I'll disagree with you there. Both the street courses and the road-race
classes can be valuable. I've been to the San Bernadino County Sheriff's
school once, to Fast Time once, to Sprint Car school once, to Skip Barber
once, and to Bondurant three time, plus I've been lucky enough to have
instruction at press events from Rusty Wallace, Mike Skinner, and Andy
Pilgrim. Obviously those are job perks for me, but the reason I list all of
them is to point out that I improved my overall skills every single time and
that each and every time I absolutely proved without a shadow of a doubt that
I had gotten very rusty due to lack of seat time.
Anyone can sign up for Barber or Bondurant street courses and learn tons about
vehicle control. I feel such courses should be required for anyone getting a
driver license (it would be better governmant spending than airbag laws). The
racing classes are even better as they teach throttle control, oversteer,
understeer, shifting technique, and other things that absolutely have
application at the Salt. Vision is chief among them. The ice-driving schools
would also be valuable. Plus any race class gets you used to just physically
being in a race car and the metal preparedness. I bet the tech inspectors at
Bonneville have seen a hundred cases where a guy brings a new car to the Salt
and he has never before worn all his safety gear and been strapped hard into
the car. I bet fewer can touch all the controls in the car with a blindfold on
and with distractions in the background, which IMO should be part of the
licensing process. Few other racing venues require safely stopping a burnng
car from 250-plus mph with no guardrail to slow you down.
Also, to Dan's point, the SCTA is the only sanctioning body I know of that
does not require a physical exam. NHRA requires it for a 9-second license
(130ish mph) and SCCA demands it for anything other than playing around at
open-track days. Getting a physical is a PITA. I bet if SCTA required it, then
the problem of long lines would be self-solving.
DF
-----Original Message-----
From: land-speed-bounces+david.freiburger=primedia.com@autox.team.net on
behalf of drmayf
Sent: Sat 8/25/2007 3:40 PM
To: Keith Turk
Cc: land-speed@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Land-speed] Driving skills
Well, good to see Tonya has you figured out, old man... Interesting
topic. If you are talking about driving skills for street application,
the unfortunate part here is that the other 99% of us really don't know
how to drive well. So learning how to dodge them would be good but they
are the ones that will get you killed. If you are talking about
motorsports driving skills well, yeah. But not many of us will ever
venture onto a road course and I bet no diving school around can tell
you about salt, lol... I woul dbe interested in hearing what you come up
with in the nature of driving schools for codgers like us.
mayf
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