[karussell]

Our International Car Control Clinic was a great success.

We had 10 american participants out of 10 despite the inclement weather.
We had 16 german participants come out and join us.

We split the groups in two for the morning. Beginner and Advanced.

For the beginner group, we spent the morning learning about what our cars can do at the limit of braking, steering, and accelerating. More importantly we experienced how our inputs can increase or decrease the amount of available traction. As speeds increased, we have to focus further down the course. We have to learn there are several steps of throttle an brake between On and Off. I think every student showed tremendous improvement within only a couple hours. The only way to do this is with practice and continuous feedback. Every student had me sitting in the passenger seat at least 3 times before they attempt to try it on their own (which is also very important). Once the exercises were completed we put all the students into the advanced students drift and slalom course. here we have you accelerate out of a second gear corner towards and apex cone and then apply throttle until you induce a slide onto the main runway (very wide open road!). we then teach counter steering and throttle inputs to hold the slide. everyone found this is harder to do than it looks. I can say that every student was able to hold a nice high speed drift for several seconds by the end of the activity. the afternoon we reconfigure the course into a road course. at first the beginner group was segregated while advanced students drove and then one by one we integrated each student. by the end of the day you could not tell which was which. we have some truly talented drivers in our group.