- 4,822
- Concord, CA
- kylehnat
While buried in several feet of snow around Christmas-time, I decided that in order to remain sane, I needed to plan a vacation that involved sun, shorts, and driving, and it had to be somewhere I hadn't been before. Then it dawned on me...most driving schools (real ones) are somewhere warm, so...why not learn how to drive? After some poking around, I decided on Bondurant's 3-day High Performance Driving course (HPD). The school is at Firebird Raceway, just south of Phoenix, Arizona, where it rains about as often as it does in outer space, and early-spring temperatures are in the 80's. That sounded damn good. I took the class April 13-15, and hoooooweeee, was it awesome!
Day One
Introduction
After surrendering my credit card number for the final payment and "incidentals" (should you buy a t-shirt or a new bumper for their car), all the students headed to the classroom for an hour-long introduction and tour, which included meeting Mr. Bob Bondurant himself, and his dog, Rusty. Bob spends a lot of time at his school, just wandering around and watching. Your heart skips a beat when you're driving, and you see him off to the side, watching you. He's a very nice guy, though, and is truly interested in how students are doing. During the tour, we stopped in the "museum", which is a room with a few vintage racecars, and a timeline on the wall, showing Bob's career. We stopped for a minute, and he shared a couple of war stories. Standing next to Bob while he described driving down the Mulsanne straight in the dark and driving for Ferrari at Watkins Glen made my hairs tingle just a little bit. Very surreal! Here are a few pictures of the facility:
Out back, most of the cars are parked. C6 Corvettes as far as the eye could see, though this is not what I would be driving:
Here is the shop, where they massage the poor vehicles after us baffoons are done abusing them for the day:
This is Mr. Bondurant's daily-driver. Yes, an ex-Grand Prix racer drives a Smart.
After a class photo, it was down to business. There were five of us in our class, and two instructors. My instructor was Austin Robison, who has a lot of off-road racing experience (Baja 1000 class winner and Dakar Rally competitor), and also has professional drifting experience. Drifting is not my cup of tea, but his car control ability is ridiculous!
Here was my car for the week (#26):
The CTS-V is quite heavy and large, but it handles very well, and has 430+ hp on tap. All in all, not too bad, though the gearbox is rubbish.
And here is the practice pad, where most of our exercises took place (the white CTS's are the instructor cars):
Throttle Steer
The first exercise was a very simple one. Start in the middle, hold the steering wheel at 1/2 turn, and slowly increase the throttle until you get all the way to the outside, and then lift. We did this in the instructor's car, and I was the first up. I stalled it twice before I finally got it to move. I guess Cadillac thought it was a good idea to give a family sedan a clutch pickup travel of .001 inches, and put it a quarter-inch off the floor, because that's the best way to get the groceries. Oh well. During Day 2, the instructor also stalled it, so I felt a little better, anyway. The clutch in the CTS-V that I drove was much easier.
Slalom #1
No explanation needed here. The technique was to turn in, straighten the wheel, and turn the other way in a 3-step motion. It works surprisingly well. We started at 25 mph, and worked up to 40. Even at the higher speed, this was easier than expected, though ESC helped.
Lane Change/Emergency Braking
This would be the some of the only "real" street driving we'd do. Down the track, there were three red/green lights. When all three went green, we would accelerate to 65 in the middle lane, and when we reached the coned area, the instructor would flip the lights, giving you one (or possibly none) clear lane to maneuver into. Nevertheless it was a good opportunity to see how the Caddy reacted to sharp, sudden inputs.
Skid Car
After lunch, we hopped in the infamous skid-car. This is a CTS fitted with outrigger wheels with hydraulic jacks, which the instructor can use to simulate low grip at the front or rear. He also had the choice to use the jacks to screw with you, which he happily did once or twice.
We did a few laps with understeer, and the rest was oversteer (more fun). With the reduced grip, it was very difficult to get the car truly straight before the next turn, so it really felt like driving on ice, and I had a hard time figuring out how much steering input I was giving it (is "straight" 1/2 turn or 1-1/2 turns?). Towards the end, we just started seeing how many times we could spin. I would've liked to have had a little more practice with this (maybe with just a tad more rear grip), as I still don't feel particularly comfortable with unpredicted oversteer.
Slalom #2
The last exercise for day 1 was the same slalom we saw in the morning, just to show us how much better we were, simply from having more time in the car.
Day Two
Heel-Toe Downshifting
Day two started with an introduction on how to walk in high-heels....heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe... Eh, nevermind. This was the primer on heel-toe downshifting, and the words we got were "I'm not going to lie, it's pretty tough in the CTS-V." Maybe if you have big feet, which I don't... This actually turned out to be pretty easy. The Caddy's pedals are in a decent position, and the flywheel must weigh about 50 lbs, because the revs don't exactly rise and fall in an instant. This made it easy to take it one step at a time, and that really helped. We went out to the training area, and drove down the side at about 55 mph. At the braking cone, we braked, pushed the clutch in, revved, shifted from 3rd to 2nd, dumped the clutch, turned around the tire stack, and did it again in the other direction. The first few attempts were a bit dodgy, but it came quickly, and I really started to enjoy it. Am I a racecar driver yet?
Short Oval
This was the first "track" exercise we did. In the training area was a short oval, with a constant radius turn at one end, and an increasing radius turn on the other end. They put out cones for braking, turn-in, apex, and exit, and we tried our hand at perfecting the trail-braking technique. I seemed to be faster than most, but I was cooking the brakes and overheating the car in the process. When the instructor went for a ride with me, he could smell the acrid brake fluid, and politely suggested that I give the pedal a bit more finesse
. We lapped for what seemed like forever, and my back and neck started to hurt from turning the same direction over and over. At least NASCAR drivers get banked turns...
Braking/Turning
At this point, they were starting to prepare us for the upcoming track-time. The point of this drill was to get a better feel for the brake pedal, and how much pressure it would take to stop in a certain distance. We accelerated up to 60 mph, hit the first brake cone, and tried to stop between two cones at the end. Then we hit the brakes later and later, trying to stop between the same two cones. Last, we simulated a "wall" (a line of cones). They wanted us to see how well the car turns while braking with full ABS (answer: it doesn't). I mowed down 3 or 4 little cones on my first attempt.
Maricopa Oval
After lunch, we went out on track for the first time. The Maricopa Oval is 1/3 mile long, and consists of a constant-radius turn and an increasing-radius turn, just like the practice oval. However, this was much faster. On the short oval, we were in 2nd gear, and maybe reached 40 mph. Here, we were in third, and topping out around 70. There was also a real wall that we could hit, so this was the first drill where we could really damage the car.
. While my instructor was in the car, he urged me to carry a bit more speed into the constant-radius turn, as I had been too close to the inside. He got out, and less than 10 laps later, I earned the dubious distinction of being the first to explore the kitty-litter (I wouldn't be the last, though). While no damage was done, and the two instructors watching didn't say a word about it, this made me a bit gun-shy for the rest of the class. It's all fun and games unless it's someone else's car .
Autocross #1
Still a bit weary from understeering off the track, we thankfully went back the training pad for some autocross action. Excellent...nothing to hit. The course consisted of a very fast kink to start, a couple of tight turns, and three long sweepers. We did two laps on each run, and every cone hit was a 1-second penalty. However, when they read out your time, they didn't tell you if you hit any cones, so it was hard to tell if you actually went slower on a particular run, or if it was because you hit a cone (sometimes it was obvious ). I was losing my autocross virginity here, but I picked it up pretty quick, and this became my favorite part of the class to that point. After 5 runs, my best was 1:03.0, setting my benchmark to break when we did this again on Day 3.
Day Three
Maricopa Oval w/Downshift
I was quite nervous to head back to Maricopa Oval the next day, but they had re-graded the gravel, so my tire tracks weren't still there to remind me. Fortunately, the drill today was to incorporate the heel-toe downshift at one end of the track, which meant the speed at the scary end was a bit slower than the day before. The instructors were standing at the downshift point, listening for the taddletale tire-chirp. From me, there was none . My instructor even told me that it sounded great from outside. Success! Of course, one lap I was headed for the sharp turn, and there was the little red Smart sitting off the track. Bob was watching and listening to us as we went by. It's kind of like when the teacher calls on you when you weren't paying attention, and your IQ suddenly drops by 50 points. Even though he's not there to criticize, you want to do well when an American motorsports legend is watching . A short while later, as I went by, Bob pulled out onto the track. I looked in my rear-view mirror, and saw Rusty in the passenger seat, tongue wagging. I couldn't help but chuckle--was Bob seriously going to show us up in a Smart with his dog riding shotgun? No, he was just heading to the other end of the track to observe from there. Still, for about 10 seconds, I was driving on the same track as Bob Bondurant! He didn't pass me, either 
.
Autocross #2
Same autocross course as the day before, but we got 10 runs this time. I improved a bit, landing a 1:01.8 on my last run. Looking at the overhead view of the course, I can see a couple places where I could have taken a different line and been much faster... Oh well. The best part of the whole class was yet to come...
Track Time
This was it...the grand finale. After lunch, it was time to finally hit the road course and see what we'd learned. We spent about half an hour in the classroom going over the track layout, where the visual references were, and where we should be shifting. There would be two upshifts and two downshifts between 2nd and 3rd. The Caddy is geared very long, so these were the only two gears we'd need. After the classroom session, we hopped in the instructor's car, and he gave us a tour of the track, stopping everywhere to point things out. After this excruciatingly-slow lap, he started to uncork it a bit, and finally, we were at top speed. He was flying around this track, driving with one hand and pointing with the other, throwing us around pretty good in the back seat. After that, we did a lead-and-follow, where each of us got to drive behind the instructor to see what a good lap should look like. We each did a couple laps, then rotated position so everyone could get a chance to follow the instructor car. After that we pulled into the pits for a quick Q&A, and then it was time to go solo! We would have 60 minutes of track time, and if we brought the car back in one piece, we would "graduate". This was the highlight of the whole course, and is the most fun I've ever had behind the wheel of a car. The track is 1.1 miles long, and there were only five of us, so if you timed it right coming out of the pits, it was like you were the only one out there. It's hard to describe the feeling, but when you're dancing with the car in perfect rythym, it's sublime. Even though it's a pretty high-speed lap, there wasn't much risk of putting the car off-track, so it was easy to push harder and harder. My instructor rode along for a couple laps, and complimented my ability to manage the car and keep it smooth and balanced. He gave me a couple of suggestions on where to pick up speed, and even drove a lap to show me, but it was harder than it looked without upsetting the car. At this point, it was just about fun, though. About halfway through the session, the coolant temperature started getting high again, so I had to shut off the A/C. Even though it wasn't very hot outside, the sun beating through the windows made it incredibly hot inside the car. I started sweating like a pig, but it didn't matter. The hour was over so quickly, I couldn't believe it. Kind of a tease, really 
. The whole track was great fun, but the favorite part for me was the fastest part. Coming off the final corner, hammering the throttle, hopping the curb on the kink, flying past the pits, braking at the 4-marker from 95, flicking down into 2nd, and throwing the car into the chicane was where I forgot that I was an average Joe for a second, and started to feel like a racer.
Here's me impersonating a driver with talent:
After the session, we had a debrief, and then they gave us our plaques, indicating that none of our credit cards were declined. We also got graded, which they neglected to mention until the very end. Apparently they grade everyone by the same standards, regardless of whether they're a racer-in-training or John Q. Public. The scale is 1 to 5, with 5 being mastery (unattainable). Professional drivers like Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon get grades in the 4.5 range, and an "average" grade for card-carrying civilians is 2.0-2.5. My score was 3.6, so I was pretty happy. I didn't bother to see what others in the class had gotten, because I didn't want to hurt my precious ego if everyone else had done even better.
So that's it. Absolutely exhausting, and ten ways of intense, but oh so much fun! I highly recommend taking a course like this--it's a fantastic experience!
Day One
Introduction
After surrendering my credit card number for the final payment and "incidentals" (should you buy a t-shirt or a new bumper for their car), all the students headed to the classroom for an hour-long introduction and tour, which included meeting Mr. Bob Bondurant himself, and his dog, Rusty. Bob spends a lot of time at his school, just wandering around and watching. Your heart skips a beat when you're driving, and you see him off to the side, watching you. He's a very nice guy, though, and is truly interested in how students are doing. During the tour, we stopped in the "museum", which is a room with a few vintage racecars, and a timeline on the wall, showing Bob's career. We stopped for a minute, and he shared a couple of war stories. Standing next to Bob while he described driving down the Mulsanne straight in the dark and driving for Ferrari at Watkins Glen made my hairs tingle just a little bit. Very surreal! Here are a few pictures of the facility:
Out back, most of the cars are parked. C6 Corvettes as far as the eye could see, though this is not what I would be driving:
Here is the shop, where they massage the poor vehicles after us baffoons are done abusing them for the day:
This is Mr. Bondurant's daily-driver. Yes, an ex-Grand Prix racer drives a Smart.
After a class photo, it was down to business. There were five of us in our class, and two instructors. My instructor was Austin Robison, who has a lot of off-road racing experience (Baja 1000 class winner and Dakar Rally competitor), and also has professional drifting experience. Drifting is not my cup of tea, but his car control ability is ridiculous!
Here was my car for the week (#26):
The CTS-V is quite heavy and large, but it handles very well, and has 430+ hp on tap. All in all, not too bad, though the gearbox is rubbish.
And here is the practice pad, where most of our exercises took place (the white CTS's are the instructor cars):
Throttle Steer
The first exercise was a very simple one. Start in the middle, hold the steering wheel at 1/2 turn, and slowly increase the throttle until you get all the way to the outside, and then lift. We did this in the instructor's car, and I was the first up. I stalled it twice before I finally got it to move. I guess Cadillac thought it was a good idea to give a family sedan a clutch pickup travel of .001 inches, and put it a quarter-inch off the floor, because that's the best way to get the groceries. Oh well. During Day 2, the instructor also stalled it, so I felt a little better, anyway. The clutch in the CTS-V that I drove was much easier.
Slalom #1
No explanation needed here. The technique was to turn in, straighten the wheel, and turn the other way in a 3-step motion. It works surprisingly well. We started at 25 mph, and worked up to 40. Even at the higher speed, this was easier than expected, though ESC helped.
Lane Change/Emergency Braking
This would be the some of the only "real" street driving we'd do. Down the track, there were three red/green lights. When all three went green, we would accelerate to 65 in the middle lane, and when we reached the coned area, the instructor would flip the lights, giving you one (or possibly none) clear lane to maneuver into. Nevertheless it was a good opportunity to see how the Caddy reacted to sharp, sudden inputs.
Skid Car
After lunch, we hopped in the infamous skid-car. This is a CTS fitted with outrigger wheels with hydraulic jacks, which the instructor can use to simulate low grip at the front or rear. He also had the choice to use the jacks to screw with you, which he happily did once or twice.
We did a few laps with understeer, and the rest was oversteer (more fun). With the reduced grip, it was very difficult to get the car truly straight before the next turn, so it really felt like driving on ice, and I had a hard time figuring out how much steering input I was giving it (is "straight" 1/2 turn or 1-1/2 turns?). Towards the end, we just started seeing how many times we could spin. I would've liked to have had a little more practice with this (maybe with just a tad more rear grip), as I still don't feel particularly comfortable with unpredicted oversteer.
Slalom #2
The last exercise for day 1 was the same slalom we saw in the morning, just to show us how much better we were, simply from having more time in the car.
Day Two
Heel-Toe Downshifting
Day two started with an introduction on how to walk in high-heels....heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe... Eh, nevermind. This was the primer on heel-toe downshifting, and the words we got were "I'm not going to lie, it's pretty tough in the CTS-V." Maybe if you have big feet, which I don't... This actually turned out to be pretty easy. The Caddy's pedals are in a decent position, and the flywheel must weigh about 50 lbs, because the revs don't exactly rise and fall in an instant. This made it easy to take it one step at a time, and that really helped. We went out to the training area, and drove down the side at about 55 mph. At the braking cone, we braked, pushed the clutch in, revved, shifted from 3rd to 2nd, dumped the clutch, turned around the tire stack, and did it again in the other direction. The first few attempts were a bit dodgy, but it came quickly, and I really started to enjoy it. Am I a racecar driver yet?
Short Oval
This was the first "track" exercise we did. In the training area was a short oval, with a constant radius turn at one end, and an increasing radius turn on the other end. They put out cones for braking, turn-in, apex, and exit, and we tried our hand at perfecting the trail-braking technique. I seemed to be faster than most, but I was cooking the brakes and overheating the car in the process. When the instructor went for a ride with me, he could smell the acrid brake fluid, and politely suggested that I give the pedal a bit more finesse
. We lapped for what seemed like forever, and my back and neck started to hurt from turning the same direction over and over. At least NASCAR drivers get banked turns...Braking/Turning
At this point, they were starting to prepare us for the upcoming track-time. The point of this drill was to get a better feel for the brake pedal, and how much pressure it would take to stop in a certain distance. We accelerated up to 60 mph, hit the first brake cone, and tried to stop between two cones at the end. Then we hit the brakes later and later, trying to stop between the same two cones. Last, we simulated a "wall" (a line of cones). They wanted us to see how well the car turns while braking with full ABS (answer: it doesn't). I mowed down 3 or 4 little cones on my first attempt
.Maricopa Oval
After lunch, we went out on track for the first time. The Maricopa Oval is 1/3 mile long, and consists of a constant-radius turn and an increasing-radius turn, just like the practice oval. However, this was much faster. On the short oval, we were in 2nd gear, and maybe reached 40 mph. Here, we were in third, and topping out around 70. There was also a real wall that we could hit, so this was the first drill where we could really damage the car.
. While my instructor was in the car, he urged me to carry a bit more speed into the constant-radius turn, as I had been too close to the inside. He got out, and less than 10 laps later, I earned the dubious distinction of being the first to explore the kitty-litter (I wouldn't be the last, though). While no damage was done, and the two instructors watching didn't say a word about it, this made me a bit gun-shy for the rest of the class. It's all fun and games unless it's someone else's car .Autocross #1
Still a bit weary from understeering off the track, we thankfully went back the training pad for some autocross action. Excellent...nothing to hit
. The course consisted of a very fast kink to start, a couple of tight turns, and three long sweepers. We did two laps on each run, and every cone hit was a 1-second penalty. However, when they read out your time, they didn't tell you if you hit any cones, so it was hard to tell if you actually went slower on a particular run, or if it was because you hit a cone (sometimes it was obvious ). I was losing my autocross virginity here, but I picked it up pretty quick, and this became my favorite part of the class to that point. After 5 runs, my best was 1:03.0, setting my benchmark to break when we did this again on Day 3.Day Three
Maricopa Oval w/Downshift
I was quite nervous to head back to Maricopa Oval the next day, but they had re-graded the gravel, so my tire tracks weren't still there to remind me
. Fortunately, the drill today was to incorporate the heel-toe downshift at one end of the track, which meant the speed at the scary end was a bit slower than the day before. The instructors were standing at the downshift point, listening for the taddletale tire-chirp. From me, there was none . My instructor even told me that it sounded great from outside. Success! Of course, one lap I was headed for the sharp turn, and there was the little red Smart sitting off the track. Bob was watching and listening to us as we went by. It's kind of like when the teacher calls on you when you weren't paying attention, and your IQ suddenly drops by 50 points. Even though he's not there to criticize, you want to do well when an American motorsports legend is watching . A short while later, as I went by, Bob pulled out onto the track. I looked in my rear-view mirror, and saw Rusty in the passenger seat, tongue wagging. I couldn't help but chuckle--was Bob seriously going to show us up in a Smart with his dog riding shotgun? No, he was just heading to the other end of the track to observe from there. Still, for about 10 seconds, I was driving on the same track as Bob Bondurant! He didn't pass me, either .Autocross #2
Same autocross course as the day before, but we got 10 runs this time. I improved a bit, landing a 1:01.8 on my last run. Looking at the overhead view of the course, I can see a couple places where I could have taken a different line and been much faster... Oh well. The best part of the whole class was yet to come...
Track Time
This was it...the grand finale. After lunch, it was time to finally hit the road course and see what we'd learned. We spent about half an hour in the classroom going over the track layout, where the visual references were, and where we should be shifting. There would be two upshifts and two downshifts between 2nd and 3rd. The Caddy is geared very long, so these were the only two gears we'd need. After the classroom session, we hopped in the instructor's car, and he gave us a tour of the track, stopping everywhere to point things out. After this excruciatingly-slow lap, he started to uncork it a bit, and finally, we were at top speed. He was flying around this track, driving with one hand and pointing with the other, throwing us around pretty good in the back seat. After that, we did a lead-and-follow, where each of us got to drive behind the instructor to see what a good lap should look like. We each did a couple laps, then rotated position so everyone could get a chance to follow the instructor car. After that we pulled into the pits for a quick Q&A, and then it was time to go solo! We would have 60 minutes of track time, and if we brought the car back in one piece, we would "graduate"
. This was the highlight of the whole course, and is the most fun I've ever had behind the wheel of a car. The track is 1.1 miles long, and there were only five of us, so if you timed it right coming out of the pits, it was like you were the only one out there. It's hard to describe the feeling, but when you're dancing with the car in perfect rythym, it's sublime. Even though it's a pretty high-speed lap, there wasn't much risk of putting the car off-track, so it was easy to push harder and harder. My instructor rode along for a couple laps, and complimented my ability to manage the car and keep it smooth and balanced. He gave me a couple of suggestions on where to pick up speed, and even drove a lap to show me, but it was harder than it looked without upsetting the car. At this point, it was just about fun, though. About halfway through the session, the coolant temperature started getting high again, so I had to shut off the A/C. Even though it wasn't very hot outside, the sun beating through the windows made it incredibly hot inside the car. I started sweating like a pig, but it didn't matter. The hour was over so quickly, I couldn't believe it. Kind of a tease, really . The whole track was great fun, but the favorite part for me was the fastest part. Coming off the final corner, hammering the throttle, hopping the curb on the kink, flying past the pits, braking at the 4-marker from 95, flicking down into 2nd, and throwing the car into the chicane was where I forgot that I was an average Joe for a second, and started to feel like a racer.Here's me impersonating a driver with talent:
After the session, we had a debrief, and then they gave us our plaques, indicating that none of our credit cards were declined. We also got graded, which they neglected to mention until the very end. Apparently they grade everyone by the same standards, regardless of whether they're a racer-in-training or John Q. Public. The scale is 1 to 5, with 5 being mastery (unattainable). Professional drivers like Tony Stewart and Jeff Gordon get grades in the 4.5 range, and an "average" grade for card-carrying civilians is 2.0-2.5. My score was 3.6, so I was pretty happy. I didn't bother to see what others in the class had gotten, because I didn't want to hurt my precious ego if everyone else had done even better
.So that's it. Absolutely exhausting, and ten ways of intense, but oh so much fun! I highly recommend taking a course like this--it's a fantastic experience!
. Unfortunately, it ain't cheap, but nothing worth doing ever is 
