Okay, I admit it took me way too long to finish up the review of my Skip Barber experience. Day 1 was all about getting acclimated to the track and gaining the fundamental skills of recovering from oversteer and looking far ahead. Days 2 and 3 saw a ton of on-track time where we learned some very important techniques. Unfortunately, I’ve probably forgotten some of the fine details of the rest of the school, but I certainly haven’t forgotten what they taught or how awesome my time there was.
Day 2
I wasn’t as tired as I thought I would be the morning of day 2. I slept well, but the instructors warned us that day 2 would probably be the most physically demanding. After breakfast, we headed straight to the track, but not in the Mustangs. Two of us got into a rental car with an instructor. To make sure we understood the line, each of us took a turn driving the econobox while the instructor critiqued. Obviously, the focus was not on speed but on accuracy and, of course, looking ahead.
The pace laps were basically like a warm-up before a workout. It was a good way to wake up and re-trigger your muscle memory for the rest of the day. After this exercise, we had another skills lesson: the heel-toe downshift. If you don’t know, a heel-toe downshift is something you often do in a manual car when coming to a corner, where you may need to scrub a lot of speed, which means downshifting.
Heel-toe
Weight transfer is everything in racing, and the car’s balance can really be upset with a rough downshift. You use heel-toe to maintain that balance by braking with your “toe,” pressing the clutch with your left foot, downshifting, and blipping the throttle with your “heel” while still holding the brake. I put quotes on the body parts because it doesn’t really matter what anatomy you use to press the pedals. The point is to brake and blip at the same time. Perfectly executed, a heel-toe downshift will keep your car in the powerband and set you up for the exit without a stutter. Here is a famous video of Ayrton Senna showing heel-toe basically as second nature.
The exercise was pretty simple. They coned off a portion of the front straight. An instructor sat with us and told us to drive up to around 80 mph and then brake/heel/toe down to second at a cone marker. We drove up and down doing this. Sometimes going from 3rd to 2nd; sometimes going from 4th to 2nd. My instructor had me practice doing a double downshift from 4th-3rd-2nd. I had never done that before, so it was fun to try. Normally, I would just go straight from 4th to 2nd. I did fine overall, but the instructor did notice that I tended to lift up on the brake ever so slightly, which caused the car to buck a bit. I’ve been paying attention to that since.
In my opinion, the heel-toe downshift is the most important technique to learn as a beginner. I learned that lesson on my first track day in my Evo. Coming down the front straight of Limerock at 120mph, I soon realized I needed to quickly downshift to make turn 1. I didn’t even know what heel-toeing was, so I braked hard then sort of coasted while I tried to shift from 5th to 3rd. It was jerky and slow, and I immediately realized there had to be a better way. I’ve been practicing on the street ever since. I can do it effectively now, though I’m still not the smoothest. Learn it. Practice it.
Lead-Follow & Stop-Box
Lead-follow laps were next. We did these in day 1, and it was much of the same this time. The final exercise was the Stop-Box. The students split into two groups. One group got into the Mustangs, while the other dispersed around the track with instructors. Then, the drivers set off. We were told to keep speeds under 80 mph, but the track was open.
We set off from the start/finish line, drove a lap, and then stopped at the start/finish line. Someone stood at the line with a walkie talkie, which he handed to you if an instructor had seen something to fix. This was surprisingly effective. It’s amazing what a true professional driver can spot just by watching you drive. You were only given feedback from one, maybe two, instructors at a time, so it was very easy to digest it and apply it on your next go-around. I had some minor feedback here and there, but overall they didn’t have much to say, which is good, of course.
The stop-box sessions lasted about 20 minutes. Afterward, the students swapped. Watching the other students drive while sitting track-side was also extremely beneficial. We got to hear the advice our instructor gave, and this really helped solidify some of the things we may have heard while we drove. Seeing someone else make a mistake you made is a very effective way to learn. Not to mention, we got to stand at parts of Laguna Seca that you might never be able to see up close. That was awesome.
And that’s it for day 2. It was indeed an exhausting day, but we really started to get comfortable in the seat. They told us that day 3 would be a lot of fun because we’d be putting everything together.
