dgrobs

Lol…..fantastic

Zhao

I almost always have the most fun with the younger students. They're almost all awesome to deal with and make instructing super rewarding.

My youngest student was young enough he needed parental consent (over 14, under 18) and his mom had to drive him to the school. Didn't own a track worthy car; parents rented him a race car for the school with a passenger seat. Asked a million intelligent questions, super excited, learned like a sponge. That was a fun weekend.

My best student (20-22 at most) he started out pretty questionable, just doing everything wrong in a fast car and I remember thinking oh god... but every single thing I corrected him on he not only corrected but never did it again. ...I've never seen that before in a student or since. His next event he was running very competitive times. I invited him to endurance race in my car a year or 2 later and he was only a second and a half slower than me.

I never jive with old guy corvette owners. I could never figure out how to get them to listen or respect my knowledge, and haven't instructed one in probably half a decade because I now stereotype them hard. I'm not entirely convinced it's because I was a lot younger than them, because the old instructors often get out of those guys cars with the same complaint lol.

TXE36

I've experienced that too. What a joy to work with. The guy learned in a single session what a typical student takes the weekend to master. He too was only in his early twenties. A couple of times he would just slow down out of the blue. Not a lot, but quite noticeable. The first time I asked "Anything wrong?" and his response was "I felt the car was getting a bit a head of me", and then he was back in it. I'd never seen judgement like that in a newbie.

Guy above brought a 2014 Corvette Stingray on worn run-flats. Stereotypes aren't always true. Looking back I've had several Corvette students and they have been great. Even have one who is an admitted "reformed typical Corvette guy" who has become quite a skilled driver.

OTOH, stereotypes do exist for a reason...

orthojoe

Bored this afternoon and read through some of this thread. My 2 cents:

If you are always having issues with getting 'clean laps' or dealing with traffic even in the open passing run groups, you have 2 options:

1). Get a slower car
2). Go racing

I chose both 1 and 2 and never looked back. No interest in DE (other than to practice for a race) or street cars anymore.

coss1600

I called bs on this one. I witnessed a gt4 the other week throwing blocks on people at the open advanced level. Wtf is that crap all about? We gridded by time and he still chose to get near the front and caused traffic jams at multiple sessions. I have videos of this same car being passed on track in 3 sessions, I mean at what point should someone tell him that he needs to look at the clock and move to the middle of back. I actually think that guy is an instructor too.

TXE36

You don't have a slow car problem, you have a driver awareness problem in that GT4. What kind of event is this? What are the rules, who is supervising? It sounds like the event your are participating in is being run poorly.

So what? Let's say everyone lines up just perfectly according to lap time. The group is released to the track in that order. How long do you think it will take for the lead end of the line to catch the trailing end? What if some car that is slightly slower than the leader, is late to the grid and gets out after 2-3 laps, now he is in front of the leader.

The bottom line is one cannot operate in groups on a racetrack with any practicality without having passing skills - this includes passing and being passed. About the only way to do with without passing skills by participants is rent the place for yourself - now you can have all the open track you want without any icky passing.

orthojoe

Why bs? You go racing, these problems go away.

coss1600

I don’t blame the group organizer because they did what groups should but don’t do, they ask people to line up based on lap times voluntarily, don’t pass others on the outlap, yet we had several individuals who failed to listen and caused a whole bunch of traffic. I don’t know if their ego got in the way or they go off your I don’t care about lap times theory. As I said, I could careless if you are in a slow car that is driven well. When you have fast or slow cars that are driven like crap, it’s nothing but problems. To make matters worse, this is happening in an advanced group. I am sorry, people are either lying about their ability or they are clueless. Which is it?

Zhao

lol nice, that would throw me for a mental loop too and he would have blown my mind with htat response. What awesome awareness of what he can and can't do and if he's exceeding it or not.

I know a handful of corvette guys I used to time attack with, tehy were all cool when I drove against them, there was even a couple with matching c6's they bought so they could drive at the same time at events, but then again pretty much anyone into any form of racing and is dedicated to it is good to talk to I find. However, yes, stereotypes haha. I'm pretty sure there was more than one newbie vette guy who asked me what car I race and then follow up with the douchebag question of 'oh, have you ever driven anything THIS fast before?' Someone has a good quote for a situation like that I'm probably going to use next time, 'don't try to impress me or scare me, because you can't impress me, and I'm already scared'.

TXE36

The answer is yes.


Unless a group knows each other extremely well, somebody has play CDI to deal with this sort of thing. The majority of adults going to the track to learn know they are going there to learn and have the common sense not to act like idiots - but there is always a subgroup driven by ego that think they are the bestest, fastest drivers ever because reasons. Generally, once it is known that a group actually checks and verifies credentials, those types straighten up or stay away.

On the other hand, if those sorts are not checked, the sorts of events you describe get overridden with these types once word gets out. If you like the event, I would encourage you to have a conversation with the organizer. Maybe not the most pleasant thing to do, but I don't see another way to solve the problem.

As you can see, asking the people to line up based on lap time works like crap - there is no getting around working together when sharing a track. Again, the problem you are describing is not caused by slow cars of any kind (i.e. a fast car 20 sec off best or whatever), it is caused by drivers with poor situational awareness, poor passing skills and/or poor manners.

TXE36

I think that would make me laugh so hard that I'd have tears in my eyes.

roadie13

A lot of these issues would be substantially improved if PCA signed up with drivingevals.com, as do the BMW and Audi clubs. That way there is a persistent transparent track record for each student complete with instructors' comments covering all issues, good and bad. And the instructors get evaluated too, which is useful feedback for the clubs. It's really a no-brainer in my experience, and I don't like big-brother ideas in general, but this one convinced me; the students love it too.

177mph

My PCA chapter uses drivingevals.com

raspritz

Ditto for my PCA region. I can see all previous comments about students before I ever meet them. Ditto them about me.

dgrobs

Yup…..
Driver Evals

Good stuff