Bondurant School of High Performance Driving - Morning

About a year ago, the Curmudgeon invited SO and me to attend the Liberty Wildlife Annual Charity Fundraiser, "Wishes for Wildlife". The Curmudgeon's wife is very involved in Liberty Wildlife. Liberty Wildlife rehabilitates Arizona native birds and similar wildlife that are injured or become ill and it provides educational training throughout the state to school children. Check out the video releasing a bald eagle into the wild on the "About Us" page.

I am not quite so eleemosynary, but I know a good deal when I see it. At the silent auction, we bid on a one-day Bondurant School of High Performance Driving program for two people and got it for a steal. SO and I decided to go to the school as my birthday present last week. At the school, each student drives his or her own 6 speed manual Chevrolet Corvette Z06. I had not driven a stick shift in 20 years and SO, suffice it to say admitted than even when she drove a stick shift, did not do so very well. We tried to rent a stick shift car the weekend before school to practice, but could not find any car rental company that still rents stick shift cars. We even tried U-Haul and it did not have any stick shifts for rent. I think you can rent high-end cars like Corvettes with manual transmissions but they are very expensive. So we just winged it!

The class runs from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a 90 minute break for lunch. The classroom is the Firebird International Raceway in Chandler. The first half hour or so is in the classroom talking about cars in general, downshifting, front wheel/rear wheel traction, geometry and the apex of a curve, trail braking and proper race lines and something about rolling back and forth between the brake and the throttle. SO and I were still trying to figure out whether the throttle was the brake, the accelerator or the clutch. And of course, we cannot forget the mandatory sales pitch by the photographer, which was pretty pricey, but what the heck, it was my birthday.

Then it is outside to pick your car. I chose the No. 5 Chevrolet Corvette (Mark Martin's number for all you NASCAR fans) and SO chose the No. 1 car (surprise!). There was only one other person in our group. We got into the cars and revved the engines and tried to figure out all of the electronics and headed out for our first training exercise of the day, manual shifting. The course was like barrel racing for all of you rodeo fans. We revved the engine, burned rubber and shifted from first to second to third gears on the straight-away, then we braked and downshifted into second gear as we were coming into the turn and when we reached the apex of the curve we accelerated from second gear into third gear and then did it again and again until we were comfortable using the clutch and shifting gears. SO did great and by the end she was shifting like a pro!

Next was accident avoidance training. We drove down the straight-away in second or third gear and there were three lanes ahead with a green light for each. About 80 feet before the road splits, the instructor would either leave one, two or all three lights green or turn all three lights red and you had to make a split-second decision into the correct lane. The red light signified an accident in front of you. We only had one death in our group where our third driver slammed into the back of the accident, although I do not think the instructor was overly impressed with our reaction time when all three lights were red. Interestingly, the hardest situation was when you had two green lights and could go in either direction. The moral of this exercise was that it is oftentimes better to maneuver to avoid an accident rather than stamping your brake and trying to stop before rear-ending the car in front of you. But if there is no way to avoid the accident and you need to stop quickly, stand on the brake and do not worry about stalling out the car or burning out the brakes.

Before lunch, we changed cars and all got into a car with training wheels for skid control training. You try to drive inside the larger circle and find the apex of the curve without going into the smaller circle in the middle and without losing the back-end of the car and spinning in circles. It is a lot like driving on ice or hydroplaning on water. Also, the instructor has a hydraulic lift that lifts the back-end of the car so you lose traction while turning. Each of us spun out the car and burned rubber at least once. It was like Kyle Busch after winning a NASCAR race. The lessons were: look where you want to go, not where you are going; do not jam the brakes because that shifts the weight of the car to the front wheels when you need more weight on the back wheels, and steer into the spin (i.e., toward your back-end) but do not over-steer or you will spin like a top.

Then it was off to lunch to talk about how much fun we were having!