[N0tt0N]

Originally Posted by roundel

The other highlight of the weekend was a new twist to the off line drills. We made teams of two that ran nose to tail and the trailing car has to stay on the opposite side if the track then pass each time on pit straight. I'll post a video of the instructor session where we tested the concept. It's hilarious.

I wish PCAP would do something like that. Pair up an instructor in his car with a Green in their car and do lead/follow in the afternoon of day 1 after everyone is familiar with the track. We did that at Skip Barber with the instructors in Mazda 3s (do not ride in the back seat of one of these on track without a garbage bag, btw) with some students followed by 3-4 MX5 Cup Cars with students. Learned a lot riding with the instructor and hearing the commentary as well as following them in the Cup Cars. Impossible to keep up with Earwood in his POS Mazda 3... at least on the first day After that it was fun.

[CanAm]

Originally Posted by roundel

The bumps really detracted from what could have been an amazing addition.

Yup. Can still be fixed, but would have been a lot cheaper to get it right in the first place.

[trytryagain]

I got a lot out of the off-line track exercise. With my Cayman it's pretty easy to take curves all kinds of different ways (including sideways :0 ). The key learning tidbit was to use more flexible thinking and seat of the pants feel through the corners. The exercise seemed to cause most of the other cars to reign in the throttle a bit, somewhat negating their normal horsepower advantage. The Cayman "floated like a butterfly" a couple times but nothing too serious!

[Chopper Dropper]

PCA is open to try things, we have done a similar exercise with white run group, cars side by side with instructors all around the track then swapping after a couple laps as an intro to extended passing. However, all these exercises take away track time, and when you hear the screams from the gallery that 3 runs gives you .005 seconds more track time etc, etc. I usually try to do an offline exercise with my blue students as traffic allows, to at least take some of the corners off line.
Dirk

[gawdzilla]

Jeff - it was nice meeting you yesterday and talking briefly. appreciate you dropping by and saying hi. Hope to see you out next year some more!

Dirk - I also like the "drills" sessions and find them very valuable as well as fun, but agree finding time for them without the masses complaining about $/min track time is a difficult challenge. maybe do two black/red combined sessions per day, and that would free up one optional time slot for particpants to work on specific objectives as directed by a classroom. at a two day event for example, perhaps saturday's optional time slot would be for green/blue drills, and sunday's would be for white/red/black drills? but this would also require clear instructions beforehand as well so everyone knows what they are doing. easy to think about, tough to implement

[BlackTalon]

Possible track loading issue with that? Don't think you can put anywhere near that many Green/ Blue students on the track at once due to insurance caps on cars per mile. Probably same issue for w/b/r, although I seriously doubt most would go out on the track for such an exercise. I'm pretty sure I don't want to be out there with 110 cars at once.

[Chopper Dropper]

^^^^ What Dave said. Any exercise time would probably have to come from that group. We can and probably will do the white group exercise as it is an intro to the extended passing which at present is limited by National to "Instructor groups" for us Black and Red. We did a number of laps side by side with instructors in the right seat and then continued the exercise with extended passing for the white group. Worked pretty well.
Dirk

[roundel]

I don't see this as a "Potomac needs to mimic this" type thing. NCC has a formula that includes exercises. It works for them and I enjoy it. Potomac has a bit different formula that attracts a slightly different crowd beyond just the different marque. If a drover likes both, attend events with both clubs!

[BMAN]

Originally Posted by roundel

Potomac has a bit different formula that attracts a slightly different crowd

[jwduncan]

Originally Posted by gawdzilla

Jeff - it was nice meeting you yesterday and talking briefly. appreciate you dropping by and saying hi. Hope to see you out next year some more!

Will, It was good to meet you too. Hard to believe the season is over but I'm looking forward to next year.

Jonathan and Melanie, nice meeting you over the weekend as well.