TireRack/SCCA/BMW

It's fun (except keeping the students off their phones ).

In the final run at the end of the day, we let the parents ride shotgun.
A lot of parents come in and say "We can't do that!"

I whisper to myself "Yea, we know."

BTW, this program is put on in cities all over the U.S.

DK83

Thanks for the inputs everyone.

My intentions are to be a better driver over all. I know this may still sound vary vague, but I was thinking of attending a school because out of the 5 track days I've gone to, I only had the instructor sit in with me 2 times. I always ask, but don't get one everytime and I understand events can be short on instructors.

So far, I've been to e-town 3 times, njmp once, and nyst once. Only in e-town I had an instructor sit in with me.

Bill32, you brought up some good points and good reads. Thanks for the links. I don't have intentions on racing in a competition. More so for my enjoyment and improvement at HPDE. I guess I can lead towards earning a license a bit later down the road once I feel a bit more confident.

I enjoyed my day at njmp, even though every session was with a pace car. I'm looking forward to njmp track days once the season begins next year.

Bill Dearborn

There are plenty of schools that require a novice or even a low level intermediate driver to have an instructor in the car with them. Novices are rarely signed off to lap on their own and low level intermediates can be signed off after the first day if the instructor can justify signing them off to the chief instructor.

Look up schools put on by BMW Chapters in your area (there are several), NASA, at the Glen look for Trackmasters, Phoenix CMR BMW Chapters, PCA Chapters, etc. They don't let you solo until you show you can go out and play well with the others. That means permitting passing and not pushing others when you want to pass. BMW Chapters will insist on knowing how to follow the line, how to go offline on corner entry, braking, throttle steering, etc. It is a lot of stuff that a person just thrown on the track and running around doing laps will never learn.

Bill

DK83

Now that you mentioned it, I do recall seeing BMW driving experience(something like that) events around me in the past. Thanks!

One thing I do feel comfortable is giving point bys! I am in no way trying to race others or hold them back. And in the rare occasion that I do find myself behind another car, I don't pressure them or try to pass without them giving me a point by. I bought a bright neon colored glove so people can easily see my hand when I give them point bys. LOL

Bill Dearborn

If you are interested in running the Glen (much better than NYST which I believe is a dangerous track) check out the following BMW Club Chapters that run HPDEs there. GVC out of Rochester, NY, Delaware Valley, Patroon out of the Albany area, Boston, New Jersey. Niagara Region of the PCA.

BMW Chapters and NASA also run at NJMP. Again there are a lot of organizations that run there and motorsportreg.com will provide the information on who to contact.

Use motorsportsreg.com to find them. There are a lot of different organizations that run events there starting in late April going through early October.

With the BMW Club Chapters and some other clubs/organizations each student is taught/evaluated using the Skill Level Instruction Program (SLIP) that can be found here: http://www.drivingevals.com/.

Here are the evaluation criteria from Novice through Uber Driver. To move from one level to the next all of your skills have to be scored at least at that level.







You can use these to grade yourself.

Bill