After a spine jarring, four man bobsleigh run one dark and wintery night at Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park (*) yielded the most exciting and perhaps ‘longest’ sixty seconds of my life, I doubted if anything could top the experience. I was wrong. I discovered Vancouver based Performance Drivers Club via their print literature detailing the racetrack based advanced driver training they offer. (www.perfomancedriversclub.org) After having now attended five all day PDC events, sixty motorcycle helmeted seconds at 90+ kph through all fifteen corners of an Olympic bobsleigh course seem tame compared to four twenty-five minute helmeted and expertly instructed sessions each very full day event at the track under the auspices of PDC.
Completion of the required, interesting and well presented this-is-what-to-expect ‘ground school’ having further wetted my appetite, I signed up for my first event. However, before embarking on this adventure at the Mission Raceway Park, then with my well loved if aging second generation Mazda RX-7 coupé it seemed appropriate and potentially car, if not life saving, to have the machine thoroughly vetted prior to my ‘first timer’ event on the raceway’s seven cornered road racing course. Very heavy rain en-route to the 07:00 rendezvous in Mission did little to help the nagging dichotomy of my high excitement offset with concerns over the wisdom of driving on a racetrack per se.
Once at the track time flew. Suddenly I was in pre-grid about to launch or so I thought. Actually it was my instructor who smoothly exited pit lane with me as his eager if apprehensive passenger. About two corners in I knew I was hooked. Later as the track dried some, the instructor wisely having bailed, I gained both the wheel and confidence and began the hands on learning process. Imagine, it turns out, I had been sitting in the wrong place and gripping the wheel incorrectly since time immemorial and then some.
By the end of the fourth twenty-five minute flag marshals controlled session, I had an idea of what I would need to learn more about (smoothness, vision, track position, apexes, flag colour significance all figured big) if not how I was going to achieve it. I was also high as a kite and quite exhausted the latter largely from the intense concentration and overall mental effort required. The highlight? Probably seeing an inevitably red Ferrari rapidly enlarge in my mirrors, pointing him past through the requisite open window as instructed and listening to his sweet exhaust note resonate as he blew me out of the water.
After my multiple PDC events I can confirm what any educator knows, that learning comes in stages and that there is commonly back sliding before new plateaux are established. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Before my second PDC event I had my beloved Wankel rotary engine freshly tuned and carbon/kevlar front brake pads fitted – the latter a Driver’s Edge Autosport company installation. On the day it was hot, dry and sunny, for me a new track condition experience! Needless to say it seemed easier albeit faster and although tentative at first I felt I had learned a lot by the end of another demanding day. The increased braking capability from the carbon/kevlar pads I found to be quite astonishing by the way.
Apart from being tremendous fun, does any of this advanced training help in the real world of traffic, freeways, city driving, pedestrians, etc? I think so. Shortly after I had the carbon/kevlar brakes fitted I had two cars collide immediately in front of me at freeway speed. Whether I stopped well short of them because of my fancy brake pads and/or because of newly increased and honed skill in critically observing, anticipating, positioning, reacting and applying solutions to changing driving demands who can say? Increased knowledge never did any harm in any jurisdiction.
At the end of my fifth track day I went to start the car to head home. It would not start. I had blown the engine!
(See my story: ‘The Most Exciting Minute of my Life’.)