Mid Ohio School experience

[johnb]

Anyone here into track stuff? I used to do a lot of PCA track events, and I decided I wasn't learning at the pace I'd like, so I started to think about professional training. I finally got around to this last week after settling on the Mid Ohio School. It's partly the fact that I live close enough to drive up there the night before, and drive home after the class. But in all honesty it looked like one of the best options I could find anywhere regardless of distance. The famous Skip Barber racing school is crazy expensive, and from what I've read, doesn't really live up to it's reputation any longer. Anyway I can't say much more about that, but I can tell you about my experience at Mid Ohio.

It was around $800 for one day. They do a 3 day school, but you can choose whether to break it up or do all 3 days back to back. I just did the first day for now. That price included renting a school car: a lightly used, one owner Acura TLX . You can drive your own car, but that only knocks a hundred or so off the price. You just need to be sure it won't let you down and ruin the day. Now I own a 944 Turbo and an '02 M3, so naturally I rented an Acura from the school.

The school consists of a few hours of classroom instruction on the basics of high performance driving, and a few hours of seat time including braking exercises, autocross, skid car practice and finally following an instructor on the track. As a bonus you get to drive an S2000, albeit briefly, and only on the autocross track.

I didn't get a very good pic of the skid car, but you can kind of see the mechanism they use. It's basically a huge dolly with inflated casters that lift the car a little, to reduce the contact patches. The result is it feels like you're driving on ice. There's a control panel in the car so I'm sure this thing is pretty sophisticated but I honestly don't know what else it can do.

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It's really, really hard to drive this car. I have plenty of experience driving in snow, ice, and even a little experience with that slipperiest of all known surfaces: Mid Ohio on a wet day. The skid car was harder! It's so frustrating when you start to lose it slowly, and you hit the steering stop early...all you can do it sit there powerlessly and wait for it to come around. Honestly I think training in one of these should be a requirement to get a drivers license. There's something about the way a cars rotation accelerates suddenly at a certain point in the spin that utterly defies intuition and everyone should get a feel for what it's like.

Now these little gems are probably worth more these days than the school paid for them years ago:

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I had never driven an S2000 before, and it was only an autocross track, but it was an absolute blast.

Over all it was a great experience and very different from from typical PCA instruction. In PCA circles, trail breaking is considered "advanced", and you hear the term "maintenance throttle" all the time (i.e. be on the throttle a little before you turn in). In the Mid Ohio school, trail breaking is lesson 1. The first in-car exercise is braking and you are pretty much required to start using maximum braking performance immediately.

The track lapping session was great too, and I was impressed with the handling of the TLX. You're on your own in the car for the whole day, except the skid car. Instructors communicate via radio, but in general you need to work harder than you would as a novice at a PCA track day, and with a lot less personal feedback.

I'll definitely go again and do the other 2 parts of the school. The instructors are all former pros, with a couple of them having raced in the Indy 500 and even F1. PCA HPDE events are great value too, and I plan to do more of those, but there's definitely a big difference in the quality of instruction you get from people who do it for a living.

[911R]

It's a great fun track. I raced it three times in vintage racing, and I never got it right.

I'd say stay with your track instructors. If you do well here, you will do well at all eastern race tracks.

[t1gerb0y]

I always looked forward to my DE's up at Mid-Ohio (although those days were in an M3... not a Porsche).

In the beginning, you handle trail braking differently in a rear-engine, RWD 911 vs. a front-engine, FWD Acura.

But once you get a hang of it in both (I tracked JDM before Euro), it makes racing around a track that much more fun!

[911R]

Just saying, but you post like this is an easy track to go fast?

It is not an easy track to go fast. The start is hard with the left-hand tun under the bridge.

I remember the turn big entry into the 180-degree that comes later. You race up the hill into a bass-ass turn (which you can't see). The good racers hit it well. The last turn is very difficult before the pit entrance,

I went twice in vintage before some arguments with the former family owners. I think it has changed ownership today?