holy thread resurrection!
i did 4 person instruction day yesterday in the Elise. I’d previously done a 12 person play day with Duncs, this was a similar format, but with 4 people and far more physical “1 on 1” coaching.
There was a young chap in a Boxster (bought it when he was 17 and had it 3 years), a guy with a 992.2 GT3 and a guy who’d just got an M2. The porsches had both done AW days before, the M2 driver was very inexperienced.
The day started with a few basic exercises to gauge experience/ability then onto the high-speed corner. Last time I’d managed about 65-70mph with plenty of spinning – mainly caused by holding the wheel too tight. With Andy in the car, I got used to effectively only using my left thumb to push down on the left wheel spoke rather than gripping hard with both hands and trying to fight the oversteer/understeer. Then we did heavy braking through the corner at 80+mph, which gave me a load more confidence of the higher entry speed. Coupled with what I’d got from the earlier tuition on steering, it had me doing the high-speed corner at a fairly consistent 75ish mph with far less drama.
Then there was a variety of useful exercises like throttle control (set the steering wheel position and just use small throttle inputs to increase/decrease the circle), hand positioning whilst winding on/off lock, slip angles, etc…
Unfortunately, the driving in circles took its toll on the group. The M2 guy got bad motion sickness and had to sit out for a while and it was the final straw for the GT3’s rear tyres which were beginning to delaminate on the inside edge.
So we were effectively down to 2 of us for the circuit driving, which was awesome fun. Andy came out and did a quick assessment of my lines/etc before showing me the correct ones driving my car - Holy fuck can that man drive! We swapped back and we improved my lines/exit speeds and then we had the best part of 1.5 hours to take turns ragging it round the mini-circuit. We spent most of this sat in the passenger seats of each other’s cars doing 5-6 laps each time whilst Andy watched and gave us feedback when we came back in to change over.
It was great to have these slightly longer runs (usually it’s 3 laps and in) to really focus on improving a specific input/corner/approach without feeling it’s taken your whole go up. We both still had plenty of spins, but all the time understanding why we’d spun and what we could do to improve.
Overall, a great day out - I’d happily do another.
Sad times, it was really enjoyable last time I did it, and I'm guessing I'm unlikely to see my money back @Jobbo @GG.?
Phil's Boxster seemed very unperturbed by the conditions.
