Due to the California heat, keeping the skid pad sufficiently wet to maximize the experience of this exercise has proven challenging in past schools. Today, the rain ensured that the figure eight was always evenly wet. All the students that I talked to indicated that the figure eight was one of the most challenging and most fun exercises of the day.
The rain stopped by lunch time. This allowed everybody to eat lunch in the dry and run a mini autocross in the dry also. As instructors, we had the opportunity to hop into cars and help the students navigate their way through the course.
I noticed that a young man driving a Ford ZX2 was going through the course rather slowly and when he was back in line, there was no instructor with him. He was the only one in line with no instructor, so I spent the rest of the session with him. Brad had not been pushing his car to the limit and really wasn't getting the 'full' experience of an autocross or what his car might do. I pushed him a little harder and he came back VERY excited. Nobody had shown him what his car could do to this extent all day.
For his last run, we pushed a little harder and it was very clear that the red mist had descended upon him. He stopped responding to my instructions to slow down and was going into turns much too fast. I'm glad that he finally had a taste of an autocross.
The last time I had a chance to drive was several weeks ago. While I enjoy teaching the students, the highlight for me was the end of the day when the instructors were able to drive and take students along for rides. Brad had so much fun in the Civic that he just had to come back for a second ride.
The Orange County Region has been growing their attendance each of the last few years that we have been participating and the drivers clinic continues to evolve as new things are tried. A tremendous amount of preparation and organization went into pulling this event off. Credit goes to the crew that did all the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
After the event was over and we had a chance to reflect on how the event could be improved, I sent Adam an email with my thoughts. I've included the email here. This email was forwarded from Adam to Jerry, who is the chief instructor for the region:
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Jerry :
We need to commend Stephen and Jason for being so helpful and attentive to our students.
They have been instrumental with us yesterday and when called upon in the past.
They are PCA members I think if not they should be put in the exempt registration class so they can run their cars anytime they want at our events. I strongly urge us to bring this to the attention of DEMT Board.
Stephen, Jason and Alex:
Jerry and I personally thank both of you for your time and efforts. Also Alex Sanchez too.
I have noted the below comments which are invaluable to our efforts to making the driving clinic event better.
Again, thank you.
Best,
Adam Nguyen
From: Stephen Yeoh
Date: Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:50:40
To:Adam Nguyen
Cc:Jason Flores
Subject: Driver school credit and some thoughts
Hi Adam,
Thanks for running the school today. From the smiles around, I think the event was well received. The weather worked out beautifully for the event, especially for the skid pad and then drying out for the afternoon. I'll take the skid pad again anytime you run a school again. Staying at one station helped. There was time to re-set up the course before the next group of students arrived.
I'm going to list out some of the activities that I did at the skid pad in case it's of use at a future class. I also have some personal thoughts about the event. Of course it is all subjective and may not be applicable depending on the objective of the exercise. This wouldn't have been possible without all the hard work by you before hand to get everything ready and plan it out. The preparation that was done before the event made being an exercise easy. Thank you.
1. After running the figure 8 skid pad, I feel that the skid pad was well received and one of the more difficult exercises as they had to learn how to intentionally 'lose' control. In a way, this makes it more fun than a traditional skid pad. However, it's harder to learn throttle steer as there isn't the setup opportunity to achieve steady state before trying anything. On a dry day, the figure 8 may work better as it will be less dependent on the surface being wet. With either the figure 8 or the traditional circular skid pad, the outside set of cones is unnecessary and for some drivers, I felt it inhibited some of them from really trying as they didn't want to hit the cones on outside. I hope I didn't upset Jerry too much trying to do the skid pad at the beginning.
2. I liked the drivers meeting prior to each exercise as it set their expectations on what they were to learn and give them a name to remember if they want to complain about anybody :) This is particularly true for the figure 8 as they will work on more than one thing at the same time. I felt this was important because unlike some of the other exercises, they needed to repeat this a few times in order to get comfortable and establish a bit of a rhythm in order to make it work. For most of the groups, the timing worked out perfectly for 2 sessions of 6 laps each. This had the added benefit of allowing the instructors not on the course some time to spend with their students instead of running straight to the next car - even when we only had 2 instructors.
3. The skid pad in particular, it was particularly valuable to have them lined up in a row where they could see the activity going on and learn from what other drivers were doing or not doing.
4. Tom (the other skid pad captain) and I discussed in the morning how we would move our groups to the next station beforehand. I made sure to instruct everybody personally while they were waiting, where the next station was. They were consistently the first group to reach the next exercise. Because of the size of the El Toro site, perhaps marking each exercise with a colored flag might help students navigate their way between exercises.
5. With a counterclockwise or clockwise rotation, it may have been simpler to group each set of the 4 exercises together so that the student never has to 'cross' between another unrelated exercise. Instead of setting both groups of the exercise up side by side, set up the 4 different exercises on the 'left' side and another set of 4 exercises on the right side and the students never have to cross paths.
6. With the groups broken up, it may be helpful to give each group a unique color rather than splitting up 'red' and letting them get mixed up as they move between stations.
7. In the interest of maximizing seat time, I asked the instructors to keep an eye on the car on course and have their student be ready with the engine started and go as soon as the other car leaves the course.
8. I feel that in the interest of really giving the student an autocross experience, they need to wear a helmet, even in the school. Otherwise they will come in to their first event without having worn a helmet and it will be a totally new sensation for the driver. If they own a helmet, they should wear it all the time. For those that don't have a helmet, to ease the strain on loaners, the helmets can be put at just one exercise so that they get to experience it first hand.
9. I went around to each driver after the instructors had moved on to see if there were any other questions that could be answered and if they were enjoying themselves. The feedback was positive in every case. If there was anything negative, they didn't tell me.
10. This format didn't really give students or instructors much opportunity for a potty break. Perhaps spacing out the radius turn and the skid pad and making sure a porta potty was available close to at least one of the exercises might help. If it's a hot day, the same would apply to having water nearby too.
11. Timing during the afternoon autocross would have been really nice to have. The students would be able to see their improvement as the day progressed.
12. You were right. I wanted to jump in and instruct, but somebody needed to be keeping an eye on things and making sure everything kept moving along.
The instructors that worked the skid pad with me were great - Tony Crisp, Bob Scheussler, Gary Cooper and Alex Sanchez.
It's a treat watching the students 'get it'. Anytime you need instructors, I'm sure Jason and I would be more than happy to support the program and come to help out.
Respectfully,
Stephen
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