I'm looking to do one of the 3 day racing programs this summer. I wanted to get some opinions and experiences on either one of these schools. Thanks,

Dan

 

I haven't done the Panoz school, but I did the Skip Barber 3-day racing school at Mid-Ohio three years ago, and I can't say enough great stuff about it. It's extremely well structured and executed, with a mixture of classroom and track time, each session focusing on a particular skill, until you put it all together and have unrestricted lapping sessions.

The Barber Dodge cars (single-seat, open-wheel racecars, like little Indy cars) are a total blast to drive, and I also loved actually driving on a track at which I had seen pro races many times, both on TV and in person. With Skip Barber you can run at any number of legendary tracks, like Laguna Seca, Road America, Watkins Glen, etc. If you're going to shell out the three grand, I suggest going all the way and choosing a track far from home that you might otherwise not visit.

Having said all that, if you haven't already done some autocrossing or (preferably) HPDEs in your street car, I strongly recommend doing that before taking any professional driving school. Going to Skip Barber as your first driving experience would be like taking your first flying lesson in an F-16 instead of a Cessna. Sure, it'll be fun, but you'll get a lot more out of it if you've learned the basics in a lesser vehicle.

All the people who did best in my Skip Barber class had previous track time. The newbies were a lot more hesitant, and prone to make mistakes, because they were trying to master basic principles of car control in a very powerful car.

If you have no track time, I suggest putting off the school until next summer and running 3-6 HPDEs this summer. Assuming you can do the HPDEs reasonably close to home, you'll probably pay about the same for 5 or 6 HPDEs as you would for one day of a pro school.

See previous discussions about this (where I said pretty much the same things) here and here.

 

Me at the Skip Barber school, July 2001.

 

WTF? Why can't I attach a picture anymore? Anyway, here's a link to a picture of me.

 

Thanks for the advice! Well, I recently went to a private track session at Moroso with my Z. It was an all day affair with a total of 10 cars running the whole day. I had the priviledge of a Skip Barber instructor as well as a BMW instructor riding shotgun with me. The rest of the day was spent practicing the things I had learned that morning. One of the instructors said we got an equivalent of 3-4 Club events because we were able to run all day, unrestricted. That's when I really caught the bug.....so hopefully that'll be enough preparation.

I'm still debating as to when to go. I had originally wanted to do the Laguna Seca track in June since it's such a legendary track, but I was informed the weekend was completely booked. Thanks for you help and for the info.


Dan


Anyone done Panoz?