Merry Christmas and blessed 2022 to you all.
After a year of driving on track, which has been a blast, I'm looking for ways to test the limits of my car and learn to recover from various situations when those limits have been breached.
I'm thinking of overbraking, understeer, oversteer, maybe learning to drift?
Also, when I used to fly, not only did we practice different manuevers, which helped us to become capable pilots that could really control the aircraft, but we also practiced how to manage various emergency situations, which for cars would be loss of brakes, loss of power, fire in one or another part of the car, etc. As an example, over the couse of my first year of track time, I've talked to several experienced drivers about a sudden and total loss of braking and no one has had much of an answer as to what one should do (cut power, use an emergency brake if you have one, pucker up and say cheese...). While we all think/do a lot to prevent loss of braking from ever happening, just as one example, it seems like there'd be some consensus out there on what to do in various undesired situations - I suspect professional drivers know all this but what about Joe Shmoe at a time trial?
Since flying is so safety aware and highly regulated in terms of a pilot's knowledge and capabilities, there were set procedures you just had to know. It seems like some, certainly not all, of that would be helpful in the HPDE to W2W world, where a driver is familiar with managing various situations through practicing understeer etc. Even better, the best pilots imo were the ones who did some aerobatics training - not to do that in the air, but to have been exposed to unexpected situations and what we called "unusual attitudes" so that you had some prior experience to draw on if a similar situation arose in flight. I know I'd be so much more comfortable as a driver if I could not only heel toe with the best of them but put my car into one or another turn just the way I wanted it, maybe with a touch of understeer on one and a bit of oversteer on another, exiting it the way I hoped.
Maybe a "performance driving school" could do the trick? If so, which ones have TMO members been to and which would they recommend? Is there some other way to this goal? I'd love to use the high school parking lot nearby, but I know what will happen there and that could cost me more than a driving school fee if the principal or smokey bear decides to interfere with my education.
After a year of driving on track, which has been a blast, I'm looking for ways to test the limits of my car and learn to recover from various situations when those limits have been breached.
I'm thinking of overbraking, understeer, oversteer, maybe learning to drift?
Also, when I used to fly, not only did we practice different manuevers, which helped us to become capable pilots that could really control the aircraft, but we also practiced how to manage various emergency situations, which for cars would be loss of brakes, loss of power, fire in one or another part of the car, etc. As an example, over the couse of my first year of track time, I've talked to several experienced drivers about a sudden and total loss of braking and no one has had much of an answer as to what one should do (cut power, use an emergency brake if you have one, pucker up and say cheese...). While we all think/do a lot to prevent loss of braking from ever happening, just as one example, it seems like there'd be some consensus out there on what to do in various undesired situations - I suspect professional drivers know all this but what about Joe Shmoe at a time trial?
Since flying is so safety aware and highly regulated in terms of a pilot's knowledge and capabilities, there were set procedures you just had to know. It seems like some, certainly not all, of that would be helpful in the HPDE to W2W world, where a driver is familiar with managing various situations through practicing understeer etc. Even better, the best pilots imo were the ones who did some aerobatics training - not to do that in the air, but to have been exposed to unexpected situations and what we called "unusual attitudes" so that you had some prior experience to draw on if a similar situation arose in flight. I know I'd be so much more comfortable as a driver if I could not only heel toe with the best of them but put my car into one or another turn just the way I wanted it, maybe with a touch of understeer on one and a bit of oversteer on another, exiting it the way I hoped.
Maybe a "performance driving school" could do the trick? If so, which ones have TMO members been to and which would they recommend? Is there some other way to this goal? I'd love to use the high school parking lot nearby, but I know what will happen there and that could cost me more than a driving school fee if the principal or smokey bear decides to interfere with my education.