Quote:
Originally Posted by consolidated
Curious how they handle car damage, at Skippy they offered insurance with a substantial deductible, but from my experience at the one day M school there was no talk of clients paying for damage, but rather "drive it as hard as you like."
Thanks for the report, how much experience would you say you have before you went? Were the better students club racer level or below, wondering to what level they'll teach to.
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BMW covers damage. You sign a waiver for bodily damage to yourself, but not a single mention of the cars.
I've personally got 40+ years of autocross, including several years in the very competive Texas Region of SCCA in ESP class. I've also done the Skip Barber three-day racing school and a couple of Dick Turner autocross schools. The AX experience, combined with Skippy really gave me a solid foundation to rebuild on after several years away from performance driving. Four had less experience than me, with two having only the M-schools and one having those and some carting. One seemed totally clueless, though she said that she'd been to M-school. They treated her nice, but she was out of her element and learned little.
One of the second group racers was Formula Atlantic level, and he wasn't the fastest. One of the top drivers in the group owns his own race car, but he was one of three or four that could beat each other on a given day. So, yes, it was a pretty high level of driving. In fact, when we wrapped up on Wednesday some SCCA or NASA guys showed up with GT3s, 'vettes, etc. They looked like they were standing still vs. our BMW class. The track manager actually came in at the end of our two-days and said something like, "that was very impressive driving."
That said, our bottom group had people below club racer level. I started there and moved up. Had there been another instructor, then one other guy in that group would have moved up and three stayed in the group. All but one was lapping comfortably by midday the second day.
Patriot is 1.1 miles and very technical and there were probably eight or nine of us in the 52 to 55 second range in the last session of the school. The rest of the class was just another second or two back, except for the one that didn't "get it." BTW, it took instructors away from the rest of us, but they had enough to give her one-on-one for 1-1/2 days. (They don't won't to do that, but they were prepared and I didn't feel shortchanged, even though it meant slightly fewer laps directly behind the instructor).
Dave