I attended the driving school held by the Sierra Chapter of the BMW CCA at Reno-Fernley Raceway on June 27 -29. The chapter is relatively new — this is their second major event. The track is relatively new — it’s come into being over the last few years. I’m rather “new” to driving, having taken a 5+ year hiatus. The first day on track at RFR was my fifth day on track since getting back to the sport this past fall. The car is relatively new (to me) — prior to the event I had one day on track with this particular car. Although I put over 100k miles on an E36, this beast is an entirely different machine.
RFR map
Day One, Firday June 27, was two distinct events. For instructors and a select group of advanced students there was a track orientation, Nurgburgring-style. They learned the track in sections, including getting out and walking the track. (I recall back in the day doing some schools that provided a track walk before the speed portion of the event started. I found it very valuable.) The other event was a car control clinic.
I’d signed up for the car control clinic (CCC) because I felt a need to push the limit of this car in second gear in a slalom/skid-pad sort of environment. It’s safer to push it really hard under those circumstances, than to get past the limit in third, forth, or fifth on track. I was mightily tempted to switch to the orientation class, but I stuck with my plan.
I’ve instructed CCC’s in the past, and twice recently. So I was kinda ahead of where most of the class was. We spent a good hour or so working on “this is how ABS works”. That’s a great exercise, but I was getting kinda bored. In retrospect, I should have told the guys, “Hey, I know ABS, how about I work on threshold braking?” The second part of the exercise was the high speed lane change. At 40 mph, this was also kinda boring. At 60 mph it started to get interesting. But then again, I’ve got R compound 255’s, with a coil-over suspension, and all kinds of negative camber.
Next up was the slalom. Like the braking/lane-change exercise, this was held on a section of track in the infield. (The track school was held using configuration B.) The braking exercise was on the mid-straight, while the slalom was on turn 17. This gave us a bit of a bend and a crest to liven things up. I did manage to drive hard enough to get the car loose during this, and missed the end gate during one of my runs.
click image for full-sized
Then things really got interesting. In lieu of a skid-pad, we used the triangle formed by the mid straight, turn 23b and turn 6b — also known and the wankel, as a little practice course. Each of the three turns is very different. Run in the opposite direction they’re very different again. So we had six little hair-pin corners to play with. In the clock-wise direction I managed to get some throttle-on oversteer coming from the mid straight to 6b. I feathered back a bit and counter-steered to let the rear tuck back in. The next time around I tried to solve it all with counter steer, and kept my foot in it. Can you say “yee haw”? Tail out to the left, tail out to the right, tail out to the left again, tail comes around to the right one more time, and SPIN!
That’s what I needed out of this CCC. For my purposes, I had a very good feel of how the car felt inside the performance envelope. I needed to get outside — not just with push, but with oversteer. What I needed was a car out-of-control clinic, and with both the slalom and the wankel I got it. Win!
That’s enough for now. I’ll return to write about the track school next.
