Road Racing 101

Exiting Turn 4 at Willow Springs International Raceway, I check the mirror. There's a gaggle of 4.6-liter Mustangs looming behind me, waiting for the back straight to pound past our wheezing Project MP3. I exit clean, use up all the road and bend the car through Turn 5, which is a fast, off-camber, downhill left-hander. It dumps me onto the back straight. The MP3 handles great, and can stick with the race-tired Mustangs in the corners, but is now a sitting duck. The Fords storm by, almost sucking me off the road.

This is the Driving Concepts race school, and it's a blast. Run in Southern California in conjunction with The National Auto Sport Association (NASA), which sanctions amateur races throughout the country, and Open Track, an organization that facilitates track time for streetcars and enthusiasts. It's for those who have already been through one of the many high-performance driving schools, have hit a few track days, are confident with their on-track abilities, and now want to give wheel-to-wheel competition a try. If you haven't first hit a major big name driving school, we suggest you check out one of the Open Track/NASA High Performance Driving Events, which are held at tracks across the country. Each features a unique grouping system, with a ladder of advancement that allows non-experienced drivers to progress from HPDE 1, the most restricted time trial group, through HPDE 4, where there's open passing, and onto full race classes and series.

My track experience started about six years ago with events run by the Porsche Owners Club at the Streets of Willow. My mount all those years was my beloved Sentra SE-R ("Prepping an SE-R for Autocrossing," December 1995). Despite the many miles logged at various West Coast tracks, they were all time trial events with restricted passing.

The desire to share corners, draft and pass under braking pushed me to look for a way into the world of wheel-to-wheel racing. The opportunity to scratch this itch popped up in the form of the Southern California NASA SE-R Cup series. Car preparation is essential and complicated, and will be detailed later in our pages, but first on the checklist is driver preparation.

To be allowed to run wheel-to-wheel with the rest of the SE-R loonies, I had to be licensed.

Taking the competition licensing school from Driving Concepts would make me eligible for this license, and, I hoped, teach me a thing or two about not just surviving races, but doing well.

Pulled from our vast stable of supercars for the assignment was the bahn-storming Mazda MP3. All right, speed demon it isn't, but equipped from the factory with a full Racing Beat suspension, it packs some impressive cornering power. Fellow classmates came in rides as diverse as a super-clean 2002 to M3s and a gaggle of Nissan SE-Rs and Mustangs.

Darren Young, a charismatic racer for 26 years and teacher for 18, led the classroom discussions and wrangled our group of throttle monkeys into conscientious and eager racers. Todd Southwell, Vincenzo Lupo and David Mecey assisted him by joining us in classroom discussion and as on track observers and participants. Our instructors had an extra incentive to demand complete saturation of the course: We stand a good chance of all sharing the track competitively in the future.

The school is set up so there are four classroom sessions and four racetrack sessions per day, ensuring both adequate time for theory and its implementation. Course material includes large sections on car preparation, mental preparation, race strategy and theory, awareness and passing.

Time spent learning awareness and track presence is best summed up by Young's sage remark, "racing is a big chess game at 120 mph." Remember that time you carried a little too much speed down an entrance ramp and ended up pucker-close to another car while drifting sideways? We did this until it was fun.

The three-wide drill involves having three cars run door to door, as tightly as possible, at a healthy pace, lap after lap, following the racing line. All three cars swap position every lap, giving each car a chance in all positions. Being in the center forces you to look ahead and count on your peripheral vision and other senses to establish the position of other vehicles around you.

We even became sensitive to the difference in air pressure when a car rode up beside us. Worry too much about the cars on either side and you risk kissing door handles or worse. The racing line differs greatly from the optimal line, and the three-wide drill offers a taste of lines that might be used under racing conditions. Track condition varies greatly and suddenly when off-line. It was eye-opening to experience the various levels of grip available in different parts of the turns. In a race, drivers spin cars in the most inopportune places, deny you racing room and even go for the Hail Mary dive bomb. To win, you have to survive, which is why we learned to plan escape routes for every corner should any of the above happen.

"Few races are won on the first lap, but many lost." These words guided us in the many rolling starts we practiced as a class. Like the world's biggest, baddest stoplight race, 20 cars packed together and, cruising at high rpm, waited for the slightest twitch of the starter's arm. At the green flag drop, the resulting free-for-all is fun, fast and scary. The confusion that sometimes ensued was actually beneficial, because it taught us to respond to situations as they occurred, not as we planned them.

Numerous possible starting scenarios are not just talked about in the classroom, but run through on track. Given the substantial horsepower difference between the many Mustangs and SE-Rs, we also practiced split starts, giving us all opportunity to deal with slow- and fast-moving cars on starts and in traffic.

We looked to the rolling temples of '50s technology, NASCAR, to learn drafting. It turns out drafting is highly effective, even in street machines--and doing so, we picked up speed on the straights.

Even after five years of track events, my first tastes of traffic and passing added a completely different and very exhilarating dimension. From the first unnerving laps we took together on the first day, to the full sprint race on our last session, the change in driver confidence was tremendous.

The extent to which racing is a cerebral sport wasn't completely apparent before this weekend. Unexpected was the healthy amount of race theory and strategy that enriched the curriculum and was immediately utilized on the track. The cost of the weekend, $495, included two days' worth of track time on top of expert instruction. A bargain.

Did I get out of it what I had hoped? Far more. Beyond the NASA license in my pocket, I walked away from Driving Concepts with an understanding of how to race smart and win. Watch for my new skills to be put to good use when we finally hit the track in our "Road Racing on the Cheap" series.

For more information on Driving Concepts, visit www.drivingconcepts.com or call (949) 489-0500. For more information on open track events, visit www.open-track.com.

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