Re: Porsche driving school
I have attended the two-day high performance driving class at Barber Motorsports but never returned for the two day Masters course because I found something closer and much better from my stand point.
My PDE class had 30 students divided into six groups of five students each. Half the class (three groups of five) would be down on the track playing follow the leader while the other three groups of five where up in the parking lot either doing the autocross, emergency lane change or heel/toe practice or on the skid pad where only one person in your group was actually driving a car and you stood there watching and waiting your turn behind the wheel. The first day on the track you never came out of 4th gear, on the second day you could only use 3rd and 4th. There was never any passing allowed and track laps were not timed (only the autocross was timed using a Casio chronograph wrist watch). You were never allowed to drive as fast as you wanted as there was always an instructor in front of you holding you back. You could only drive as fast as the instructor was going; I wanted to go faster.
Then I found Jim Russell three day racing school at Infineon Raceway near San Francisco for about the same price. Each morning and afternoon session started with about 30 minutes in the class room then it was to the track where you were in the car for 30 minutes then back to the class room to have instructors critique your driving performance corner by corner and offer advice on how to go faster then back out into the car for another 30 minutes. You used all four gears, you where allowed to pass in prescribed areas and your laps were timed by a transponder to the 1/1,000th of the second.
If you are looking for excellent catered lunches, a 4 star dinner and driving a car equipped with ABS and stability control in air conditioned luxury then PDE is for you. But if a sack lunch, sitting in an open cockpit in the sun, driving a car without ABS (you are taught threshold braking) or stability control, non synchromesh gearbox (your heel/toe technique takes on real meaning now) and you get enough track time over three days to develop a blister on your hand from shifting may I suggest a racing school?
