Mrs. Pinecone and I just got back from doing a 2 day driving school at Lime Rock in CT. We bought gift certificates in June with their Moms, Dads, and Grads sale. http://www.skipbarber.com

The 2 day driving school is a high performance driving school, not a racing school, although a lot of the things taught can apply to racing or track days. The main things are car control and smoothing out your driving. http://www.skipbarber.com/driving_sc...ay_school.aspx

The course is taught using Dodge vehicles, Dakota trucks, Neons and Vipers.

The first day starts with some intros and some info about how the course will run. The class was divided into 3 groups (18 total, 6 per group) and one group stayed in the classroom for a vehicle dynamics class. Another group went out in the Neons for straight line braking, and out group headed out to the skid pad.

The skid pad training is in the Dakota trucks, running in 2 wheel drive. The fronts have Goodrich T/A Sport tires, the rears were racing slicks. And the skid pad was wet. So can you say little to NO rear traction. The morning session was on understeer and oversteer and corrections. Oversteer was induceed by both trailing throttle and power. They teach a CPR method, Correct, Pause, Recover. The typical steer into the skid only takes care of teh Correct and possibly Pause phase. But everyone learned what happens if you do not actively recover to avoid having the energy stored in the susepsnion launch you ito a violent spin in the other direction.

After a while the groups rotated, with our group headed for straight line braking. To start with we did a couple of ABS stops to get used to mashing the pedal. We both did well so after 1 - 2 stops, we got to turn the ABS off and work on threshold braking without a computer aid. Great fun, lots of tire smoke and eventually some very nice, short stops without ABS.

The classroom was last on vehicle dynamics. They discussed weight transfer, tire contact patch, and some other stuff that was pretty much review for me.

Lunch was provided at the track. After lunch the was some class on proper downshifting. Interestly they teach single clutch downshifting for street cars and double clutch for race cars, but will accept single or double clutching in this course.

The three groups went off with one groups on their "autocross" (sort of a small track) for downshifting, another group off to the second skid pad session, and the third for braking and turning. I don't remember the order we did them in, but the downshifting was in the Neons on a sort of kidney bean shaped track, up to thrid, brake and dwon to second, turn, accelerate upshift, brake, downshift, turn and repeat. Both of us quickly graduated to just running around o nour own letting those did not yet have this sill get more instructor time.

The afternoon skid pad was more slides and spin recoveries. They added a nice twist as they have a setup where the instructor can lock the rear wheels setting up more intense initial spin entries. So around and round and spin, CPR, get going and do it again. VERY good practice.

The brake while turning is trail braking. They set up some cones with a short straight section, then a curve. You are to enter at about 35 and brake and turn, avoding the cones or locking up. Again a couple of passes (many more for some students) with ABS, then trying it without ABS. We both found, that the best thing was to NOT think about modulating hte brakes, but letting our subconscious take care of it, with some nice turning stops recorded by each of us.

A short review in the classroom and the day was over. Boy did we sleep well that night.

Second day, starting with a talk about lines on the autocross course. Then one group to the autocross, one to the skid pad and one to the accident avoidance simulator.

We started with the skid pad again. This time they set up 4 gates and had you drive a square, wiht full throttle acceleration on the straights, then hard braking to trail braking through the corners. A little competition as each driver tried to catch the other truck. Good exercise on feeling how much traction there was for accelerating and some more skid onctorl practice when you added a wee bit too much throttle.

Next we moved to the autocross. By this time it had started to rain a bit. The autocross course is so slick that it was hard to walk on the wet pavement. LOTS of rotation and several spins in the Neons. Working the line with trail braking and putting the car where you wanted it to be.

The accident avoidance simulator is a lane change exercise, but the traffic light array was not working. You had three lans marked by cones, then a space without cones, and then three more lanes. The idea was that you would drive down one of the first set of lanes, then get a signal to go to another lane, move to it, then threshold brake to a stop. So we started with the middle lane with a radio call to go left or right. If you did well, they had you increase the speed. The idea is to toss the car for the first move, to give yourself time to make the second move. Then you moved to a double lane move as you went down the left or right lane and finished in the opposite lane. And this was all done without ABS for the final braking. The double lane toss is challenging, but great fun.

After lunch we split into two groups. One group did the Viper experience, the other the champagne slalom. Then you switched.

We did the Viper first, which was the same autocross course we ran in tre Neons, but with some 500 HP, and trying to get you to use it all on the straights. You got two sessions of about 5 laps each. Nice car, but not so impressive after driving the M3. But after everyone was done, the instructors gave rides. And remember, they aren't paying for the tires, so they worked on drifting. And spun several times, and I even got a ride through the infield grass.

The champagne slalom is based on a training exercise developed by Jackie Stewart. You have a bowl that attaches to the hood of the car with a tennis ball in it. You have to drive a tight autcross type course. Typical autocross penalties for hitting cones. The deal was though, if the ball came out of the bowl, you had to stop, get out, put the ball back in the bowl, get back in, buckle up and continue, with the clock running. This was run as a team competition with two runs per person, but adding up the best run of each driver for a team total time.

After that came the Super Special Surprise. Which I am sworn to secrecy to not reveal, but think mini-endurance race.

After that, back the classroom for graduation.

All in all a very fun two days, with LOTS of learning and seat time. The instructors were great, from club racers to pro racers. You got to drive with virtually every instructor there. And they all had good advice. They also did an excellent job of pushing everyone to their personal limit, but without making it obvious that some people's limits were lower than others.

Also neat new deal, for a $200 deposit, at the course, you lock in a 20% discount on almost any other Skip Barber course to be taken in the next 12 months. So we put in deposits. You see, they run an Ultra High Performance school, where they do much more Viper seat time, and a longer autocross setup to get higher speeds and some more elevation changes to play with weight trasnfer.