Performance Driving School

[TKinWhiteOut]

I am new to rear wheel driving (the FR-S is my first rear wheel drive car) and am interested in taking a performance driving course to better understand rear wheel driving and the overall performance of the car.

I wasn't sure if anyone has been to a performance driving school or has any recommendations or feedback on your experience.

I am looking to spend $600 at most on a driving course.

Below is what I found online and wasn't sure if anyone has tried any of these schools.

http://www.bondurant.com

http://www.faasst.com

http://racingadventures.com/


I appreciate any help with this.

[CSG Mike]

I would actually recommend keeping an eye out for the SCCA autocross novice school. You'll be able to safely explore the limits of grip, braking, and transitions, and for a LOT less money.

I guarantee you'll drive away a better driver. This is coming from a guy who doesn't particularly like Autocross too.

[DAMotorsports]

You can also look into nasaproracing.com. They do HPDE at all of their events and in level one they provide an instructor for free. SCCA auto cross and track events are also a good starter.

I've have ran with several different groups and ended up sticking with NASA because of the free instructors. They have a yearly members of $45 which includes a year membership to grass root Motorsports. Then most of the track days were 140 per day with instructor.

[Huehuecoyotl]

tracks by me are rented by http://www.proautosports.com/ , in addition to http://www.nasaproracing.com/hpde/

as a noob it costs like $240 for your 1st day that includes classroom time, and that days track and $140 each additional, and once you know them they will cut you a deal for a half day too

they have free instruction for all the sessions you want, now ofcourse these are volunteers so you get some good ones and some not the best ones but between a bunch of them you start to hear the same things and get pointed to the same lines on the same corners, plus nothing like time in the saddle, for $380 you get a whole weekend of track time, access to skid pad, and often there is a autox too you can get in on, good way to ease into it before shelling out $500 for a day of class when youre really still very green

doing some scca will get you familiar with your car and skills and isnt as pricey either

[TKinWhiteOut]

Thank you for all your feedback. I will look into all of these suggestions and hopefully set up this up soon.

[Ganthrithor]

It's more than $600, but I can highly recommend Skip Barber's 1 or 2 day driving schools. I think you can do the one-day Mazda driving school for a grand-- its held pretty regularly up at Laguna Seca. You get classroom vehicle dynamics instruction (handling, tire choice and pressures chat, etc), skid pad + cone course time (RX-8s on the skidpad, MX-5's on the cone courses IIRC) and some laps on the racetrack in the afternoon. It's absolutely worth the money if you can somehow save some extra coin.

They also offer the same curriculum in nicer cars (Boxters, 911s, 3-series etc) if you feel like playing in fancier toys.

Both courses are a lot of fun and will make you much more confident in your abilities / comfortable in your car. They really are a blast and having done both these courses and a bit of autocross locally I believe you'll learn more from a course like this than hitting the autox. Autox is literally a whole day of logistics and waiting around for a few minutes of seat time and if you're using that time to muck about you'll irritate the other runners (understandably since murdering the cone course or yellow flagging the event holds everyone else up). One advantage of these courses (other than the instruction itself) is that you can just cut loose and basically play around / experiment with the car-- you get a lot more seat time than at an autox event and nobody cares if you spin out or spend the whole afternoon trying to emulate Chris Harris. You're also paying to use someone else's car, so you don't need to worry about immolating your tires or anything.

tl;dr: If you can save the extra cash I'd highly recommend one of these courses. You'll learn a ton, get more seat time than you would at an autox and you'll get to lap the coolest track in America. Go do it.

edit: here's a link: http://www.skipbarber.com/mazdadriving.asp and another: http://www.skipbarber.com/highperformance.asp

edit2: I think you may only get track time in the high-performance course. It's still worth doing the course though, even if you don't get to lap Seca.

[TKinWhiteOut]

Thank you Ganthrithor for your thorough post. I love your feed back and explanation, especially because you've had experience in this.

I will look into it and also check my car budget. If I have any questions, I will PM you.

[whataboutbob]

San Diego area option:

http://www.sdsolo.com/forum/showthre...n-for-business!