This past year was a good year, not too many WTF?! moments, so I decided to give myself the Skip Barber 3-day racing school for XMAS. I figured this would be a good class to make the jump from HPDE’s to competition racing.I signed up for first available school at Limerock, 16-18 April.  If you recall the 16^th was the day after the monsoon like rains pummeled the east coast.  So the story begins…

I packed up the M3 on Sunday and headed out. I took the M3 on this trip as I didn’t trust the 528it on long trips with its original 140K radiator and for good reason as the radiator blew up on me sitting in traffic the other day, but that is another story.It was raining pretty hard so speeds were between 45-65mph the entire trip with all of traffic.I made a couple of stops along the way, the first was at Terry’s to do an oil change and pick up my Spec E30 rims that have been sitting on his deck for the last two weeks.I made other stops along the way to visit family and break up the trip.In an effort to save some cash I decided to shy away from the $140 per night hotel costs that the Limerock local hotels were charging and instead decided to use some Hilton points for the first two nights and then go to a local hotel as I didn’t have enough points for all 3 nights. The closest Hilton family of hotels was in Waterbury which was about 1 ¼ hours away in Waterbury CT (Yes, Limerock is in the middle of nowhere). So Monday morning I woke up early, enjoyed my complementary continental breakfast, and headed out the door.

Now for the major TeamWTF?! moment…Driving the mountain roads this morning was definitely not fun as it was still raining moderately hard. I was driving around a turn at about 60mph and then the road suddenly disappeared due to a river wash out. I wasn't able to stop fast enough and hit the wash out at about 15 - 20mph or so. The water went up over hood and hydro-locked the engine. So I am in the middle of the washout cursing up a storm and start hearing glug...glug...glug as the water was coming up from the floor pan into the interior. I got out of the car and was pushed it out. As I am standing there with a dead M3, no cell phone reception, and 3 miles away from the next town (Limerock) the only thing I could think of was, “Shit, I am going to be late for the school.” Shortly after this a cop came by from the other direction as he was closing down the road. He called a tow truck and gave me a ride to the school, which I made it to right at the buzzer.

Good news:
The school rocked!!!

The first two days were cold and rainy, great weather to be in an open car on a very slick track. For those of you who haven’t been to Limerock here is a good description and map of the track .The rain line had some decent traction, but wasn’t too exciting as you basically follow the outside edge of the track that only has 1 left hand turn.  The dry line on that track is extremely polished and slick in the rain and will spin you like a top if you cross it.  It probably didn’t help that the formula cars that we were in had BFG G-force TA’s which suck in the rain, but what a great opportunity to practice car control.

Day 1 of the School

You start out with a classroom session on basic car control and take you down to get familiar with cars.  The group is split in two and they match you up with someone in the other group to share a car with.  While one of the groups stays for more classroom lecture, the other group heads off to the kidney shaped “autocross” track so you can get a feel for the car at low speeds.  Then the groups switch out followed up by an awesome lunch spread (better be for a $4K class).  After lunch you have some more class time where they explain Double-clutch (yes the transmission is not synchronized), heel-toe downshifting followed by on-track exercises.  They divide the main straight into two lanes, you go down the straight, and execute two downshifts and then turn around.  The WTF part of this exercise is in executing the 180 degree turn.  Over the winter the maintenance crews put steering stops in the rack to protect the tie rods which widened the turning radius.  This new turning radius is not tight enough to make the 180 turn on the pavement, so everyone was completing their turn in the mud adding to the fun factor.  After that exercise they have 1 group in the formula cars and the other group in the Mazda 3’s and they take you for track familiarization, and then as always the groups switch vehicles. 

More TeamWTF?! moments

All of my gear is in 1.25 hours away in Waterbury CT, and I am without a car in the middle-of-nowhere CT.  It is 4:30PM and I try calling the major rental car companies and no one is near there.  Finally Enterprise says they have a place about 20 miles North of the track.  The head instructor told me he would take me to the shop where my car is and then to Enterprise.  After I pay for the tow at the garage and we are on our way to get the rental car I get a call that Enterprise was wrong and they don’t have a car at that location and the next closest location was another 25 miles north of that location and that they wouldn’t stay open long enough for us to get there (great customer survice).  The instructor said he would have given me his car, but he hadn’t seen his girlfriend in a couple of weeks and wasn’t going to miss out on his opportunity to get some action.  As he is telling me this, I saw a small shop out of the corner of my eye that rents cars.  My luck changed… they had 1 car left, phew.

Day 2

I checked out of the Hampton Inn and found a route to the school that didn’t have any water issues and started the day out on a good foot.  A lot of focus on day 2 was braking and downshifting exercises.  It was still raining which made the braking exercises very challenging, but another good opportunity to practice footwork.  We spend a good amount of time with threshold and trail braking and working the downshifts in with them.   The way they worked these exercises is they made a stop box at the beginning of the front straight.  You would accelerate down the track and complete your exercise.  Some of the exercises you would come to a complete stop at the end of the straight and they would give you feedback and then send you on the rest of the way around the track.  We also worked on driving the rest of the track and each time you went out they would increase the rpms that you should be at.  The instructors were positioned at different points in the track and when you came back around to the stop box they would give you feedback over the radio on what you were doing at those points.  While one group was on the track the other group would go with one of the instructors and observe the other group.  Each time they would change the track vantage point of the observing group and explain the good and bad points of what the other drivers were doing. That night instead of having to fork out the $140 for one of the local hotels the head instructor let me stay at his house while he stayed at his girlfriends.  I was extremely grateful for his generosity.  All the instructors went well out of their way to make sure that everyone was taken care of throughout the course.

Day 3

The third day dried up so we were able to get on the dry line and put everything together.  The exercises we had were in passing and rolling starts.  The passing drill was kinda weak, at the end of the straight they setup a box of cones at the entry point to turn 1 to simulate a car.  You would floor it from the stop box and then go off line as you approached the “car”, brake and start the turn offline, not the most realistic, but probably the safest method that so their insurance wouldn’t skyrocket.   The starts were pretty humorous.  They would have you follow a pace car around and you were supposed to stay in a grid formation around the track, and then take off down the main straight when the green flag was dropped.

Well I guess this is a good place to describe the rest of the people in my class and might better explain why this exercise would be humorous.  Two-thirds of the class was mostly made up of very rich people driving million dollar vintage race cars. One of the guys that started up CISCO Systems was there, along with a few other multi-millionaires. I don't think I ever want to race in the vintage series because these guys couldn't or wouldn't learn what the instructors were teaching. They had horrible lines and were very unpredictable and slow throughout the entire class. Now some of these guys had been “racing” for awhile now and still didn’t have very good skills.  On the other hand, maybe going into the vintage series wouldn't be bad as I could be one of the faster drivers instead of having my ass handed to me as I will in Spec e30.  I am sure that there are a lot of really good vintage drivers, but these guys definitely weren't.  Good group of guys to hang out with, but not much in the form of driving.   So as I have said this is the first time that I have had to do a rolling start, but it wasn’t a very hard task, follow the pace car at a steady pace around the track and floor it when the green flag drops.  Well it was definitely hard for the other drivers to keep a pace, they finally got everyone lined up by the time the pace car left when the green flag dropped I took off and everyone else was still waiting for the flag to drop.

After you go through turns 1 & 2 there was another pace car and they cars in front were supposed to go to the back, so I let the other cars pass and lined up with the other car in the back.  We come along the front, the flag drops, and I was able to get the jump on everyone again and passed all the cars by the time we got to turn 1. 

They did one more rolling start before they had open sessions.  During the open sessions, you could only pass in the straights and since the cars are all the same spec, the only advantage one might have is the lack of their own spare tire.  It gave me a good opportunity to practice hanging back in the entrance to a turn and making a run on them so by the time we were exiting the turn I was already passing them.  This method was much more effective than drafting with this group of racers as they were slower in the turns.  After that open session you had one more open session before the end of the class. 

The class was definitely worth the it, even with all of crap that surrounded it.   The instructors were extremely professional and had a great attitude and sense of humor through out the entire event.  They presented the information in a manner that was very easy to comprehend.  The feedback they gave on track was also very thorough and they were able to offer me the personalized advice necessary for me to improve my skills throughout the class.  These guys were great and put in the extra effort to help me out with all of the WTF moments with the M3.  As of right now I would definitely recommend this school to anyone looking to get into road racing.  Once I get on the track and get some races under my belt maybe I will have some other advice of things that would have been nice to learn, but as an intro to racing class, they definitely covered a lot of the basics.

Jennifer definitely picked up a ton of bonus points as she drove up on Wednesday with the trailer that we bought that previous weekend. Also much thanks to Nick for bringing the plate and registration for his trailer (we later found out that the trailer I had was actually his and vice versa) on Tues evening and helping her hook it up.  Insurance is fixing the M3.  They are removing the carpets to have them cleaned, checking all of the wiring and electronics in the floor and installing a new engine, looks like I will have to do another break-in period.  Now time to go and fix the radiator on the wagon.