Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Bondurant Day 1 Recap

Day 1 of the Bondurant School is in the books. Overall, we had about 2.5 hours of classroom time and 4 hours of seat time. For this day and the next two days, we are driving 400HP C6 Corvettes with Goodyear Eagle F1 Supercar tires. My co-worker Vu Banh is attending the class with me and we basically one instructor assigned to the two of us so we get as much feedback as we want. Today consisted of mainly driving drills - heel/toe downshifting, skidpad with constant handwheel angle (i.e. steering with your feet), ABS panic stops, and accident avoidance lane changes. We also had an hour session around 2 corner section of the road course which consisted of one constant radius turn and one increasing radius team. We are mainly working on managing weight transfer, driving the racing line, properly trail-braking, looking ahead, and getting to the throttle correctly. The classroom portion covered the theory behind these items. While many of these items are very basic to drivers with racing experience, it is extremely helpful to get back to the fundamentals and practice these individually.

Overall, I was very impressed with the school, instructors, cars, and the facilities. The race tracks and practice areas are in good condition and the shop is very well equipped and stocked with toys.

Photo from the Garage
Day 2 will start with more fundamental exercises and then transition to track driving in the Vettes after lunch. Day 3 and 4 will be all seat-time so it only gets better from here! On a side note, I got to meet Bob Bondurant today and 14 year-old karting star Pietro Fittipaldi, grandson of Emerson Fittipaldi, is taking the same class. Pietro's grandfather will be at the track tomorrow so I look forward to meeting the former F1 and Indycar star.

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