How much experience did it take for you to become comfortable with car control?
 

"Comfortable with car control" is kind of vague, call it "confident and skilled enough to nonchalantly induce and control oversteer in the rain at Sonoma Raceway". Just curious how much experience it took you guys and what things you found most helpful for practice/learning. I know the usual recommendation are skid pad and autocross.

Seat time, seat time, seat time.

Takes a couple of years of events imo, if not more.

Good coaching will be imperative, there will come a point when you could go out there all day long, turn 100 laps and not learn anything because you're stuck in your own head. But 15 minutes with a coach could give you the confidence to do things you didn't know you could do.

Which is a damn shame that Sonoma disallows most instructor ride-alongs.

Oh, yeah. I glossed over that.

Take all the schools and instruction that you can. Even if it's not a school have someone fast hop in the car with you (or drive your car with you riding shotgun).

The season of coaching I've arranged is sounding better by the minute! For me anyway. I was more comfortable last season, but a near incident that's the end of the season seems to have eaten away at my confidence over the winter I guess. And this is just auto-x.

I realize that you can't do this everydat, but the best way I have found to learn car control is to hoon around in parking lots full of snow. You can drift in slow motion and experience the limits of steering, braking and acceleration at very low speeds and with almost no penalties. You could take a trip up to Tahoe in a RWD rental car with all seasons if you don't have access to winter tires on your twin. I in my mind a big open snowy parking lot is driving nirvana.

Cheers!

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OP is in the bay area. Error 404: snow not found lol.

The first "breakthrough" i had in driving was a buddy of mine taking me for a few runs in my car while I rode shotgun so I could feel and see what driving faster actually looked like.

YMMV of course.

20ish days of lapping, at a 2 to 3 hours of track time each on lots of different tracks, over the span of 4 years. What has helped me the most is, ironically enough, not racing or lapping, but drifting. Snow is a good place to start, dirt roads is even better.

I grew up in the country with dirt roads that turned into sugar sand in a lot of places and drove a 20yo RWD Galaxy. I learned a lot of my car-control skills in "slow motion". Just about anytime I left the house, I had to practice throttle modulation to keep from getting stuck, and slip angle came into play when turning through many intersections while trying not to get stuck. The sugar-sand made for some great training because everything happened so slow that it was easy to learn what was happening and why.

When my wife got back into autocrossing and was spinning the FRS almost every other run, I set her up on Project Cars with an FRS and heavy rain. I was actually surprised at how much it helped. After a Saturday in the "sim", she has spun only once, in the real world, through enough events to kill two sets of tires.

Ditto to above...if snowy roads aren't available, search out smooth dirt roads for a similar feel, although the grip threshold will be higher than snow...

I think what @Icecreamtruk and @DCBeltwaymoveright and others are saying is true in terms of mastering car control you have to step over the line and lose control to know where that line is and how to react to stay in control. Low grip helps, rain, snow, dirt, seek it out, and maybe chuck the stock tires back on if you have them, or your DD tires instead of the track tires.

Watch the weather, next time there's a wet weekend coming up see if there's a local autox you can attend at the last minute, empty parking lots at 2am are cool and all, but a wet autox course will get you sideways at 50 mph, no harm no foul if you mess up with zero risk of someone getting mad at you (provided you don't do something fuck-all stupid).

In terms of getting faster, @e1_griego is right, having someone faster drive your car is eye opening, I remember the first time I did that I was like "Oh, shit, I can go flat out through there, there, and THERE!?" (autox course)


http://www.baautox.com/forum/index.p...art=0&rid=3270
AAS and SCCA will let you register on-site the morning of the event (hell, show up a little before noon for AAS if you want to run in the afternoon), Lotus Club gets the most runs but usually sells out a week or so in advance. BMW club sells out the day registration opens (and requites membership) and I haven't run with Porsche, Corvette, or Sac SCCA. If you have questions about the local autox post in the NorCal autox thread, there's a handful of locals who will respond, or PM someone in there who sounds friendly.

:burnrubber:
And to be clear, I'm where you're at OP, still a total nub.

Go spend some time driving on a frozen lake. That's about the best/easiest way to introduce yourself to balancing a car with the throttle. Also, consequences of getting it wrong (assuming you're reasonably smart about it) are basically zero.

Most people get to that mark at the 50-100 track day mark, if they have good guidance. Without guidance, you may never get there.

Remember, if you feel totally comfortable, you're too far within your own limits, and are making minimal improvements.

Enjoying this thread. LOVE crappy winter roads. Never done a HPDE day/weekend/course. Very intrigued. Much envy. Such exciting. Sarcasm none.. seriously. Think I'm pretty good, but really have no idea at high speeds or at the edge of the envelope. Comfortable throwing back end around on purpose, but not so sure how that would translate to a track..and VERY curious....