Just back from the two day “Masters” course (April 12, 13) at Barber run by the Porsche Driving School. Weather was great, low to mid 70s both days with clear skies. The course is very well run and organized, but run a bit differently than the BMW Performance Center courses (I’m talking about the VIR and CMP “advanced” courses I’ve run with them). I’ve never done any Porsche driving classes so I had to call and request an exception, since the masters course has a basic course prerequisite, based on experience. This took about a week to get approval.
The course: Instructors are uniformly excellent. Plus it was cool at sit at the table with Hurley Haywood at dinner and ask questions and listen to many of his racing stories. He’s very personable and has a huge history in motor racing. He’s also not a big fan of how traditional DE instructor education is run including within the PCA (Porsche Club of America). The actual activities included:
-Wet skid pad: Surface is almost too slick. It’s sealed asphalt that is watered and it’s not much different than driving on an Ice and Snow mix. Probably takes about 30 HP to break the rear end loose and then it snaps around so quickly (at all of about 10-15 mph) that it’s quite challenging to catch. This was clearly the most boring activity. It does tune your reflexes a bit, but was not that interesting. We just ran alternating circles (there are two small circles on the surface that you drive back and forth between) and were timed but never told out times.
-Autocross: A bit better, more of a mini-course with the cones serving as lanes as opposed to a real autocross track where the cones are used to direct the driver and create the course. This was run in a Boxster. Was more fun, but again for some reason our times were “secret” so we couldn’t compare times or learn if we were improving. I noted one of my group’s drivers was able to get to full throttle in one part quite early, so we talked, but out of our group of 5 we had no idea as to times. Not a huge deal but on day 2 when there is a competition for total time, between the 6 groups, it would have been nice to know where you stand.
-Lane change and trail braking: Also a parking lot exercise was run in the Caymen. A bit more interesting but still relatively low speed stuff. For each of these three events feedback was by radio from the instructor to the car.
-The track events: Clearly the highlight of the course with ½ of day one on track and ¾ of day two on track. What was really great about the coaching part of the track experience was the many different ways feedback was provided. Instructors, rode in the student’s cars, instructors drove student’s cars and pointed out corner specifics, instructors were stationed at various corners and then at the end of the session gave specific feedback about how you approached a given corner and finally there was the usual lead and follow. For me this was remarkably effective as you could work on the identified issues and fix them for the next session. Also on Day 2 we had open track sessions where we got to go out “alone” in our own cars for a session and then come back for feedback.
Just like the BMW driving school they try to group students by experience but this is really hit and miss. I and another of our group of 3 for the track sessions were quite closely matched (my other group mate had racing experience and was pretty quick) the third person was substantially slower and for whatever reason was unable to hit most of the apexes (all marked by nice tall green cones). Thankfully the instructor was willing to “lose” him for a couple of laps until it was time to rotate the student cars in line. Overall, very effective and fun, plus they provided us on day 2 with memory sticks to record video and telemetry by Racekeeper® systems installed in the cars. I’ve not looked at my data yet but should be interesting.
The Cars: I’ll only comment on the cars I drove on the track since the parking lot exercises weren’t really extensive enough to render a solid opinion.
Caymen R- A really nice track car which would be a reasonable dual-purpose, i.e. street and track vehicle. Very well balanced, will pretty much go where-ever you point it and has great adhesion and balance in the corners. Motor sounds nice too, but really needs another 50 HP to make it exciting. Hard to go wrong with this car on the track. Had the PDK (dual clutch) transmission which was nice and very similar to our DCT.
997 Porsche 911, Carrera S, manual transmission- This is the older generation, now replaced by the 991-911. Overall, a nice car, nothing spectacular, good power, nice handling with perhaps a tad less front grip than the newer generation 911. No real faults.
991 Porsche 911, Carrera S, PDK – This is the latest generation 911 that just came out this past February. I’ll start with the conclusion, I was expecting more. The magazine reviews have been great and I was thinking that the performance would blow me away, but it didn’t. However, not to be overly critical it’s an overall very impressive car. Seat are super comfortable, headroom is excellent even with a helmet (I’m 6’2”), motor sounds great (better on the outside than inside) and handling is very neutral and predictable. Motor is not unlike the S65, not a lot of bottom end and it gets better with higher rpm. Clearly it’s a higher performance vehicle than the E9x M3, but it’s in my view only incrementally better and would not justify a change if I were so inclined. Acceleration is a bit stronger, but not huge (it does get off the line though pretty hard) and the top end pull is really good too. Grip in corners also exceeds the M3 but again the margin of improvement is not huge. It’s a nice car and clearly a “driver’s car” but I think that given the M3 (I have an E90) is so practical as a daily driver that can be driven at the track too, it’s still the best compromise from my view.
Okay, the two “dream cars.”
997 Porsche GT3 – Wow! This is a track car and I don’t think I would want to use it much on the street, but on the track it is spectacular. The steering response is telepathic, it just goes wherever you think you want to go. The motor sounds as good as any flat 6 on the planet. Far and away the best brake feel, response and modulation I have ever driven. As soon as I hit the first braking zone, I thought “wow these brakes are really nice” and they remained rock-solid consistent throughout the session. Only afterwards did I find out that this car has the Ceramic-composite brake system. The only downsides, there is very little view out of the rear-view mirror as the wing obstructs (no one is going to pass you so no worries), the clutch is pretty stiff, but was not big deal for me and I was warned the transmission is stiff and notchy. Yes, it is, but again for some reason it did not bother me as I was able to find the gears without problem and it was the easiest car to heel and toe. The gears are pretty tall and the red-line is high, but just for comparison, on my car (DCT) third gear is good for a bit under 105 mph, on the GT3 I hit the rev-limiter once which was at 118 mph in 3rd gear (just entering braking zone so no use shifting). This is a car I would love to own but I know from others (I know lots of people who used to own GT3s but no more) the cost of upkeep and a motor rebuild after 80 track hours gets to be too expensive for most people.
997 Turbo: Another very impressive car. Many of my classmates were not too fond of this car. I’m not sure why but they thought it was heavy and not as responsive. For some reason I really liked this car and was able to overlook any shortcomings. Any lag is really negligible, in fact waiting for the GT3 to come on cam takes a lot longer if, for example, you’re coming out of a turn at 3,500 rpm you put your foot down and then have to wait for a few hundred more rpm to get going. On the turbo wait a fraction of a second and then you’re off, at pretty much any rpm. Suspension is a bit stiffer than the 991 so for the track it was pretty good. It does feel a bit heavier (it is) than the 991 but it’s not super noticeable. I grew up on low power cars and this one is just plain fun, maybe I just like power now. I describe this car as “it comes with a tractor beam” installed. Say you let the instructor or your classmate in the GT3 get several car lengths ahead of you (both the GT3 and Turbo were only allowed in lead follow groups), put the right foot down, wait a couple of seconds and any cars in front of you will soon be glued to your front bumper. This car clearly could be dual purpose as it seems more civil for potential street use.
Overall, the whole experience was pretty fun. I still like and plan to keep my M3 but this was a nice change of pace and it was fun to drive another company’s cars on a pretty nice track.
