ace039

For the people who took either one of these courses. Which would you recommend? I'm leaning more towards the Racing school cause I wanna start getting into Auto X.

pll

I've taken both types of courses: Jim Russell Racing's High Performance course and the Skip Barber 3 Day Racing School. The SCCA also puts on drivers schools which prepare you for getting your competition license. From the looks of it, that school is also geared toward racing, but is less expensive than the private schools.

The Russell Racing High Performance course was a driving school with some track time. We spent a half day on braking, accident avoidance, and learning how to control our street cars.

In contrast, the Skip Barber 3 Day Racing School is a hard core racing class. You get into a Formula Dodge open wheel car and drive in it all three days, mostly on the track. They teach you race theory, finding racing lines, racing strategy, car control, threshold braking, trail braking, passing, wet weather racing, starting a race, etc. all in the open wheel car. You can take most of what you learned and apply it to driving your street car in an autox course.

The racing school costs 3x more than the driving school. Which one is best for you? If you have never done a track event in your life, start with the high performance driving class. Then do several autocross and open track events. Once you get some experience, you can take the racing school. That's how I went through the progression of courses. I felt that the experience I gained before I went to the racing school made the racing school experience more worthwhile.

Since I don't autocross, I can't say definitively which school is best for autocrossing. But if you ever want to do road racing, a racing school (SCCA or private) would be very helpful.

I hope that helps.

rlawson

If you want to learn to autocross, you can't go wrong with the Evolution School.


http://autocross.com/evolution


This provides national caliber, ride along, instruction and seat time. You can't beat two - three hours of seat time that you will get with the course. I believe that something like 50% of the national champions at the SCCA Solo II event have been through these classes.

In addition, many local clubs offer autocross classes. Again, you get seat time and ride along instruction.

Just keep in mind that a couple of days of seat time, could cost you a set of tires! But it will be more fun than a trip to Disneyworld!

Randy Lawson