Well, let me just say instructing is pretty hard. But it is fairly rewarding to help someone learn the art of driving well, and when you make a suggestion… and they try it and go “wow that was much better!” it is all worth it. If you’re doing it just for free track time, there are easier ways to get that. Offer to help out with tech, one of the race series, timing and scoring, or some other much easier job than instructing.
The clinic was a lot of classroom time to go over how humans learn the tasks involved in driving, what is expected of the instructors, and at the end there was a little bit of dealing with post-incident stress. All of it was in an effort to prepare you for the task ahead. The last part did end up coming in handy…
Between classroom sessions we were out on track, most of the time to just have fun. There were 2 sessions where we had drills to go over however. The first drill I did was called “blind driver”. We went over to a blocked off area of the paddock and were paired up with other instructors taking the class. The driver wore a blindfold while the “instructor” directed them through the slalom ahead. It was much harder than it sounds as you can imagine, and it is also a very odd thing to purposefully drive a car while you cannot see. The other drill was a little less interesting, but very useful. We were all given “bad student” cards which had characteristics we had to go act out. We were then paired up and went out on track with our “students” driving. Once you were able to get your bad student under control and fixed what they were doing wrong you switched with your partner and it was your turn to drive. Let me tell you, driving poorly on purpose is extremely difficult.
I was given 2 students to instruct the rest of the weekend after passing the clinic. My Group 1 guy (beginner) drove an 80s front wheel drive Corolla, and my group 2 guy (intermediate) drove an MR2 that was fairly similar to mine, but with aftermarket suspension bits, a 4 point roll bar, and a couple minor modifications for power. My group 1 guy had autocrossed for years as did I when I first started, so I was able to get him to tweak his autocross knowledge and he got the hang of things very quickly. My group 2 guy was decent with car control and pretty quick, but we struggled to get on the same page with each other in our first session and it didn’t end well as we spun in the fastest turn on track and ended up bumping into a tirewall. After that we talked over some things in the pits before the next session and went to work on the more advanced stuff. Saturday was dry, but Sunday we had some rain all day with a downpour during the last couple sessions, further complicating the learning process as we now had to get our students to forget about the dry line and learn a completely new one to work on. A lot of students ended up going home before they hurt their cars, but there was one M3 driver that was not so lucky. He caught a puddle wrong in the middle of the back stretch and backed into the tirewalls surrounding a corner station at ~85mph and ended up tipped over. Both driver and instructor were not severely injured, but it was something that did make you question why you were out there just a little bit.
I also did get to drive my car some during all of this, heh. It sure didn’t feel like it at the time because I was busy with my 2 students, trying to eat, messing with the borrowed camera setup, and helping out my friends that were there driving in group 1. I have run VIR North Course a few times, so the first and last sectors of the track I was pretty familiar with. Luckily the middle sector that contains the Climbing Esses, Left Hook (turn 10), Oak Tree (turn 11/12) and the back stretch… so there was nothing too terribly technical to learn. The Climbing Esses were more or less boring once you got the line over the crest in the middle right with the MR2; it needs more power to make them interesting. South Bend requires some testicular fortitude as the exit point is very blind because of the shift from flat track to downhill. Oak Tree is pretty similar (but not exactly like and therefore a tweak in strategy is required) to turns 6 & 7 at Road Atlanta so I was able to apply techniques from those turns to the ones at VIR. The backstretch is hilly, but kind of boring with 117whp, and at the end of it you rejoin the last sector which is the same for Full and North Courses.
I had an inner tie rod end (diagnosed later) start to go bad on me, so I’ve got some work to do to make sure the car is ready for Road Atlanta. I’ve been so busy preparing the car that I’m now a few weeks late in wrapping up this blog post. Road Atlanta looms ahead of me now… can’t wait to test out the fresh pavement!
