Hameed

Have you taken any high performance driving courses?

Which school did you attend?

What did you like/dislike about the course?

Courses offered by BMW, Bob Bondurant are the types of courses I am referring to.

JZA80MHU38

On top of improving your driving skill and find out the limit of your car, one great take-away from joining those high-performance driving courses is that you can find out how WRONG you can get if you become too aggressive for what you as a driver or your car can handle in a safe controlled environment. You will respect all the others who share the same public road with you. I probably will send my kid(s) to those junior level courses shortly after they get the licence (well, talking about at least 16 years away from now) and let them learned how dangerous it really is out there if they can't control their own temper with a piece of killing machine on hands.

I have not joined those big-name schools, but I have heard great things about the BMW schools (that is, if you can stand some of those cocky I-know-it-all BMW owners/drivers who are in the same classroom with you). Check out your local SCCA or racing chapter and they may have some really good instructors on hand and save you some money.

Hameed

Thanks! The only reason I mentioned those two schools was simply to elaborate on what I was asking - not necessarily to endorse them or anything else like that.

I am surprised no one else has responded to this thread.....

DASHOCKER

iTrader: (2)

BMW charges 700 plus bucks for the course(s). Well worth the price imo. You get to drive M3's and the like. If only I lived in North Carolina.. That is the closest location to me that offers the performance driving school. They don't offer the driving school in the tri-state area(NYC, NJ, Conn.)

JZA80MHU38

It will be even better if you live in South Carolina

DaveGS4

iTrader: (2)

Lol.

Hameed,

I gave Krista a three day course + lapping day at the Panoz Racing school at Road Atlanta for Chrismas two or three years ago, and the advanced course as a followup. They also do it at Sebring. She loved it, very good you use their Panoz racecars.

http://www.panozracingschool.com/home/home.aspx


She has also done the Car Guys course and said it was OK, not super but a good starter class. They let you use your own car.

http://www.carguys.com/


Jeff (think you may have met him at the Dragon - had a C4S then, has a GT3 now) has also done the Panoz stuff and is doing advanced Bondurant courses now.

Hameed

Thanks for the info Dave!

The BMW courses are offered locally and they appear to be very good.

May take one this year.

rosskoss

All of them are too expensive for me.

okcfunky

Do a few day Bondurant one, great way to dive into basic understanding of the auto dynamics. I loved the thing, and am heading back there to get certified for SCCA again. Great amount of track time, great amount of instruction, excellent seat time and learning. Very knowledgeable crew too. Besides, I'm partial to 'vettes.

After that, check out your local PCA region autocrosses, the regions in my part of the US are pretty dang friendly to all makes.
Once you've beat autox in the ground (takes years) or if you ever go to a road race track (in which case you'll be hard pressed to go back down to autox in short order) do a Driver's Edge, or a HPDE(PCA version). Some of those cats who instruct have been comp. racing for 30+ years. The Driver's Edge has run groups based on ability, very well run organization on the whole.

SCCA is great, but heavily regulated. It's good and bad.

If your reaching around 9/10ths, then you should be doing it in a dedicated track machine. Saves on maintenance, time, and pride.

DriftNsc3

When I went to Disney World last Feb. I did the Richard Petty thing, its a one day class and its not cheap, but then agian nothing Disney is cheap. I also singed up for the Skip Barber racing school but I had to back out. With the Skip school I think its around 3k-4k and its a full weekend. Lots of track time.
I have a friend that went to another school in Daytona,Fl that was $3k for the a 3 day class. He said total class room time was about 6 hours, they had alot of class at the track and standing with the cars to see what they were learning. Then the alot of track time aswell.
They have Racing schools all over. IDK if this is the type of school you were talking about but I listed what I know.