Running laps at Laguna Seca. Photo by gotbluemilk.com
I’ll preface this post by saying very clearly that I am currently sitting atop Mount Stupid when it comes to driving a car on a track:
Via smbc-comics.com
I have lots of hobbies, and have passed through the Mount Stupid phase of knowledge many times. Hopefully I’m learning to identify when I’ve gained enough knowledge to be dangerous, but probably not.
Anyway, about 3 months ago, Kristen’s sister Julie got a Subaru BRZ, which is a rear-wheel drive sports car. She left it at our house for a week, and naturally I drove it around a bit. IT WAS AWESOME. I’d sort of forgotten why sports cars exist until then. I can now say there was a sort of automotive dark ages in my life, between say 22 and 32. The BRZ appears to have brought in the age of enlightenment.
I asked Julie if I could borrow her car to do what is called a “track day,” which is where you bring your own car to a race track and learn to drive it there (NOT in a race setting, but a controlled instructional setting with lots of safety rules). I think she thought I was joking. Then as I was reading about track days, Kristen and I started casually talking about maybe getting a used sports car. Fast forward a couple months, and now we are the proud owners of a 2007 Mazda MX-5 Miata. So my Age of Automotive Enlightenment came in an odd form – I grew up lusting after 500hp muscle cars, and now I own a 135hp lightweight Japanese roadster that is stereotypically driven by female hairdressers. But all my research suggested that the Miata is absolutely the best bang-for-the-buck driving experience you can get. So naturally, the Miata went to the track.
The track day took place at Laguna Seca near Monterrey, which is a very famous track. I studied Youtube videos of people driving the track, and made flashcards to memorize the turn numbers layouts beforehand. Maybe it was overkill, but it gave me some confidence and I knew exactly what to expect going in.
The day was organized through a group called Hooked on Driving, which I chose because they seem to have the heaviest emphasis on safety.
The Miata. We got to choose our own #s, so of course I chose 469, which is the # of the robotics team I helped found in 1999
The day started with lectures on safety, flags, and general car handling stuff. Then we went out to the Skid Pad (basically a big open parking lot) for handling drills. There was a figure 8, and we were told to purposely over-drive the car. The told us to try and get the car to understeer (where the front wheels lose traction – you turn the wheel and the car keeps going straight), and oversteer (where the rear wheels lose traction – you fishtail and potentially spin).
This is where things got interesting, and where I’m going to begin to opine from atop Mount Stupid. My car was one of the cheapest cars in the novice run group by almost an order of magnitude. There were Corvette ZO6s, Lotus Elises, Porsche Caymans and Boxsters, Audi R8s, a vintage Shelby Roadster, a Mercedes Benz S63 AMG, and a damn Ferrari. Perhaps I was projecting, but the guys in the expensive cars didn’t seem to want to push them too hard on the skid pad. But I can say honestly I did not give a sh*t – I came to the track to learn to drive, and bought a car I knew I wouldn’t have to baby. I spun my car twice (on purpose), and lost control in every way possible. It was awesome, and I couldn’t stop smiling.
Ferrari, Porsche 911, and Shelby Roadster in the background
Anyway, after handling drills, we had another lecture, and then it was time for the track. The novice group is paired up into teams of 2 people + 1 instructor. The instructor sits in one of the 2 cars every time out, and we all had radios to communicate with each other. My instructor for the day was John Connelly, who also drives a Miata (though his is track-prepped). They try and match the coach with students based on what kind of cars they drive, so the coach can give more precise instruction. In my case, John was awesome – I learned a ton, and since he knows what a Miata can do, I knew I could trust him when he’d tell me things like “full throttle through here.”
John instructing me during our first track session. Photo by gotbluemilk.com
Our first 20 minute session on the track was introductory in nature. We went fairly slow at first and sped up toward the end as we got used to the corners. The laps felt pretty fast to me by the end of the session.
Afterward, John offered to take me for a ride in his Miata, which of course I was excited to do.
I thought we were going pretty fast in our introductory laps. We were not. John showed me what fast actually looks like. He braked hard and late. He held the car at the edge of its grip through a turn, and I could feel him adjust throttle and steering input to keep the car at the edge. The car was subtly slipping sideways, in a controlled manner, through corner exit. I now know what car magazines mean when they say a car is “neutral.”
The laps with John changed my perspective on what it means to drive on a track. During our next session, I tried braking harder and later. It worked. I tried to feed on the throttle while unwinding the steering after the corner apex. That worked, too. All of John’s comments for the rest of the day made a lot more sense. I got faster and more confident as the day went on. I think I’m learning to drive!
Us in the corkscrew (Turn 8) with a Lotus Elise. Photo by gotbluemilk.com
The rest of my comments here are going to center on what I saw at the track – the impressions of an absolute novice. Again, atop Mount Stupid.
Another term for a track day is HPDE, which can stand for High Performance Driving Education, or High Performance Driving Experience. My impression is that some people came more for the education, and some came more for the experience (of going really really fast).
Now, the whole point of the day is to have fun. That might mean learning, and that might mean opening up the throttle on your 600hp beast as much as possible. I begrudge nobody their source of fun. However, a few of these guys were doing things that the other drivers thought were a little aggressive, and at our de-brief sessions they were given talking-tos by the coaches, who seemed to take that kind of thing pretty seriously.
Laying down all 135 horses on the front straightaway. Photo by gotbluemilk.com
There also seemed to be a lot to learn from many of the drivers in my novice group doing weird stuff on the track. There is only one way to go fast around a track in a Miata, which is to take a good line and drive the absolute piss out of it. The Miata loves this sort of treatment, and this is why it is such a popular track car. John was clear about that, and I tried very hard to follow his instruction on braking, apex location, throttle level, and track-out. It is a “momentum car,” meaning there is not much horsepower to cover up any mistakes. That said, I saw many of the high-horsepower cars taking weird, sub-optimal lines, braking early, apexing early, and generally doing things that would slow my Miata to a crawl. People don’t really post Youtube videos of themselves taking a poor line around a track, so watching the Experience people after they passed me actually seemed to be a great learning tool for a novice like myself.
Regardless, it was an absolute blast. Learning a new skill is so much fun, and doing it in a controlled environment while going fast makes it even better. Driving a sports car on a track is a kind of lifetime bucket list thing to do, and I’m hoping I get to do it a whole lot more.
To conclude, the track day was pretty much the most awesome thing ever. It’s all I’ve been talking about for the past several days. I’d like to do maybe 4-5 track days per year, and I think I may have convinced both my dad and Kristen to come out and learn how to drive as well!
