Like most people, I’ve always felt I was a pretty good driver. In fact, I’ve always felt that I was much better than average and have even been a little bit cocky driving SABLWLF, my 1996 black Miata MX-5, around town. That was until yesterday, when I attended my first Evolution Driving School. That’s when I found out how much better I could be.
This round of the Evolution Driving School (picture taken at the Mazda Grand Prix of Portland), put on by the Western Washington Sport Car Club of America (WWSCCA) and organized by Keith Brown, was held in Packwood, Washington on the back parking lot of the lumber mill there. It included Phases I and II and Challenge over a space of three days, running two phases per day. Since I was quite inexperienced, I elected to only do the Phase I class this time around, so I could practice what I learned before moving up to Phase II. I think that was a good plan, because doing more would have been too much information right now.
Aside from being way out in the tooleys (you know what I mean—I can’t find the word in the dictionary), it was a great location: small rural town, big paved lot that drained well (it rained most of the day), and a warehouse-type building for the base of operations (where we could park, store our stuff, and stay dry). Instructors were Tom Katzian (a long-time multiple National Champion at autocross or road racing, I’m a bit fuzzy on that), Andy Hollis, and Glenn Hernandez—both of whom are very experienced autocrossers—again, I’m a bit hazy on exactly all they have accomplished in the sport of auto racing, but they both definitely knew their stuff! Class began at 8 am sharp, with cars empty of all loose items, tires pumped, and Snell-approved safety helmets in hand.
The plan was to run three laps of the course by ourselves with instructors watching. Then we were divided into five groups of two or three (there were 13 students total) with each instructor taking someone from each group to tutor over ten laps of the track. Then we broke for lunch, had a group ride-through with the instructors in sedans, went to different instructors for the afternoon session, and followed that with three laps on our own. Since we finished fairly early in the day, and everybody wanted to do more practice laps, we were divided into two groups and ran as many laps as we could cram into 15 minutes. Those of us who were not driving spent our time out on course chasing the cones that were knocked down, so the next driver could proceed on the course as soon as possible.
It was a challenging day! The course consisted of a slalom of eight cones, around a circle heading through an angled turn toward a pivot cone, back into a sweeping turn, a Chicago box, another angled turn and then across the finish line. Please forgive me if my terminology is off! Since I had only participated in one autocross prior to this (I’m pretty sure I was the greenest member in the class), and that was a couple of years ago, my first obstacle was learning how to read the course in the seeming forest of cones. It’s not that hard to decode, but it took a couple laps for me to figure out where I was supposed to be going—with my instructor Andy’s help. My first trip around was a miserable 84.121 seconds, hitting cones, screeching to a halt to try and remain on course, and totally missing the pivot cone which was the fourth element around. In comparison, Andy drove the course with me in 42.783 seconds! I spent the rest of the day learning what I SHOULD be doing, rather than improving what I was already doing. It was humbling, but not once did anyone ever make me feel that I was incompetent—I just needed to learn, and they were there to teach me.
Once I figured out where I was supposed to be going, the lessons got much easier, and I found that I could relate a great deal of it to what I already knew from my experience in riding horses. Funny thing about how your body moves the car where you are looking, and actually looking where you are going was one of the most important lessons of the day! If you focus on the cones right in front of you, you miss the line you need to be driving, instead of having a nice, flowing line through the course where the elements blend together, and each one sets you up for the next. Having soft eyes and looking ahead is something that has been drilled into me in my riding lessons, and it works in driving cars also. Keeping your hands on the wheel is important too, because you can’t drive the car unless you are holding onto the steering wheel—without that, the car is driving, and it doesn’t have a brain! We were introduced to the concept of “shuffle steering,” where you turn the wheel by progressively passing it through your hands. I will have to practice that. Toward the end of the day the only times I got in trouble was when I was focusing on where I was, instead of where I was going. My last three “graduation runs” came in at 45.259, 44.290, and 43.998 seconds respectively. Not bad at all, considering where I started.
In all, I feel that I gained a great deal of confidence in my driving over the space of the day, and my accuracy in driving a line through the course was vastly improved. One problem I had at the start was in being too tentative and not “going for it.” But as Glenn told me, “Cones don’t have lawyers. Don’t stop or slow down if you hit one, learn what you need to and go on.” I don’t plan on becoming a dedicated autocrosser, but I will be out there next year as often as I can fit it into my schedule. Hey, street racers—if you want an outlet where you can legally pour on the steam, there’s a racing venue for you, whether it be drag racing, road racing, or autocross.— And you won’t have the worries of injuring or killing another driver or innocent bystander, or being ticketed by the cops. Never fear, there is plenty of adrenaline to go around!
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