Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From PDX to HPDE: How WDCR SCCA Built a Community-Driven Track Experience

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From PDX to HPDE: How WDCR SCCA Built a Community-Driven Track Experience · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Grand Touring Motorsports started as a social group of car enthusiasts,
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  but we've expanded into all sorts of motorsports disciplines, and we
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  want to share our stories with you.
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  Years of racing, wrenching, and motorsports experience brings
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  together a top notch collection of knowledge and information
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  through our podcast, Brake Fix.
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  What's going on everyone, and welcome to another installment of Brake Fix.
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  I'm your host, Brad, aka The Triple Six.
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  With me, as always, is our co host, Eric.
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  Tonight, we have a panel of folks from the Washington DC region of
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  the Sports Car Club of America here to educate us on their new and
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  improved high performance driver's education program, also known as HPDE.
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  With us tonight are Chief Instructor Joe Obenberger, Assistant Chief
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  Instructor Barron Mills, and former HPDE Chairman Travis Dixon.
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  Welcome to the show, gentlemen.
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  Thank you.
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  Hi Eric.
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  Hi Eric.
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  Our goal tonight is to continue the conversation we've been having with
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  our listeners over several BrakeFix episodes where we introduce the
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  idea of high performance driving to folks that are new to motorsports.
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  Folks who are curious about what they can do with the sports car they
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  have sitting in their garage, or maybe aren't aware that organizations
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  like SCCA offer a service like HPDE.
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  In our preparation for this episode, we found a little bit
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  of history on your guys program.
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  Originally, it was known as PDX or performance driving experience.
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  It is now known as the SCCA HPDE and has been around for quite some time.
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  From what we found, it started in the 2006 to 2007 season.
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  And we can attribute some of that to two members of GTM who were influential
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  in getting that program off the ground.
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  Racer, Ron Sherry and Matthew Yip.
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  Thanks And from what we've gathered, the original format was
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  influenced by their experiences.
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  From other organizations like BMW, Audi club, and others.
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  It also turns out that WDCR was actually the first region in
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  SCCA to have an HPDE program.
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  But like every new endeavor, SCCA HPDE wasn't without its
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  challenges, but it has become a very successful and reputable service.
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  But, but let's fast forward.
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  Let's focus on what's new and what's changed.
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  How has SCCA grown the program and evolved it over the last 13 years?
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  What's the future of SCCA HPDE look like and why should you come out to
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  their next event to check it out?
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  Well, Joe, Barron, and Travis are here to answer all those questions and more.
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  Why don't you tell us a little bit about SCCA HPDE?
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  I think a little of the back story.
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  back into that history of it is that the program was started by people from
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  a bunch of different other programs.
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  So even with, you know, Matt and Ron were involved, some other folks like from the
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  autocross committee, Jim Howard, who's no longer in the area with us, you know,
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  those are the folks that they were on the board at the time had been part of solo
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  committee, a bunch of different areas that said, Hey, we want to get into this,
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  into this new area here and a new market really, you know, we saw other clubs doing
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  it and We were always pretty shameless about trying to, you know, beg, borrow
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  and steal the best parts we could find.
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  And that's why it was helpful for folks like Matthew and others to go
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  out and, you know, run with other clubs, instructed and help put on
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  events and such to come back and say, Hey, this is what we saw worked here.
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  It doesn't work.
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  And we sort of tried to cherry pick the best elements from
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  that and put them together.
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  At the same time, the collective mindset was a lot of around.
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  Don't make this into another SCCA program, you know, it was purposely done to not be
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  as as serious business as uh, As some of the other competition programs were when
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  we started we didn't have time trials running It was just pdx, which was the
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  worst program name ever You know, naming after an airport, never a good sign.
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  And even today, it's actually, HPD really isn't the name now.
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  It's actually track events is the official name, you know, SCCA still
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  has intellectual property stuff.
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  So they have to have some name that they can stamp a trademark on or whatever.
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  But for our purposes, as, as a, as a regional club, we've called HPD
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  because that's what people know.
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  Understand and Eric, I'm sure you, you as well as anyone understand
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  that we're not the only game in town.
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  And you sort of got to fit in, you can differentiate, but same
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  time, you've got to make it clear to people what it is you do.
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  And if you say that, they go, Oh, okay.
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  I know that my buddy talks about that at work.
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  So that's what it is.
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  To be clear.
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  We should, we should have said this up front, I guess, but, uh, there's
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  actually two HPD programs within.
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  W.
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  D.
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  C.
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  R.
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  S.
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  T.
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  C.
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  A.
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  Travis, correct me if I'm wrong, but until last year, our H.
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  P.
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  D.
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  E.
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  program was the only full time program independently running program.
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  Nationwide for SCCA.
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  No, there were plenty of others.
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  Uh, yeah.
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  And even in the development of the program, St.
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  Louis region was another one that was sort of an early, early developer of it.
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  And we've actually, you know, shared rule sets and then when them and them
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  was such, so we're probably running the biggest standalone events or some
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  other event or something, but it varies.
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  The, the, the, the original PDX program was designed to be flexible.
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  It was designed to have a very minimal rule set to allow the regions to
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  use it as they saw fit for that.
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  They could, they could use it as, as a fill in for a race.
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  We were probably one of the first clubs, regions I should say, doing
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  standalone HBD events though in SCCA.
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  Most of them were using it either as just as a, as a, as a fill in, you know, in
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  between race groups or, you know, Some of them we're using as a worker perk.
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  It was, it was, Hey, we're doing a PDX and the entries are all
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  the flaggers who are out there.
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  We gave it to them as a freebie to say thanks kind of thing.
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  So again, you know, flexibility in the room that you can get away with
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  that underneath the region, the SCCA W uh, Washington DC region.
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  There are now two HPD programs and the other one started middle
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  or late last year at Dominion.
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  They have their own program chair.
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  They have their own chief instructor.
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  We're Involved with that.
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  We're helping them bring that up.
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  They've got a good start there.
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  I think they're doing pretty good Let me clear that there are actually two.
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  Uh, we're very very closely related Yeah, the core group of us that they
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  put on the events at summit point.
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  We've actually done I think Two events at Dominion, the DC region
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  board has been very interested from the inception of Dominion and having
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  a presence there and trying to participate and work with them on that.
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  And we actually did a couple HPD, you know, events there for a lot of us that
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  are based, you know, north of the beltway.
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  We basically said that, look, you know, we can, we want to keep doing
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  things well, quality over quantity.
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  So the region actually reached out and conscripted a few folks who
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  were interested and from down that.
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  Part of the world to help duplicate the program that we have at some point, and
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  implement similar things down there, both HPD and the time trials program, actually.
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  And I know that your sister org in New Jersey is also
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  doing events at NJMP as well.
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  Not probably not as many as you guys, but they do a few a year now.
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  Um, I, I don't know.
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  I can't remember which region is doing that.
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  I know we've had several years ago and over the years we've had folks from other
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  regions like, like Southern New Jersey come down and spend time with us and,
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  and, and basically see how we do it.
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  And same pattern as us, beg, borrow and steal the things you like and that work
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  and then, uh, take them home and, and put them to use in, in your, your environment.
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  I mean as much as I try to stay agnostic, but yes, you're right There's
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  multiple groups out there to look into I guess which begs the question,
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  you know What gets a new driver out of their garage to come out and
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  burn some gas on a track with SCCA?
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  SCCA is A little bit more unique with the other clubs is this whole
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  community that we seem to have, especially in our classrooms, the novice
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  classroom, the intermediate classroom.
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  There's this sense of community that we're bringing people together and
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  that when they attend the classrooms, when they attend the events, they're a
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  part of this, this greater community.
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  It is a volunteer organization.
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  Everyone who attends Barron's does this all the time.
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  We're all volunteers.
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  And I think that builds a welcoming, environment for students to come to.
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  I think kind of the generic comment on HPDE is for me,
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  it's an adrenaline rush, right?
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  It's just a lot of fun.
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  And, and one of the neat things about it is you can, once you come out and
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  just after the first event or two, you There's so many different areas
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  that can interest different people.
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  Some people love buying speed and working on their car.
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  Some people like just improving their driving skills.
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  Other people like the community, other people come out and drive at 60
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  percent all the time and never really advance and they're happy there and
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  we fully support that kind of driver.
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  Once you kind of get your foot in the door and come out for an event, there's
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  so many different ways to enjoy the hobby.
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  Other than just coming out and trying to drive at the limit of
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  the car and the limit of yourself.
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  That's really, really a fun part, a fun aspect of the hobby.
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  So I'd say one thing you missed on the list there is being able
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  to come out and drive full tilt without getting a speeding ticket.
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  I mean, that's a beautiful thing.
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  There's that.
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  Travis brought this up on time trials.
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  That's something unique to SCCA.
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  And I think students come out to our events and they
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  see time trials taking place.
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  I mean, it's right below, you know, racing.
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  It's right, right there.
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  And I think they see that.
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  And a lot of them are like, that's what I want to do.
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  That's, that's for me.
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  You know, as Barron was saying, you got the student that is happy driving 50%,
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  you know, they give it to a hundred and that's as fast as they want to go.
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  And no more.
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  When I first started doing this, I would see guys at VIR
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  coming in in their Mayottas.
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  Sleeping in their Miatas and then you got the guy coming in the giant RV, you
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  know With like the pit crew and three Ferraris and the whole breadth folks that
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  attend the events As far as what gets people out word of mouth is the biggest
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  thing We see that with other clubs and i'm not saying in any any way to detract
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  from it at all Uh, of the different clubs have different fields for, for how it is.
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  And it's groups of people, even, even within the instructors and
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  such, you know, we, we've never tried to go in and tell people they
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  shouldn't run with somebody else.
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  That's not, not the way we work.
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  We say, this is how we do it.
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  And if you want to come play with us, cool, have fun.
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  You know, we understand if you guys want to go hang with your buddies and
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  the other club that's running somewhere else that weekend, that's cool too.
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  You know, you're not going to compete against having a good time with friends at
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  all, ever, no matter what the product is.
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  And I've heard that before.
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  It's a sport of convenience.
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  Sometimes, right?
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  I want to go to mid Ohio.
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  So whoever signed up the weekend I'm available at mid Ohio, that's
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  where I'm going to go, right?
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  Or that's who I'm going to go party with.
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  What's your elevator pitch?
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  To say, Hey, come out and try WDCR HPDE compared to other orgs.
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  Yeah.
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  I kind of in a nutshell, when people ask me that I have, I've got a couple
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  examples, but one, one of them is it is an HPDE program, but yet it's part of SCCA.
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  So we get the leverage, a lot of that.
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  talent down into HPD.
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  We have guys, drivers and instructors and classroom instructors that hold track
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  records at SCCA that are very well spoken that share that wealth of experience
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  to people that are there the first day.
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  When you're looking at differentiators as well, you know, from an event
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  perspective, one of the things I like to point out is, is that back
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  to the whole being a club perspective thing, is that we're not out here.
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  To pay anybody's mortgage.
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  Nobody is looking for a paycheck from what we do.
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  The other thing I think that we bring is a lot of the leadership team, the
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  committee, and a lot of the instructors instruct for various organizations.
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  So we, we get to see what others are doing right and wrong.
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  And we bring that back and try to integrate it into the program.
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  So right now I think we're kind of at this perfect balance where we have
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  the Talent and expertise of the whole national SEC organization available
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  to us if we need it, but over the last couple of years and probably even longer
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  than that, we've been pretty flexible.
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  We really, really, really try to listen to our customers and we make a major
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  change once a year and we look at little minor tweaks literally after every event.
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  So we're always listening to the customer.
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  I will add that I think again, it's, it's this community that I think we have that.
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  That a lot of the people that come to an SCCA event.
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  Come to the following SCCA events to have that same sense of community.
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  I mean, back when I first started doing this, I didn't care
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  who was coming to the events.
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  I was going by myself and I would hang out by myself and drive and have a blast.
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  But once you build up your, your kind of core set of people, you know,
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  especially if you find someone that you're close to, you know, a speed
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  wise and you can follow them around the course and you, you kind of start
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  building this, You know, your own little group that you play with all the time.
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  And now, for me, I mean, to go to an event where I don't know anyone
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  is kind of a foreign concept.
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  But, as far as our instructors go, I mean, I'll even say during the instructor
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  meeting, you know, if your student asks about events, tell them about track days.
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  Tell them about NASA events, hooked on driving, chin events,
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  and what you think of those events.
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  How much track time the students get per dollar.
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  That was what was important to me back in the day is, you know, I'm
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  forking out, you know, 350 bucks.
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  How much time do I get on track?
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  That was a big, you know, deciding factor for me.
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  So how much time on average does a student get at an SCCA event for their dollar?
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  So it's different per run group.
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  So our novice students get four 25 minute sessions.
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  Intermediate gets some additional time.
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  I think they get 120 minutes total per day and advanced
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  gets like 130 minutes per day.
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  So it's a significant amount of track time and I think that was one of the
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  changes that as Barron pointed out that we made early on, you know, we A
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  lot of the instructors instructed with all these other organizations, and we
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  looked at how much track dime per dollar do they get with each of these clubs.
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  You made a very good point, and a lot of people see racing at the track as
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  equivalent to, let's say, golfing or skeet shooting or flying planes or boats.
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  And in reality, it's not that expensive, and since you were talking about
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  numbers, and It's 6 per minute based on the numbers you gave me for, for a
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  novice student and versus an Ottercross.
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  And I know it's huge in SCCA, but it comes out to 17 a minute at an Ottercross.
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  So value for money, track is worth it.
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  And I always like to point out when people compare the two that if you come out to
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  a track event, we have toilets of flush.
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  We've got that going for us.
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  And you're not obligated to work either.
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  Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 14:29
  Once in a while you get the drag racer that shows up and he gets three
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  laps in and it's more track time than he's got in the last three.
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  Three race events.
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  And he's, you know, very, very happy about it.
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  Oh, absolutely.
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  That was a challenge when we started time trials actually was we sort of
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  tried to cross market and involve the hill climb community, you know, some
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  of those folks like, like, I think Blue Ridge region runs on Jefferson a lot.
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  Do they have a lot like, like a more moral day or labor day event every year?
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  I think I can't remember which of what it is or whatever, but
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  there's a lot of cars out there.
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  They're really neat race cars.
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  You know, they're, these are open wheel cars and some really neat
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  stuff, but they're designed to run.
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  Like an autocross car that they'll go out and do three laps and that's it.
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  They have to come in at that point in time.
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  They're not designed to do that, which led to some interesting evolution and
• 15:14
  changes over time with our time trials.
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  Bram, we started out doing that, doing like three lap time trials with, you
• 15:20
  know, one car at a time kind of thing before evolving to the current format.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, and not to diverge too far off, cause I am a trialer.
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  I've trialed with you guys and Emrah and some other groups and
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  I'm a nine, nine lap maximum.
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  Three warm, three hot, three cold.
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  That's it.
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  And I come in, whether, I don't use the whole session because I
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  figure if I can't do it in nine laps, I shouldn't be out there.
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  But, uh, that's, that's aside the point.
• 15:42
  A lot of buzz in the last couple of years around an SCCA construct
• 15:46
  known as Track Night in America.
• 15:48
  And what I'm wondering is, is this a gateway?
• 15:54
  So I've never been to one, but we have had several students that have come from Track
• 15:59
  Night in America that enjoyed, right?
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  That, that loved to be able to get to a track, you know,
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  spend a couple hours there.
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  It's, it's inexpensive way to get onto a track.
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  They enjoyed it.
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  And when they came to an HPDE, they understood, they very clearly
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  understood the difference, you know, capital E for us, right?
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  The education part, very much more interested in being very
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  clear in the education part.
• 16:25
  For the HPD portion track night.
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  America actually started as a push forward from the autocross side into
• 16:32
  other faster things on track and such.
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  So it was a little different mentality.
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  The track night part came from from their their concept of coming
• 16:41
  in and doing track events middle of the week in the afternoon.
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  Bug out of work at lunchtime, head to the track, and spend the afternoon.
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  And they actually had a, you know, more autocross type setup.
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  I don't know if they still do or not, but where you, you could work and run
• 16:55
  within the same day, flag a, flag a session, run a session kind of thing.
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  By doing midweek, they were able to keep track.
• 17:01
  Cost pretty low.
• 17:02
  They got some really great deals with tracks and it was a good taste
• 17:04
  for people that didn't want to commit three, four, 500 bucks to a
• 17:08
  weekend at the racetrack to do it.
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  They wanted more of that taste of, of, of go out and spend, you know, a hundred
• 17:14
  or 200 bucks program differences is that they have almost, uh, I don't think
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  they've ever done in car instruction.
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  Their model has always been to do track side instruction.
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  They have driver coaches, which are looking and observing.
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  That behavior and making adjustments in between sessions more than anything.
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  And whereas we were taking it more to it, to a direct feedback model with
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  having people in the right seat and offering that, that direct feedback
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  and, and, and coaching that goes beyond what you can see from, from
• 17:44
  standing on a corner, watching a cargo.
• 17:45
  Yeah.
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  We call that the send it system.
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  Nothing wrong with it.
• 17:52
  I mean, you know, it's, it's different ways to get the job done and, and,
• 17:55
  and everybody's going to find a, find an event that works for them, you
• 17:57
  know, between what they can, what they want to spend, what kind of feedback
• 18:01
  they want and what they're willing to tolerate from, from an event organizer,
• 18:05
  you know, as far as structure and, and time on track and, and everything else.
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  I'll echo Baron a little bit.
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  I've never been to a track night in America and here
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  I've been saying all along.
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  We, we go to all these different events and we take the best of all of them,
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  and, and none of us here have been to a, to a Trackman America event.
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  I think that's primarily because of the, the lack of instruction.
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  For me, looking back, you know, my first track day, the things that you learn, you
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  know, keeping your eyes up, taking in the whole scene, being smooth on the controls.
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  is very hard to teach without someone in the right seat.
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  A concern of mine, I guess, is that you get folks that are going through track
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  nine America, they're just dropping the seat, going on track and driving.
• 18:47
  They might be developing habits that that are hard to unlearn when
• 18:52
  you really want to start going fast, learning the right line.
• 18:55
  Learning the techniques, I think, would be an issue, but again, never been.
• 19:00
  It's a cheap way to get a couple hours on track, right?
• 19:03
  PDE is more of a money and time commitment.
• 19:07
  There's no doubt about that.
• 19:08
  I think it's more than pays for itself in the type and quality of
• 19:13
  instruction that you get at an HPD.
• 19:15
  But let's set expectations here, right?
• 19:17
  Because I'm still playing the part of our listener who's sitting on the
• 19:20
  couch kind of going, Eh, well, okay.
• 19:22
  It seems cheap compared to autocross compared to drag racing.
• 19:26
  If I look at it at, at dollars per minute, right.
• 19:28
  Or dollars per lap, but there's still a fear factor here, right.
• 19:33
  And there's still maybe, do I have the right car question?
• 19:36
  So let's try to answer some of those.
• 19:37
  Let's, let's talk about safety a little bit, but let's also, let's set
• 19:40
  expectations and say, what is it you really need to come out to have a good
• 19:44
  time at a DE the simplest approach, right.
• 19:47
  Is, you know, we have, we have people showing up.
• 19:49
  And literally in station wagons right in modern like a BMW station wagon that
• 19:56
  is fully stock been looked over real well mechanically and that's it look the
• 20:03
  first time you're on track you're not pushing the car you're pushing yourself.
• 20:08
  And that's, that's really, really key.
• 20:10
  The thing that you really have to worry about at the track is the person
• 20:13
  driving the car, not the car, especially the first three or four events.
• 20:17
  So you can go off from there, right?
• 20:19
  You can get it all kinds of detail of what you really need to do to the car.
• 20:22
  We have a tech sheet that, that you check off.
• 20:24
  It gives you a list of things to review.
• 20:26
  They'll look at the car.
• 20:27
  The lowest barrier to entry.
• 20:29
  Where we would draw the line was you need to at least bring your own helmet.
• 20:32
  You know, we, we, we sort of tried to try to put something in of, you know, at
• 20:35
  least get them committed at that level.
• 20:37
  And, you know, honestly, we, we've always had it in there that, you know, you
• 20:40
  can go to OG racing and rent a helmet.
• 20:42
  If that's where it's at, that's where you want to be.
• 20:44
  We actually have a set of loaner helmets we use for giving rides and
• 20:47
  such in non COVID 19, uh, seasons.
• 20:49
  Love to take somebody who hasn't been on a track before and put them in a
• 20:52
  car with an instructor and let them go and see what the track is like.
• 20:56
  So I have some really good videos somewhere.
• 20:58
  We stuck a brand new person in the right seat of a factory five Cobra and I stuck a
• 21:04
  GoPro in front of him looking back at him.
• 21:05
  And you know, you can just see the Fun and terror in their eyes all at the same time.
• 21:10
  It's glorious That's a really good point, right?
• 21:13
  I mean if somebody has a question about whether or not they should come
• 21:16
  out and pay the money Come out and visit us right just come out and hang
• 21:19
  out for a half a day or drop by The people there are very very friendly.
• 21:25
  You can walk up to Anybody and ask a question and you'll get help.
• 21:29
  And we're very, very inclusive relative to visitors and new people.
• 21:34
  So it's a really, it's really good environment for that as
• 21:37
  far as the cars themselves go.
• 21:39
  I mean, I would say pre 1990 ish.
• 21:43
  Yeah.
• 21:43
  If your car is pre 1990, you know, there, there's going to be some
• 21:46
  things that you'll want to do.
• 21:48
  But Modern cars today are, are so rock solid.
• 21:52
  You know, we've taken a rental Ford Fiesta, put five guys in it and just
• 21:56
  beat the hell out of it on the track.
• 21:58
  And It's fine.
• 22:00
  You know, yeah, the brakes are a little bit hot, but it, you
• 22:05
  know, they, they don't break.
• 22:06
  They don't overheat.
• 22:07
  They, you know, modern cars are really, really good.
• 22:10
  I mean, and Barron mentioned, you know, the track day prep tech sheet,
• 22:14
  check your pads, check your brake fluid, you know, tires, coolant, oil,
• 22:17
  transmission, differential fluid, lug nuts, you know, wheel studs, uh, you
• 22:21
  know, wheel bearings, that sort of thing, you know, check those things over.
• 22:24
  But we also have a tech crew on site, you know, to help out
• 22:28
  with those sorts of things.
• 22:29
  We've tried to make sure that the rules are written in a way that that's
• 22:32
  inclusive, wherever, wherever reasonable.
• 22:34
  For, for obvious reasons, you know, we can't put your average,
• 22:37
  you know, wallowing SUV out there.
• 22:39
  It just doesn't make sense.
• 22:41
  But we took pains in creating the, the rule set to allow for those, the, the
• 22:47
  sport truck and sport SUV kind of thing.
• 22:50
  You know, we've had Ford Lightnings out there on You know, a 30 series
• 22:54
  tire looks like the whole thing is lowered and it goes out there and
• 22:58
  starts passing Porsches and such.
• 22:59
  It's, it's, it's hilarious.
• 23:00
  You know, I, we, we literally just had a conversation with a guy came out at our
• 23:04
  previous event, flagged for us, had a blast, wants to come out and run again.
• 23:08
  He's building an S10 extreme, you know, with a cage and everything lowered.
• 23:13
  And I've seen those autocross before.
• 23:14
  And I know that they're actually reasonable.
• 23:16
  You know, that's a little crazy, even the grand scheme of things.
• 23:20
  But from, from that, yeah, that's.
• 23:22
  As long as he builds it, builds it safe and the thing can, can stop
• 23:25
  and, and, and not, uh, be a danger to itself and others from that standpoint.
• 23:29
  Yeah.
• 23:29
  Let's let, let's see it out there.
• 23:31
  I, I like the fact that you say that it didn't need to turn, it
• 23:33
  just needs to be able to stop . Well turn eventually, but , so.
• 23:39
  Okay.
• 23:40
  I mean, that kind of leads into a question that's probably on everybody's mind and
• 23:44
  I think the answer probably goes without saying, but we're gonna say it anyway.
• 23:48
  Is it safe?
• 23:49
  Here's the thing, you'll hear folks at HPD events say driving on track
• 23:54
  is safer than driving on the street.
• 23:55
  I don't believe that's true, just me personally.
• 23:59
  However, I mean, the speeds are higher, but you do have, you have
• 24:02
  an instructor with you in the car.
• 24:04
  You are driving the car.
• 24:06
  Things happen, of course.
• 24:07
  As far as in SCCA goes, I mean, we have pretty good track record
• 24:11
  as far as Any, anything happening during our events and pretty rare.
• 24:17
  We have any sort of actual metal bending at an event, extremely,
• 24:22
  extremely rare that we have any metal bending events in our novice run group
• 24:27
  where we have instructors in the car.
• 24:29
  Usually that's.
• 24:31
  Ends up being some mechanical issue that has happened where a
• 24:35
  car goes off track and usually it goes off track and that's it.
• 24:38
  Nothing gets bent.
• 24:40
  Compare doing 140, 150 multiple times in a 20 minute session on the beltway.
• 24:46
  It, yeah, it's safer to do it on the track.
• 24:48
  I guarantee that.
• 24:49
  No doubt about it.
• 24:50
  You know, risk increases with speed.
• 24:52
  You know, it's just.
• 24:53
  Uh, part of the game, you know, and I wouldn't tell anybody to put their
• 24:57
  car out there that they can't risk, you know, if that's your daily driver,
• 25:01
  I don't want to see it, not be able to get to work on Monday morning, you
• 25:03
  know, I would feel bad about that.
• 25:04
  I'm not going to try and short code and tell anybody that nothing can
• 25:07
  happen because things can happen through yourself and others actions
• 25:10
  or inactions, things go pear shape.
• 25:12
  It's, it's a fact of life.
• 25:13
  What we try and provide is a safe way to explore the limits that
• 25:17
  you can't do on public roads.
• 25:19
  I'm going to say, you know, look, it's a high speed sport, right?
• 25:22
  And it's a, it's, it's got some adrenaline associated with it.
• 25:25
  It's as dangerous as the driver wants to make it right.
• 25:28
  Limited in novice, at least limited by the instructor.
• 25:34
  So you can drive at a, at a very moderate, you know, high speed with a lot of margin
• 25:39
  and have a lot of fun out there, but it is a high speed sport, nothing like racing.
• 25:43
  It's not demolition Derby.
• 25:44
  Like Joe said, we have a, we have a really good safety record.
• 25:47
  And by safety, meaning.
• 25:48
  any sort of not not talking about harm to a human.
• 25:53
  We're talking about simple things like bending metal.
• 25:55
  That's actually very rare.
• 25:57
  It's rare.
• 25:57
  It's rare again with S.
• 25:59
  C.
• 25:59
  C.
• 25:59
  A.
• 25:59
  There's this, you know, when we have the novice classroom, all
• 26:03
  the students are there together.
• 26:04
  We're all talking.
• 26:05
  We all get to know each other a little bit so we can say, Oh,
• 26:09
  that's barren in the gray BMW.
• 26:11
  That's, you know, bill in the And you have this spectrum of cars, right?
• 26:18
  Everything from, you know, uh, VW Golfs to Miatas to Corvettes to McLarens, right?
• 26:25
  So you have this whole spread, but we're in an environment that all
• 26:30
  those cars can play well together.
• 26:31
  They all know, you know, we all know each other.
• 26:33
  And.
• 26:34
  You build up that sense of community so that when you're on track
• 26:37
  together, you can trust each other.
• 26:39
  That guy in front of you in the McLaren with, you know, so and so
• 26:43
  as an instructor isn't just going to bury the brakes on the straightaway
• 26:47
  for no reason when you're flat on the floor behind him trying to catch him.
• 26:50
  So I think that that community builds.
• 26:52
  Uh, a way to help mitigate some of the safety to borrow a
• 26:56
  phrase from Ross Bentley, right?
• 26:57
  The E and HPDE stands for education and we're going to talk about that a
• 27:01
  little bit more as we progress here in the conversation But I just wanted to
• 27:04
  bring it up because it is a question that we're asked more often than
• 27:07
  not as coaches How dangerous is it?
• 27:09
  How safe is it?
• 27:10
  Is it this is it that as we said everything comes motorsport, but In the
• 27:16
  HPDE world, the risk is mitigated by the fact you have a coach in the right seat.
• 27:20
  A lot of other things are taken care of, speeds are lower, et
• 27:22
  cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 27:23
  So that's good.
• 27:24
  But the next question that usually crops up, you know, we've got
• 27:27
  our, our gal or guy going, Oh man, this is really exciting.
• 27:30
  I've mitigated the risk or I've accepted the risk.
• 27:32
  I still want to do this.
• 27:33
  I want to take my, you know, BMW 330 to the track and I want to go have fun.
• 27:37
  What happens if, you know, something were to go pear shaped, as Travis said,
• 27:41
  will my insurance company cover me?
• 27:44
  And if they don't, where do we go from there?
• 27:47
  Our answer to mitigating things going bad sometimes involves being
• 27:53
  perfectly willing to cut loose a risk.
• 27:56
  If somebody is not able to bring a car that's properly prepared, a driver that's
• 28:00
  properly prepared, a mental attitude that is in line The goals of the program
• 28:05
  and the rest of the people on the track.
• 28:07
  We've always been more than happy to say, look, here's your money back.
• 28:11
  I'm sorry.
• 28:11
  You didn't have a good time.
• 28:12
  Want to find out how you can change things to fix it?
• 28:14
  Let us know.
• 28:15
  But as an organizer, I've always wanted to put the safety of, of my,
• 28:19
  my instructors first and foremost, my staff, and also the other participants
• 28:23
  up there, the 300 bucks from some guy who who's out there and thinks he knows
• 28:29
  more than everybody else is not worth it.
• 28:31
  You know, we can refund his money.
• 28:32
  And.
• 28:33
  So I'm going to ask it this way, SCCA, the parent organization can't recommend
• 28:37
  that a driver use track insurance.
• 28:39
  We talked about track insurance on a previous episode.
• 28:41
  So our listeners are probably familiar with that.
• 28:43
  And if you're not, please go back and check out the things I wish
• 28:47
  I knew as a new episode where we dive into that a little bit deeper.
• 28:50
  So I'm going to ask you guys, what's your opinion on track insurance?
• 28:54
  Should students, especially folks that have never been to the track, look into it
• 28:58
  or purchase it in your personal opinion?
• 29:00
  So I had a buddy, he had a GT3.
• 29:02
  60, 000 car and he would always get track day insurance.
• 29:06
  I don't, I don't know how much it costs per again, but so he got the
• 29:09
  insurance and he had on Shenandoah, one of the suspension arms broke
• 29:14
  and car went into the wall.
• 29:16
  He's fine.
• 29:17
  Car was not very rare, by the way.
• 29:19
  Very rare.
• 29:20
  That's true.
• 29:21
  That is very rare.
• 29:23
  Track insurance covered it completely.
• 29:25
  And so it works.
• 29:27
  It's not a scam.
• 29:28
  Anyone's worried about that.
• 29:29
  And that's in lieu of your standard insurance, which basically stops
• 29:33
  once you cross the threshold of the, of the campus itself, right?
• 29:37
  Most people aren't really aware of that.
• 29:39
  Although we did cover that in the previous episode.
• 29:40
  I just want to kind of point it out, reiterate that fact.
• 29:43
  Yeah.
• 29:43
  And we've had, we've had, uh, fortunately a very, very small
• 29:46
  number, but, but a nonzero number of people that have had to exercise
• 29:49
  the, uh, the track insurance option.
• 29:51
  And, and one of the things that, that we're very careful of is that again,
• 29:54
  back to the whole, you know, yeah, it's bureaucracy, but you know, we
• 29:58
  have a well defined incident reporting procedure, again, tied to our event
• 30:02
  insurance, where if something more than a.
• 30:05
  bump into the tires happens.
• 30:07
  We're going to take some notes and write up something and, and more
• 30:09
  importantly, be available to somebody if they have an oops, if they have an
• 30:13
  issue, we'll spend time to talk with their carrier and explain to them what
• 30:17
  the event was and what it happens.
• 30:18
  And by the way, we can provide a pretty significant amount of documentation
• 30:21
  to show that, that this was in fact a instructed educational event
• 30:26
  that they were participating in.
• 30:27
  As for, as for opinion, you know, as an organizer, even not for a couple
• 30:31
  of things there, I can't afford to ball my car up and walk away.
• 30:34
  I buy the event insurance.
• 30:35
  Travis said it well in an email exchange we had, and it's, you know, whatever
• 30:39
  you bring to the track, you know, if something bad happens, that shouldn't put
• 30:44
  you in any sort of severe financial bind.
• 30:47
  If the way you want to do that is to bring a 3, 000 Miata,
• 30:51
  That you can walk away from.
• 30:53
  That's great.
• 30:53
  If you're bringing an expensive car and you're extremely wealthy,
• 30:56
  that's fine too, but another way to buy that ability to just to walk
• 31:00
  away is to buy track and shirt.
• 31:02
  The other thing, the reason we're kind of harping on this issue here is
• 31:06
  there's often a misconception that D E.
• 31:10
  Is racing and racing is D.
• 31:11
  E.
• 31:12
  And I just wanted to make sure that we clarified that it's not.
• 31:14
  And that's why again, we'll deep dive a little deeper into Barron's domain.
• 31:18
  We're talking about what is the expectation of what's going to be learned
• 31:21
  in the classroom and things like that.
• 31:22
  But before we get into that, let's let's kind of dive in just a little bit into,
• 31:26
  uh, How someone goes about getting into an event, kind of crossing that gate
• 31:30
  saying, yeah, I'm going to do this.
• 31:32
  So I know there's some peculiarities with respect to how SCCA does
• 31:36
  their registration, things that people should be aware of, things
• 31:38
  that you guys can elaborate on.
• 31:40
  Just send me cash, cash is fine.
• 31:43
  Bitcoin, you know, we've actually, uh, I think normalized things over the years.
• 31:49
  Um, like many clubs out there, we're now using motorsport reg.
• 31:52
  We have been for several years.
• 31:53
  And part of what we rely on there is, is that for those that aren't aware, is
• 31:58
  that motorsport reg has a back end that lets organizers share some information.
• 32:04
  So we look at, What other events somebody has done, notes that may
• 32:09
  have been left, some breadcrumbs from other clubs and organizations.
• 32:12
  And we, and we use that to help, help guide somebody towards whether they're
• 32:15
  in the right event to begin with, what run group they should be in, etc.
• 32:19
  There, there's a lot of work that goes, that goes on
• 32:21
  behind the scenes between Joe.
• 32:23
  And Kim, our registrar, who, uh, Joe's laughing at this because I think it's
• 32:27
  understated things dimensely, but there's an immense amount of back and forth to
• 32:31
  make sure that people get into the right run group and that they're not stepping
• 32:35
  up unprepared, you know, we, we try and do whatever we can to help them succeed
• 32:39
  at and have a good time at the event.
• 32:41
  So one thing I will say, having used Motorsport Reg forever, and there's
• 32:45
  very few organizations that really don't unless they have a proprietary system.
• 32:49
  So it's pretty common in our world to use that.
• 32:52
  The nice thing was that SCCA used the PDX moniker, so it made it very easy
• 32:56
  to just suss out the events because you're just punching PDX and they're
• 32:59
  the only ones that would come up.
• 33:00
  But now that you guys are using the HPD acronym, what's the
• 33:04
  quickest way for somebody to find a WDCR event in Motorsport Reg?
• 33:09
  Go to our website and go from there, I would say.
• 33:11
  That's fair.
• 33:12
  It's good to count calendars up there.
• 33:13
  The events are linked.
• 33:14
  And if you make it that far, if you go to Motorsports Reg, if you
• 33:18
  have any questions about any of this, there are emails on there.
• 33:22
  Lynn Tolan, the program chair, and Joe's name email is on there.
• 33:27
  And probably most importantly, Kim's name is on there as a registrar.
• 33:31
  If anybody gets stuck in all this, just send an email and ask.
• 33:35
  Right.
• 33:36
  And we'll answer that.
• 33:36
  One of the things we see that's worthwhile to mention is when people register is not
• 33:41
  being honest with themselves and others over what run group they should be in.
• 33:46
  The common thing we'll see is, Oh, now this is full, so
• 33:48
  I'm going to bump myself up.
• 33:49
  And we would start looking at their history and their, their driving
• 33:53
  resume, as we like to call it.
• 33:54
  We can go, Oh, you've done two autocrosses and some go karts.
• 33:58
  Maybe you shouldn't be in advance for this one, you know?
• 34:01
  So, but with that, that's comes down to what, what was said earlier of.
• 34:05
  Email us.
• 34:05
  Let us know.
• 34:06
  Say, hey, I wanted to get in, you know, I was out of town.
• 34:09
  You may not be able to talk your way into it, but we can at least do the,
• 34:12
  okay, we're going to keep notes.
• 34:13
  If we find a spot, we'll work on it.
• 34:15
  But we ask for driving resumes because some cases it's, yeah,
• 34:18
  I've been driving forever, but not entering events like this.
• 34:21
  It doesn't show up in MSR, but here's my, this, here's my racing license.
• 34:25
  Here's, here's other stuff, you know, use your words, talk
• 34:28
  to us and tell us what it is.
• 34:29
  But being honest and being truthful and reasonable with what it is you're,
• 34:33
  you're trying to do is, is important.
• 34:35
  It's no fun to show up and end up in, in a, in a run group that is
• 34:39
  frankly too fast for you to be in.
• 34:41
  And you spend the day getting bumped down and having uncomfortable conversations
• 34:45
  with stewards and instructors and everybody else about maybe you
• 34:48
  should rethink your choice of hot.
• 34:52
  Other sports backing, but there is the rare occurrence and all of us
• 34:56
  being coaches here, you know that you do get the one guy who his whole
• 35:00
  resume is he played Gran Turismo and he's actually quite good on track
• 35:03
  and you don't know how that works.
• 35:05
  So there is some natural talent out there, but we are not all Schumacher.
• 35:09
  We are not.
• 35:10
  Sorry, so we all got to start somewhere.
• 35:12
  We have all humble beginnings and it involves a coach in the right seat.
• 35:16
  And I will say, um, for those listening, if you're thinking of
• 35:20
  signing up for anything, do both days.
• 35:22
  Don't I, we do, you can sign up for just Saturday.
• 35:25
  You can sign up for just Sunday.
• 35:28
  But you will get so much more out of it, out of your first track event if
• 35:31
  you do both a Saturday and Sunday.
• 35:34
  Um, you'll have that Saturday night, I swear you'll sleep amazingly well.
• 35:38
  And you'll wake up, you'll be back at the track ready to execute
• 35:42
  what you learned the prior day.
• 35:43
  And, and the, the driver that you were Friday night compared to Sunday night.
• 35:49
  Will be so drastically different.
• 35:52
  You'll be hooked.
• 35:52
  I mean, you'll, you will be hooked, but there's a reason why our second
• 35:57
  day is not that much more than one day.
• 35:59
  You know, it's usually what about 100 bucks more to do to do two days in one.
• 36:04
  And I think we put that in place because we saw the value in continuing over
• 36:10
  two days versus encouraging people to do one day or the other from a
• 36:13
  being able to bring them up to a much higher level than one day at a time.
• 36:17
  Would don't wait.
• 36:19
  You know, we deal with a lot of people who do the Oh, I
• 36:21
  forgot to register or whatever.
• 36:23
  We're really permissive about dropping out.
• 36:25
  And we understand stuff happens.
• 36:27
  It helps us as organizers to know early who's attending.
• 36:30
  We can sort out any issues we could ask you questions about.
• 36:33
  Do you really think you should be in time trials, even though
• 36:35
  you've only done one autocross or not, you know, if you register.
• 36:38
  Three weeks in advance.
• 36:39
  We've been pushing it.
• 36:40
  I think this is one of the first we've done it of having basically
• 36:42
  all of our events open at once, which our registrar hates.
• 36:45
  It helped get it out of there and people can figure out their HPDE
• 36:48
  calendar early for that and know where they're going to be and lock that in.
• 36:52
  And again, especially with novice groups, I think all organizations have this of
• 36:56
  that's the group that fills up first.
• 36:57
  So if you want a spot in there and to get your feet wet in order to be able
• 37:01
  to move up to a group that doesn't fill up in three days, register early.
• 37:04
  If something changes, we understand.
• 37:06
  We'll, we'll deal with it.
• 37:07
  See, it's, it's just like voting register early, register often.
• 37:13
  SCCA is pretty lax with giving refunds.
• 37:17
  So something happens with the car or you get sick the night
• 37:20
  before and you can't make it.
• 37:23
  Will you just give me your money back?
• 37:24
  To Travis's point, sign up early and, um, you know, uh, please,
• 37:28
  uh, plan on coming, uh, of course.
• 37:31
  Um, but, you know, there's, there's always the option of going back if
• 37:35
  something comes up with the car or, you know, who knows what life throws at you.
• 37:39
  Um, especially now with, with COVID, you know, if you get a fever
• 37:42
  or something, please don't come.
• 37:46
  So we found our event, right.
• 37:47
  We found a DC event.
• 37:49
  We're going through the SCCA website.
• 37:50
  Takes us to Motorsport Reg, sign up and go.
• 37:53
  And at the bottom it says, you know, do you acknowledge download these, Subs.
• 37:57
  What's that all about?
• 37:58
  To me, the subs are simply, are very simple, right?
• 38:01
  They're a document that has some unique characteristics or some details
• 38:07
  that aren't easy to, to keep up, to date on the webpage or in Ms RMSR.
• 38:12
  So they're, they're just another format for us to give all the detail that.
• 38:19
  The customer needs.
• 38:20
  There's a SCCA history behind all that, and Travis probably knows
• 38:23
  all that, but that's, that's the big picture for the customer.
• 38:25
  The HPD rulebook is pretty small and generic.
• 38:29
  Event supplementals have always been used to fill in the blanks that are
• 38:33
  for things that might be site specific.
• 38:35
  I mean, you know, it includes everything from detailing into car eligibility,
• 38:38
  which, as you're probably aware, can vary depending upon facility.
• 38:42
  If you go to other, other racetracks in other states, you may find peculiarities
• 38:46
  over, over, you know, Seatbelts or convertibles, all kinds of things like
• 38:50
  that, which sometimes are state mandated, racetrack mandated, you know, whatever.
• 38:54
  So we detail that in there down to where can you find info on
• 38:58
  where to stay at a hotel in the, if you're coming from out of town.
• 39:01
  I mean, we try and try and use that as concise as possible.
• 39:04
  One stop shopping for how to get to the event and how to be successful at it.
• 39:09
  It's a lot of information in one place, but it's been whittled down over the
• 39:12
  years to hopefully just the stuff that is really going to be useful.
• 39:16
  It's, it's, it's It's a lot of how to do stuff, not don't do this.
• 39:19
  Hope.
• 39:19
  And a shameless plug for the GTM website, it's actually where we got our inspiration
• 39:24
  originally for our track travel guide.
• 39:25
  Having been in SCCA a long time and knowing the SUPs and what's in there,
• 39:29
  we were like, you know, maybe we could soften this a little bit because
• 39:31
  they do read like a rule set and that's what they're designed to do.
• 39:34
  To be modeled after, but it is valuable information.
• 39:37
  So I recommend if you are going to an SCC event, don't just click next,
• 39:41
  next, next, and ignore them, read them because it is specific track information.
• 39:45
  They're updated by the event.
• 39:47
  So if there's, let's say additional COVID information or participant information
• 39:51
  about wearing face coverings and how you're going to handle class, all that
• 39:55
  stuff is going to be found in the subs.
• 39:56
  And I tip my hat to the folks that write those for every event,
• 40:00
  tailoring them to every event.
• 40:02
  every year.
• 40:03
  And it seems like a lot of bureaucracy, but the fact that we have those subs and
• 40:09
  those subs get approved by a national organization who is the one issuing our
• 40:13
  event insurance helps lead to having events which are insurable by track time.
• 40:17
  day insurance as well as we've never had a problem with
• 40:20
  anybody looking at our events.
• 40:22
  You know, the locked ins or Haggerty's who offer track day insurance and they
• 40:26
  go, okay, that's, that's definitely an event that we can offer insurance on.
• 40:30
  It's never, never been questioned for that.
• 40:32
  And part of that I think is because of having, you know, a strong
• 40:35
  basis in, in a well documented event structure includes that.
• 40:39
  All right.
• 40:39
  So we've registered, we've done all these things, we've read the
• 40:42
  subs, we're checking the list.
• 40:43
  There's one last thing to do before we get to the event.
• 40:45
  Let's talk about tech a little bit.
• 40:47
  So SCCA does tech a little differently than other organizations do.
• 40:50
  There are few out there that require you to go to legitimate or mark specific
• 40:55
  shops and get your car looked at by a specialist and things like that.
• 40:59
  There's other organizations that don't even bother.
• 41:01
  So what does SCCA do about tech and can you explain your tech process?
• 41:07
  Real simple, right?
• 41:08
  Don't let it scare you.
• 41:09
  I remember the first couple of times I was scared to death of tech, right?
• 41:15
  And our, and our guys look at the checklist.
• 41:19
  Make sure your car is safe.
• 41:20
  You know, it almost always comes down.
• 41:22
  If you've made a modification, that's where things go wrong
• 41:28
  and brakes and tire, right?
• 41:30
  That's the biggies.
• 41:31
  The good news is our tech guys always try to help you get through.
• 41:36
  They're not there to fail you.
• 41:37
  They're there to make you have a fun day.
• 41:40
  They're very, very helpful.
• 41:41
  I've seen those guys actually, sometimes when they have time, you know, helping
• 41:45
  people fix their car or getting an instructor to help them fix their car.
• 41:49
  That that's the kind of things, that's the kind of environment that, that
• 41:52
  these first timers are stepping into.
• 41:54
  I'll add that as Travis mentioned, I think SCCA may be the only organization
• 41:59
  that if you fail tech, We'll give you your money back and send you on your way.
• 42:05
  Almost every other group will happily take your money and say, sorry, you
• 42:09
  didn't take your car and you can't drive, but thanks for your 400 bucks.
• 42:14
  If your wheel falls off after you pass tech.
• 42:16
  I mean, that's a whole nother turn away.
• 42:18
  If you've turned, turned a wheel.
• 42:19
  Yeah.
• 42:19
  You're on your own at that point in time.
• 42:21
  So, but yeah, I mean, as I mentioned it, you know, brakes and tires again, as
• 42:25
  you mentioned, also the modifications.
• 42:28
  If you've got a race seat and six point in driver's seat and some like 20 year
• 42:34
  old passenger seat, the restraints have to be the same on both sides.
• 42:38
  So I think if you, if you're really going to get serious about HPD events,
• 42:44
  you're going to have to know some stuff.
• 42:46
  You know, how do you, how do you check your pads?
• 42:48
  How do you check tire pressure?
• 42:50
  How do you check oil coolant?
• 42:52
  Differential fluid, trans fluid, all that stuff, you
• 42:55
  know, wheel torque and so forth.
• 42:57
  Understanding that brake fluid is a wear item is a big thing, you know, a big
• 43:01
  way to pass tech is to be able to go, is to be able to know when was the last
• 43:04
  time your brake fluid was changed, you know, was it recently, was it this year?
• 43:08
  That's one of the, one of the main things is, is, is fresh fluid
• 43:11
  will, will go a long way to helping have a, have a successful weekend.
• 43:14
  Yeah, quick story.
• 43:15
  Uh, so I had a student with a Lexus LFA, a V10, 9, 000 RPM,
• 43:21
  awesome car, 5, 000 miles.
• 43:24
  But it was a 2004, never had the brake fluid changed, but
• 43:28
  Hey, it's only 5, 000 miles.
• 43:30
  Why would you change the brake?
• 43:33
  So it's nice to say the brakes traded car's fine.
• 43:35
  Everyone's fine.
• 43:36
  Nothing happened.
• 43:37
  We didn't go off track even, but you know, push the pedal and
• 43:40
  it's getting a little bit soft.
• 43:41
  Travis said it's a wear item.
• 43:43
  The marketing pamphlets these days say lifetime fluids, right?
• 43:47
  Yeah, right.
• 43:48
  That's true.
• 43:49
  Whose, whose lifetime?
• 43:52
  At the track, it's in dog years, unfortunately.
• 43:55
  That being said, so we've gone through tech, we've done all these things.
• 43:57
  We're there now at the track.
• 43:59
  So let's focus on the education part.
• 44:01
  Let's really level set.
• 44:02
  And I know this is Baron's sweet spot.
• 44:04
  Let's talk about the classroom.
• 44:06
  What?
• 44:07
  Are new drivers going to learn during their first track day
• 44:12
  or their first track weekend?
• 44:13
  It's really pretty simple, right?
• 44:15
  So the track is a new environment, and you put anybody into a
• 44:20
  new environment and add speed.
• 44:23
  And it causes stress.
• 44:24
  The novice classrooms are all about managing that and instructing as much
• 44:30
  as possible the students so they can become more familiar and comfortable with
• 44:34
  the environment and manage that stress.
• 44:37
  You know, the other half of that story is communications with the instructor, what
• 44:41
  it's going to be like on track and how to manage that relationship with the but it
• 44:48
  really is all of the safety guidance of Communication how the track communicates
• 44:54
  with the driver and how other drivers communicate with you and passing rules.
• 45:00
  It's just critical stuff is is one or two pages of things that if you
• 45:05
  get right, you'll be absolutely fine.
• 45:08
  So Baron, you said that the The track talks to you.
• 45:11
  Do you hear voices that the rest of us don't?
• 45:14
  Yes, I do.
• 45:16
  Absolutely.
• 45:18
  Yeah.
• 45:19
  So, you know, one of the phrases we say, and we have communications from
• 45:22
  car to car, we have communications from, from driver to instructor, and we have
• 45:26
  communications from the track to the car.
• 45:27
  And the way that happens on track is through flags.
• 45:31
  through visual communication from people that are stationary around the track,
• 45:36
  giving the drivers information and direction on what to do on the track.
• 45:40
  The classic was the checkered flag, white flag, the red flag,
• 45:43
  et cetera, that you see on TV.
• 45:45
  There's only one flag I remember.
• 45:46
  It's the blue flag.
• 45:47
  And if I remember correctly, Baron, it means there's a race
• 45:50
  going on and you're not in it.
• 45:53
  Exactly.
• 45:55
  For the novice classroom, I think the key things to take away that we
• 45:59
  Try to drill into the novice students is, one, listen to your instructor.
• 46:04
  That's probably the biggest takeaway from the novice classroom.
• 46:07
  And that you, as the novice student, are responsible for driving the vehicle.
• 46:12
  That is your main goal during the day, is driving the vehicle.
• 46:16
  The instructor is responsible for what happens outside the vehicle.
• 46:20
  The cars around it, the flags, what corner's coming up.
• 46:23
  But they can't control the vehicle.
• 46:25
  That, that is the student's job.
• 46:26
  And then as Bear mentioned, the flags, what the flags mean.
• 46:30
  But even that, I mean, I, honestly, I don't know how many novice
• 46:33
  classrooms I went through before I even knew what all the flags were.
• 46:36
  So, your instructor is going to help you with the flags.
• 46:39
  So, in the novice class, we're going to tell you what the flags are.
• 46:41
  Those are what a yellow flag is.
• 46:42
  But then, when you're out on track, And you see a yellow flag, I guarantee
• 46:47
  your instructor is going to tell you what that yellow flag means.
• 46:50
  Um, and then of course the passing rules.
• 46:52
  The instruction actually starts at the, at the all hands meeting
• 46:55
  first thing in the morning.
• 46:56
  Of reminding people, we're not getting the details of, of how to go out and drive.
• 47:00
  But, you know, the little things that they may, people may not have internalized
• 47:04
  yet, or maybe site specific or whatever.
• 47:06
  Like if something happens, stay in the car with the belts on, you know, don't
• 47:10
  get out and go out and try and fix it.
• 47:13
  You know, we have emergency staff there who are well trained professionals.
• 47:17
  If your buddy's car, you know, goes off and hits the wall, you're
• 47:21
  not going to make it any better by stopping and trying to help.
• 47:24
  You know, we can get it, get an ambulance and a fire truck on any point that any
• 47:27
  of those tracks within about 90 seconds.
• 47:29
  Um, not that that happens a lot, not that that happens a lot.
• 47:35
  So please do that.
• 47:37
  You know, if your car stops, you pull off, stay belted in.
• 47:40
  It's the safest point for that.
• 47:41
  And that's something that anybody, no matter how many track days they've done,
• 47:44
  doesn't hurt to remind them of that in the morning, that that's what they should do.
• 47:47
  We're very much about, you know, A lot of, some people call it continuing education.
• 47:52
  We have three run groups, novice, intermediate and advanced, and we have
• 47:55
  instruction available for all of those.
• 47:58
  We, a lot of organizations do not do classroom instruction for advanced,
• 48:02
  for example, and we do, it's optional for advanced, our intermediate, uh,
• 48:07
  has instruction classroom instruction.
• 48:09
  Also, we have the novice, you know, the instruction there happens in class
• 48:13
  and in the car with the instructor.
• 48:15
  And as you move up, you make more assumptions about
• 48:18
  what That customer can do.
• 48:21
  You assume that they know all the flags and all the basic safety operations
• 48:25
  in the intermediate run group, but you very quickly start teaching car control,
• 48:29
  car dynamics, how to improve drills.
• 48:32
  And as you get to an advanced group, those discussions become even more advanced.
• 48:36
  I think sec is really, really good at that.
• 48:38
  And, and part of that is enabled by, you know, our, our, uh, our advanced room
• 48:43
  instructor is a current race car driver.
• 48:45
  I teach intermediate right now, but the person that helps me is a race car driver.
• 48:50
  Active race car driver holds one of the lap records.
• 48:52
  So I think, I think we do a really, really good job there.
• 48:57
  That's, that's what we hear back from the, from the customers anyway.
• 49:00
  So we, uh, We have three classroom instructors that all have, as
• 49:04
  Barron mentioned, that bring unique things to the table.
• 49:07
  So we have David Miller, our novice classroom baron, and Bill Smith is
• 49:10
  our advanced classroom instructor.
• 49:12
  And one thing that we've been doing recently because of COVID
• 49:15
  is having some online classrooms.
• 49:17
  And that might be something that we keep.
• 49:20
  What has come out of that is that students can pay a little more attention at an
• 49:25
  online classroom, um, When there's not the, the, you know, cars going by outside,
• 49:31
  you know, they're like excited, like, all right, I'm going to go wide open throttle,
• 49:34
  third gear, 5, 000 RPM, that's my goal.
• 49:36
  Um, so with, without that involved, I think there's, you know, learning
• 49:40
  the flags and things like that.
• 49:42
  May come a little bit easier, but you know, we're all still
• 49:46
  playing the code game still to figure out what's going on there.
• 49:49
  Yeah, and I think we're always fighting in my best Ricky Bobby impersonation.
• 49:53
  The I want to go fast mentality that people come to the track and
• 49:57
  immediately expect that speed is the First thing that we talk about.
• 50:01
  And so I think what you guys have hit on is good is that safety
• 50:05
  always comes first, safety is paramount and the speed comes later.
• 50:09
  That's even as coaches were always instructed, you know, the, the flow
• 50:13
  of teaching is speed is always last.
• 50:15
  You always add it as the last thing in the cycle.
• 50:18
  Well, so I, when I, when I was a student, uh, my first track day, what I wanted to
• 50:23
  see is how fast can I go on straightaway?
• 50:25
  That was my goal is and I better believe I was staring at that speedometer
• 50:30
  going on the straightaway not worried about anything else is going on just
• 50:34
  just like what is that needle going to read before my instructor tells me
• 50:37
  to break that actually changed Joe.
• 50:43
  Fair enough.
• 50:44
  So I think you guys have set a really good expectation for the students.
• 50:51
  It's an environment to foster learning, right?
• 50:55
  And it's a progression.
• 50:56
  You're not going to learn everything in one day.
• 50:58
  It's going to be multiple over multiple sessions.
• 51:00
  You guys average probably one to one on, or maybe it's N minus one
• 51:05
  number of sessions in classroom as you are on track every day.
• 51:09
  So it's, it's repetitive, but that repetition is what cements it in there.
• 51:14
  And then the coach augments.
• 51:16
  What is being learned in the classroom to kind of back up and
• 51:19
  just summarize real quick, right?
• 51:20
  You come in as novice you have an instructor in the car.
• 51:23
  We give check rides to move to intermediate An instructor will
• 51:27
  give that checkride and move that person to intermediate, and
• 51:31
  then they are soloed in SCCA.
• 51:33
  They still have the ability to, they still have a classroom, and they still have
• 51:36
  the ability to ask for an instructor.
• 51:39
  I still learn things when Joe gets in the car with me, how not to
• 51:42
  drive, you know, things like that.
• 51:45
  And then the next progression is, of course, advanced.
• 51:47
  We do the same thing.
• 51:48
  We do a checkride to go up to advanced.
• 51:50
  Really, the next segment that we wanted to talk about, which is what
• 51:53
  are other things that SCCA HPDE offers and one of those being coaching.
• 51:59
  So what are some next steps post I've done my track days, I've
• 52:05
  moved up through the system.
• 52:07
  Where should I go from here?
• 52:08
  Do I just go to another group or do I find another discipline?
• 52:11
  Well, I think one is the Instructor Clinic.
• 52:13
  Uh, haha.
• 52:14
  Bear and I actually have been working quite a bit on how we
• 52:17
  should run the Instructor Clinic changes that we can make to it.
• 52:20
  We've gone through Friday at the Track has a way of bringing their
• 52:24
  instructors on and we're taking ideas from them, as Travis mentioned.
• 52:28
  You know, we all go with lots of other clubs, see what their clinics
• 52:31
  look like, and try to bring the best of all worlds into what we do.
• 52:35
  It's a volunteer organization, and we send slide decks around constantly to
• 52:40
  each other, and criticize each other, and try to make these programs better.
• 52:44
  That not only goes for the instructor clinic, but also novice,
• 52:46
  intermediate, and advanced classrooms.
• 52:48
  The cool thing about the instructor clinic, we put the
• 52:50
  candidate in the right seat.
• 52:52
  So they are expected to instruct for at least, I think we do four sessions,
• 52:56
  and then we do classrooms between them, and we have a pretty detailed document
• 53:00
  that Baron primarily put together.
• 53:03
  That we send out every event to all the instructors, what we expect,
• 53:06
  all the things that we do with driving evals after events where
• 53:10
  students evaluate their instructors.
• 53:12
  And of course, instructors evaluate their students.
• 53:15
  That really has, I think, been extremely beneficial to the program
• 53:19
  in helping all the instructors become much better at listening, at setting
• 53:23
  goals, helping their students.
• 53:25
  Be faster.
• 53:26
  So that's 11 area.
• 53:28
  And so it might be.
• 53:30
  It might be a good, good, good thing to point out that one of the things that
• 53:34
  we've done for for a number of years now is an instructor clinic, and that's
• 53:38
  where we've been able to more tightly integrate what happens in the right
• 53:43
  seat on track with what happens in the hard plastic seat in the classroom.
• 53:47
  Overtaking and trying to make, make a unified program.
• 53:49
  Not just saying, Hey, you instruct, come on out and play with us.
• 53:52
  Go out and do whatever it is you do because you're fast and that's okay.
• 53:55
  We try and do train to trainer stuff and have done those typically on
• 53:59
  a free to the instructor basis for a while as a, an expense to us,
• 54:03
  but worth it to build the program.
• 54:05
  over being able to bring in, get people up, and teach in a way that is compatible
• 54:09
  and the way that we think should be done.
• 54:11
  It goes both ways for us, I think, is, is that those instructor clinics
• 54:15
  tend to be where we also get feedback from other, from instructors and do
• 54:18
  the, Hey, we do this this way here.
• 54:21
  Maybe we should try this and we'll go, Yeah, that's a good idea.
• 54:23
  Let's, let's give it a shot.
• 54:24
  And it's also a recognized Program.
• 54:26
  It's a recognized certificate.
• 54:28
  Let's call it that where there's reciprocity with other groups to say
• 54:32
  you've been through SCCA's bootcamp.
• 54:33
  We'll recognize you as an instructor.
• 54:35
  It's not always a rubber stamp.
• 54:37
  Sometimes it does take, you know, uh, Hey, call Joe and he'll sign you off.
• 54:41
  And I know we're talking a little bit more on the coaching side, but I've
• 54:44
  had the, the distinct privilege of being to the school many, many times.
• 54:48
  I come back now as a veteran instructor, but I came up through that system.
• 54:51
  I got certified through SCCA and, and the, Teaching that I got through there
• 54:56
  is, in my opinion, second to none.
• 54:57
  So I know we're kind of branching away from the student here a little bit.
• 55:00
  Let me add one thing to that, that last discussion, you know, started talking
• 55:04
  about the instructor aspect of that.
• 55:06
  And Joe really championed a couple of years ago, uh, giving our, each
• 55:11
  of our instructors only one student.
• 55:13
  That shows on the student side too.
• 55:15
  I have instructed for organizations where I've had three students, All in the same
• 55:19
  day, and you know, you make it work, but the student doesn't get as much quality
• 55:26
  time as with, you know, the other extreme where that student has one instructor
• 55:32
  and that instructor's job is to make that student happy for the whole weekend.
• 55:36
  So it works both ways.
• 55:37
  The instructors are happy having one student and the students are happy
• 55:40
  having one, you know, knowing that their instructor is fully committed to them.
• 55:43
  So a couple other things I have on my list as extracurricular
• 55:46
  activities could include flagging.
• 55:48
  We've always done a work, something, get something arrangement.
• 55:51
  We do try and use volunteer flaggers wherever possible.
• 55:55
  SCCA has always tried to avoid paying flaggers because you sort of get what
• 55:59
  you pay for inversely a lot of times.
• 56:01
  Um, yeah.
• 56:03
  So the people out there volunteering to stand, take it
• 56:05
  very seriously and do it very well.
• 56:09
  Almost to the point of amusement at times, but the outcome is that we
• 56:14
  get people that are very attentive and very interested in that.
• 56:17
  Trying to reduce the friction to attend our events though, we've opened up
• 56:20
  opportunities to say, Hey, come out and flag a day or two with us and you've
• 56:25
  earned yourself a free track day.
• 56:26
  You can't really beat that.
• 56:27
  I mean, You know, a little sweat equity and, and get, get to see the track.
• 56:31
  Uh, and by the way, we feed, feed, feed you lunch and dinner usually, uh,
• 56:34
  in normal, in normal years, at least.
• 56:36
  You get to wear that really, really stylish white.
• 56:40
  The, uh, yeah, exactly.
• 56:42
  So the, uh, the, the, the shirts came about as advertising, you know,
• 56:45
  we, we started out because the rule said you had to have long sleeve.
• 56:48
  Cotton t shirts or whatever you couldn't wear nylon or short sleeves and such.
• 56:53
  And, and so we said, well, let's print up some long sleeve cotton t shirts
• 56:57
  and hand them out and they turned into advertising, uh, there's something cool
• 57:00
  about walking around the grid at the Daytona, you know, Rolex 24 and seeing
• 57:05
  some random person with a PDX shirt on, is there anything else you guys
• 57:09
  want to add to that as to things you can do after, of course, SCCA is a race
• 57:13
  organization, so there's time trials to move toward and also competition.
• 57:18
  In our organization, once you're signed off for advanced, you can run in TT.
• 57:22
  We do not, we, WDCR does not have a separate TT license.
• 57:28
  It's, it's, once you're signed off for advanced, you're in TT.
• 57:31
  Yeah, and then TT is, it's the competitive part of this, right?
• 57:34
  The HPDE, you've moved past HPDE and moved into a competitive part
• 57:38
  of the SCCA ecosystem, so to speak.
• 57:41
  And then there's, there's actually a national component to that now, uh,
• 57:45
  there's a team time trials nationals group that, that has started coming up with
• 57:49
  some consistent rule sets and running sort of a national series of events.
• 57:53
  And as that has come and matured, we've actually been
• 57:55
  adopting rule sets from them.
• 57:57
  So there's consistency and, and trying to integrate, integrate
• 58:00
  with what they're doing.
• 58:01
  And some of that's partnership with, with things like grid life as
• 58:04
  well of, of national has done that.
• 58:06
  And, and we're, we're, we're trying to.
• 58:07
  Trying to come up with a program and have a program that is unique, but not so
• 58:12
  unique that, that, that nobody wants to come and run it because it's car prep or
• 58:16
  whatever is different again, back to the top of the order of people book events
• 58:20
  because of what fits their calendar.
• 58:21
  A lot of times, you know, let's, let's do a good event that they can go.
• 58:24
  Yep.
• 58:24
  My car fits that let's come and come, come and have fun with these guys
• 58:27
  because I have off that weekend.
• 58:28
  I just add again, it's, it's a completely volunteer organization.
• 58:31
  And as you move up and as you become more experienced or more
• 58:34
  familiar with it, basically.
• 58:36
  Anything is available.
• 58:39
  If, you know, if you're interested in doing tech, we'll get, we'll figure out
• 58:42
  a way to have you help the tech guys.
• 58:44
  If you're interested in flagging, if you're interested in registration,
• 58:47
  any of those areas, we're, you know, we're, we're open for that discussion.
• 58:51
  It's taken a few years to get there, but the SCCA race programs are now
• 58:56
  starting to look at HPDE experience as a precursor to going racing.
• 59:01
  It's been sort of a weird thing that for the longest time, SCCA
• 59:04
  didn't have a progression from non competition to competition, you
• 59:08
  know, wheel to wheel competition.
• 59:10
  And that's actually changing.
• 59:12
  And we do a lot of close work with our, with our region race
• 59:15
  school for things for a long time.
• 59:18
  And we probably still do once this world returns to normal of we try and schedule
• 59:22
  and usually offer a discount of if you do the, the early, HPD event before
• 59:28
  going to race school, you start to take a lot of money off the end of your bill.
• 59:31
  And it's, it's really designed to get people on the track.
• 59:34
  Prior to that, there were people showing up for race school that had
• 59:36
  never been on a racetrack before.
• 59:38
  And we saw that as a, Hey, we can help fix this guy's talk to
• 59:41
  us and we'll work together and make it more fun for everybody.
• 59:45
  And the people are there.
• 59:46
  So when you go to an HPD event and you want to do racing.
• 59:50
  Or do time trials, they're all there to answer your questions
• 59:54
  that the people that do it.
• 59:55
  And I think Travis hit on a really good point.
• 59:57
  The volunteer part of the organization, there is motivation.
• 1:00:01
  I mean, the people that are volunteering are doing it because they really are
• 1:00:04
  passionate about making a good program.
• 1:00:07
  And the amount of time that Barron, David Miller, And crew put into the classroom
• 1:00:13
  content is huge, you know, if we had to pay them It'd be awful But so there's
• 1:00:21
  really a big effort that the volunteer people have put into this program
• 1:00:25
  and I think it really shows All right anything else guys before we wrap it up?
• 1:00:29
  Just say a little something about high performance driving events in general.
• 1:00:33
  I like driving I like to drive fast and I like cars.
• 1:00:38
  I like the people the technology You Pretty much everything involved with HPDE.
• 1:00:43
  So burning fuel, running through tires, burning through brakes.
• 1:00:47
  I like the physics involved with it.
• 1:00:49
  One thing that I've noticed is we seem to get a lot of engineering minds at
• 1:00:54
  HPD events, and I think one of the reasons for that is because it is kind
• 1:00:59
  of Science personified in some ways.
• 1:01:02
  I say this to Baron all the time.
• 1:01:04
  One half mv squared, you know, we're calling us down
• 1:01:07
  the straightaway going 120.
• 1:01:09
  We got to convert all that energy, all that kinetic energy back into heat.
• 1:01:13
  And I think that mindset really plays into who attends the events and it.
• 1:01:18
  The other thing I like about it is the whole engineering tradeoffs.
• 1:01:20
  You know, everything's a tradeoff with, with this, you know, and not only with
• 1:01:24
  just with the cars in general, but in driving, driving the course, you know, you
• 1:01:27
  can take the shortest path through and go slow, but drive a shorter distance or, you
• 1:01:32
  know, drive longer path, but your speed is higher and you need to find that correct
• 1:01:36
  balance for every corner and every car.
• 1:01:38
  I think one of the great things about SCCA is the paths they
• 1:01:42
  provide for moving forward.
• 1:01:44
  Now, obviously there's a path to moving towards racing.
• 1:01:47
  For me personally, that's not something I was really interested in.
• 1:01:51
  I was all about instruction.
• 1:01:53
  I wanted, you know, I got in the car with some guy, some
• 1:01:55
  poor fellow in the right seat.
• 1:01:58
  And I was like, wow, this guy's job is the best.
• 1:02:01
  I want to do what he does.
• 1:02:03
  And SCCA provides a nice path forward.
• 1:02:06
  I just want to, I want to quickly bullet list or really just run through,
• 1:02:11
  you know, at speed, the things I believe that SCCA What differentiates
• 1:02:16
  SCCA from the other HPD programs?
• 1:02:20
  One on one instruction, right?
• 1:02:21
  One instructor per student.
• 1:02:23
  It's a volunteer organization.
• 1:02:24
  We believe that allows us to create very competitive pricing and
• 1:02:28
  time, amount of time per dollar.
• 1:02:30
  Some of the best classrooms that are available, and I'm not speaking even
• 1:02:34
  for myself, you know, the novice classroom and the advanced classroom.
• 1:02:37
  The fact that we're part of a race organization, that knowledge
• 1:02:40
  of all those things, like.
• 1:02:42
  Car dynamics and safety and driving the car and mindset.
• 1:02:47
  All those things we leverage heavily in, in the HPD program
• 1:02:52
  ability to cancel registration late.
• 1:02:55
  Some organizations you commit one week out and you may, you
• 1:02:58
  might get a 50 percent refund.
• 1:03:00
  We're at, uh, we're most of our track days are at, uh, summit point.
• 1:03:05
  They have three tracks.
• 1:03:06
  All three tracks are just fantastic.
• 1:03:09
  Right.
• 1:03:09
  Maine is just a really, really great track.
• 1:03:12
  But the other two tracks are fun too.
• 1:03:13
  We have track days at those two again, on, on on the club perspective o of
• 1:03:17
  we we're, we're in an organization run that, that runs events by its members.
• 1:03:21
  So when somebody says, Hey, I, I think I can do a better job at
• 1:03:24
  something here, let, let me help.
• 1:03:26
  We go, okay, come on in and help.
• 1:03:27
  We don't get hurt.
• 1:03:28
  Don't get feelings hurt by somebody, uh, who has a better idea.
• 1:03:31
  You know?
• 1:03:31
  So we, we.
• 1:03:32
  We take feedback, we truly listen to it and try and incorporate that.
• 1:03:36
  And, and that's been the evolution of the program since day one of, of,
• 1:03:39
  of listen to it, to our customers, listen to our instructors, listen to
• 1:03:43
  people that have been there beforehand and know better and have seen things
• 1:03:47
  and, and are willing to share.
• 1:03:49
  And on that note, gentlemen, I cannot thank you enough for
• 1:03:51
  coming on the show tonight.
• 1:03:52
  It's been super informative and I'm sure our listeners now have a better
• 1:03:56
  perception of what SCCA is all about and why they should come out and try an event.
• 1:04:00
  There's a lot of really good information on WDCR's website.
• 1:04:04
  I think you guys probably have the most thorough documentation when
• 1:04:07
  it comes to being prepared and how the driver should be prepared
• 1:04:11
  and the car should be prepared.
• 1:04:12
  There's a lot of information there and check it out because they've
• 1:04:15
  done a really good job of being very thorough with the information.
• 1:04:18
  Now for the listeners out there, you can find more details on everything we've
• 1:04:22
  talked about either GTM website and looking at the followup article that goes
• 1:04:26
  with this episode or by visiting www dot.
• 1:04:29
  Wdcr do org slash hpde or following Wdcr on Instagram at wdcr cca or
• 1:04:42
  looking up w dcr SCCA on Facebook.
• 1:04:45
  I think that's everything.
• 1:04:46
  More than enough . Very good.
• 1:04:47
  Again, I cannot thank you guys enough for coming on the show, and I
• 1:04:50
  appreciate, uh, everything, all the knowledge you passed on, and hopefully
• 1:04:54
  we'll have you back again soon.
• 1:04:56
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:04:56
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:04:57
  Thanks, Eric.
• 1:05:03
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:05:05
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:05:07
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:05:09
  org.
• 1:05:10
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:05:13
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can
• 1:05:17
  call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:05:25
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• 1:05:25
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• 1:05:27
  Hey, listeners, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:05:28
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• 1:05:32
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• 1:05:32
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• 1:05:36
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• 1:05:41
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