I was at a time attack event a few years ago and there was this 18 year old girl (whom I’m sure had professional training / guidance) driving a stock, base model dodge neon around the track on 3 wheels faster than 60 year old rich guys in Porsche 911 Turbos. She’s an audiophile who just happened to get into racing instead. Just imagine what she could do with that Porsche 911 Turbo
Driving is such a great metaphor! One year for my birthday we rented a whole go-kart track. This was back when I was an active PCA Driving Instructor. Invited a bunch of friends. About half were PCA. We had a whole bunch of races over several hours. Everyone had a chance at all the karts.
At the end of the event they gave me a printout breaking down all the results on all the cars across all the races. The results were astounding!
Fastest lap time, there was a clear break. ALL the PCA people on top, followed by all the others. Male or female, didn’t matter. Even one kid, too young to drive but his PCA dad had taken him to events, taught him about threshold braking, turn-in, weight transfer, late apex line, all of it. Even that kid was faster than any of the others with no formal driver training.
The times were also broken down by kart, and race by race. The same clear break applied kart by kart. All the PCA drivers were faster in each and every kart. The fastest kart was never the fastest kart unless it had a trained driver in it.
All my life before joining PCA and getting proper driver instruction I was sure I was a really good driver. Absolutely sure of it. Only after about a year of instruction did it really sink in not only how clueless I was, but how much more I still had to learn. A full year. Think of it.
The difference is so vast.... when I started it was all I could do to drive in the Novice group and be stressed and sweating bullets while being passed by everyone. Two years later I took a student for a ride in the much faster Intermediate Run Group and without even trying was modulating and maintaining my spacing and my student remarked it was so smooth he could hardly believe it.
Any given track day there’s about 100-120 drivers. Call it 100. Out of those 100 there’s roughly 20 first-timers, another 20 Novice, maybe 30 Intermediate, 20 Advanced, and 10 Instructors. The classes break down as well. Only a few of the Instructors are really good.
Just like here they all talk to each other. Just like here they all pretend to know what they’re talking about. Just like here a few of them actually do.
Just like here one of the more common assumptions is its the equipment. Its the tires. Wheels. Springs. Bars, brakes and of course engine. Horsepower. My great epiphany came when I had a real good look at the car of a guy I just could not keep up with and scrutinized and quizzed him to death and finally had to admit to myself his car was slower than mine. He was faster only because he knew how to drive better.
Its like that here too. Only we don’t have a Novice run group. And everyone thinks they’re the Instructor.
