Instructing @ Streets of Willow Nov 2023 18th + 19th
Hello everyone and welcome to the blog section! This wil be my first post in this now reserructed section where I will put infromation about experiences adjacent to all of my other projects. I don't want to bog down other project writings with lots of semi-related text, so I'll be writing about it all here. So, I'm starting this up again by covering my instructing experience @ Streets of Willow in November of 2023 on the 18th and 19th!
Saturday Nov 18th: running streets counter clockwise began interestingly enough. Joel, the main fellow behind Extreme Speed Track Events, didn't believe he needed me as an instructor. No big deal, I figured I'd just have some more time to myself. Then of course I check in with one of the head instructors for the day and they were immediately interested in having me help. So I went back to Joel, and Joel then set me up with a 1:1 instruction session with a gentleman named Javier. Javier had treated himself to a 2023 Chevy Camaro for his retirement present, and wanted some instruction on a race track to learn how to drive it. That was a wise choice, as wow is that one heck of a car!
I took Javier out for a few laps in my C5, running about 50%. He got a bit light headed and was concerned he couldn't safely drive at all. I chatted with him a bit though, and said let's try a 20% lap, which in turn had him feeling much better about it all. Then, we got out with the beginner group for their initial lead follow session, which is always a very slow adventure. Javier took to it all quite well, and while we had a few normal novice adjustments to make, he was no longer light headed and was showing some promise. By the end of my third session with him he seemed to have gleaned enough skill sets to be able to go out on the track on his own. Unfortunately, colder temps zapped his energy after that session and he chose to call it as he wasn't in the best condition to hit the track up again. I can respect that, and it was good to work with Javier.
I had some good time driving my C5 Corvette around, and you can read about it over in my C5 project page!
Sunday Nov 19th: Running streets CW was also a good time. Joel yet again had a private instruction student lined up for me, and this time it was a mother and son wanting to get out in their grandfathers car. Now typically you might think, Grandfather's car, okay we're talking 60's muscle car probably. Welp, nope grandfather had pretty modern tastes and and they had purchased a 1991 Acura NSX! Talk about a killer car, and also a car worthy of needing instruction in as a novice.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to fully get both students out as there was just one beginner session and they both very clearly needed the 1:1 instruction to be driving the car. We all settled on the son driving, and the mom just going out to drive the car for the parade laps along with hopping in as a passenger in my C5 Corvette Sure enough, we made the right choice, as the mom insisted we stop after just 2 laps at 40% or so in my C5. I swear the choice wasn't just "she's a lady let's go with the male", there were a wide variety of factors in there and she herself also pushed for her son to get out more than herself.
The son driving the NSX did really quite well, which combined with the capabilities of the car definitely had him driving quite briskly early on. We did focus on a few fundamentals and he made massive improvements out there. Unfortunately, one bad habit he had was from the apex he'd accelerate quite aggresively and not ease up on steering input. This in turn asked a ton of the tires, and I kept warning him he was approaching his limits and to run wider on exit. We also had discussed the string theory a few times together and also covered it in the novice download session. Welp, sure enough as we were exiting turn 3 he was asking too much of the car and it slid out. He the over corrected and we spun off the track going the opposite direction. We collected ourselves, got everything together and hopped into the hot pits to get the car checked out. Everything checked out fine, and we were back at it.
Unfortuantely for the son, the mom was quite concerned about the spin. Granted, given how nice the car was, I can understand why she'd prefer it not spin off the track into the gravel. Still though, novices are there to learn and push their limits, and sometimes they exceed them. What better place to have such an event occur than a controlled environment where everyone is all going the same direction and there are generous runoffs and paces like at Streets of Willow?
We got the son back out in our NC Miata for the final session and he had a great time in a car that is notably easier to drive as a novice. Plus, the car doesn't let you cover up novice cornering habits with blisteringly fast acceleration out of the turns. In the end I think everyone went home happy enough. The mom got her time on a track with the car, the son got to drive the car aggresively and learn some things, then the son got to drive a more modest car and see that if he wants to get into it for himself there's a lot less coveted cars you can go out on the track with and have fun.
You can read a bit about my personal experience driving my C5 corvette or my girlfriend driving the NC Miata if you want to hear more about the track weekend!