Anyone been on a track day as a novice? A recent incident on an unexpectedly slippy road has prompted me to learn some more driving skills and I thought a novice track day would be a good idea. Learn what the car can and cannot do, how to correct mistakes properly etc. I realise I’ve relied too much on mod-cons like traction control and ABS.

Club MSV look like a good option. Anyone got any experience of them? I’m not bothered about racing; this is just a skills thing.

Also interested in this. As a relatively new driver, it looks to a fun way of learning some important stuff without killing myself.

Wouldn’t recommend a track day for learning those skills. The operators don’t tend to like it when you go off from pushing too hard. That and there is the real chance you could loose it and take someone else out! You’d be better off getting instruction in a safe environment. Something like Car Limits is a much, much better place to start and learn the techniques from an instructor. Track days afterwards for fun (I know you can get instruction at the track day but this tends to be shorter session and doesn’t teach the basics).

It looks very much like the track days I remember when I did a bit of work at Oulton Park. They are designed to give you an idea of what it’s like to drive a racing car on a closed circuit. Positioning on the track, braking points and driving technique (shifting from accelerator to brake directly). You lap at specific and predetermined times, controlled by revs and stopwatch, as the purpose is to learn technique not demonstrate how good a driver you are and how shite Hamilton really is.
What I have seen after a quick squint is that Club MSV is the same and not what you’re expecting. You probably need something like an advanced driving course, or something similar. MSV looks like a racing school rather than a skillls course.
Still great fun mind.

i’d say an airport day is better than a track day for what you want. I’ve done a MSV track day and the standard is pretty high, but with a dry track its pretty hard to get larey without it being obvious. Good fun, but I think some tuition (AMG experiance??) or a airport day (where pushing the limits are actively encouraged) would be better

Agree with above – a track day is for loons to go fast. Better off getting some skid pan training or something like that.

Mercedes and Porsche do great skidpan/wet driving courses at their centres (Brooklands and Silverstone respectively). Most of the circuits offer something similar too.

Trackdays are a different thing really – more about going fast and improving up-to-the-limit skills. You won’t be popular if you keep getting sessions red flagged because your car is in the gravel again.

mastiles_fanylion – Member

Agree with above – a track day is for loons to go fast.

Plenty of trackdays have novice sessions. Course, they’re largely full of incompetents. And people who shouldn’t be in novice, but really like overtaking people because it makes them feel like heroes.

These novice days are generally controlled by revs for the driver and a stopwatch in the tower. The novices are there to learn the lines not catch the eye of Ron Dennis, if they want to race they’re flagged, if they ignore the flag, they’re pulled in, if they don’t come in they don’t go out for a second session. Walk before running.

Are they usually booked up a lot? I’m tempted to ask for one for my birthday… I dno’t care much about the car just want as much time as possible ragging it.

Bookatrack or Motorsport events , ensure open pitlane for maximum track time.
Take spare wheels with illegal tyres on them . If its really raining use your road tyres. If it damp or dry stick on the worn ones. 50 miles on the track will kill them off .Just check them every session , its all to do wit the blocks of tread moving about.
Easytrack also good , but more for caterhams /specials .

Don’t want to use my own car mind!

Bookatrack do rental Caterhams. not cheap ,but cheaper per minute than any CDX day.

You’d be better going down the lines of an IAM or ROSPA course if you want to be a safer driver on the roads.

My experience of track days is that they expect everyone there to be a petrol head who reckons they’re the best driver in the world.

Which of course, they are. (full of drivers who think they’re the best driver in the world.)

I’ve enjoyed my track days so far and they’ve all been completely different but none of them were for novices. (Mini Cooper racing, Ferrari 360, Formula Ford, drift).

The drift day was a hoot but far too short, it finished after three laps just as I was getting used to the car and getting some nice long drifts out of it.
The formula ford was the best so far, like a big, very powerful go-kart, really enjoyed that one.
Ferrari was a big rubbish, like a powerful Fiat. i.e. nasty
The Coopers wwere great little cars to drive but this do attracted the worst drivers. All macho and chest swelling but useless behind the wheel, all went in to corners too fast and ended up coming out too slow.

the thing to listen and learn is simple… KEEP YOUR FOOT OFF THE BRAKE repeat that mantra every time you encounter ‘trouble’ and you ll be fine.

Thanks for the advice everyone.

KEEP YOUR FOOT OFF THE BRAKE

From talking to people and reading a bit about it, my incident would have been avoided by keeping on the throttle. Just keeping my foot off the brake was not enough. That’s why I want to learn more about how different cars drive and respond when there’s no traction control to help…

…but in a safe(r) environment.

Plenty of trackdays have novice sessions. Course, they’re largely full of incompetents. And people who shouldn’t be in novice, but really like overtaking people because it makes them feel like heroes.

I know they do novice days but I meant that track days aren’t designed to improve skills as described in the OP, rather just to teach best lines, turn in, apexes etc…

There are different types of skid pan days;

The first I did was basically front and rear wheel drive cars on a concrete surface with lots of slippery stuff sprayed over the track and lots of cones…good for learning to slide about but not so good for the unexpected loss of grip that would catch you out whilst driving to work.

The second is the ‘car on castors’ type of thing which I haven’t done, but the instructor can create different types of skids as and when he pleases. This will be the best type of training and is what I’d look for next time.

The third is whats called a kick-plate. I don’t know how widespread they are but I was lucky enough to get sent to Rockingham through a driving competition at work, one of the activities was the kick-plate. You drive onto the traditional skid area with the sprinklers, but there is a plate that detects the car passing over it and kicks left or right at varying degrees of severity, sending the car spiraling down the skid pan whilst you desperately claw away at the wheel 🙂 Apparently reversing over at 30mph is best as the front wheels get kicked, and the weight of the engine makes for lots of fun. Its surprisingly violent, and feels as though you’ve driven over a tree stump at high speed. I imagine the learning value is a bit limited though as its controlling over steer only.

its controlling over steer only

that’s one thing I want to learn

Over steer is *relatively* easy to control. Under steer is more difficult (IMO).

my incident would have been avoided by keeping on the throttle

FWD car, surely.. in RWD the throttle could be your undoing…

Over steer is *relatively* easy to control

Try telling that to me after I saw my car picked out of a dry stone wall 😳

It is also very dependent on whether you’re in a front or rear wheel drive car. Front wheel drive is much more forgiving and dare-I-say flattering. I know from bitter experience.

FWD car, surely.. in RWD the throttle could be your undoing..

Nope. Lift-off oversteer. Just physics, isn’t it. If you’re a bit hot into a corner in a rear wheel drive car and you ease off the throttle, you un-weight the driven wheels at the rear. This decreases the traction even further. If the engine also happens to be at the rear all that weight has a natural desire to obey physics and carry on going round the corner when what you want is for the car to go straight again.
[EDIT – in my case the difference was from some throttle to no throttle, hence unweighting the rear. Maybe going from some throttle to more throttle would have made it worse. These are the kind of things I want to learn]

I have done a course with these guys

http://www.driverdp.com/home.html

Excellent day out and learnt a lot.

Depends on the situation, at what point you are taking the remedial action and the road surface I suppose. In snow I’ve seen the driving wheels of RWD cars just push the back of the car out into a spin for no reason at all when travelling in a straight line. Can’t see how more throttle would’ve helped there.

Just goes to show why car manufacturers developed FWD doesn’t it? 🙂

I’ve done an Airfield driving day with

http://www.1stlotus.com/intro.htm

A couple of mates have done a couple as well with Andrew.

Really, really good and very informative about car control.

I’d suggest the above rather than a track day.

Also, look out for the Vauxhall VXR track days. Only £99 for a halfday and you don’t have to worry about your car 🙂

Try telling that to me after I saw my car picked out of a dry stone wall

I did say *relatively* 😉

As long as you know the theory for controlling a skid, I thought understeer was easier and more intuitive to control than oversteer.

Understeer; reduce throttle and straighten the wheel slightly to regain grip, before continuing around corner. As long as the driver knows not to stand on the brake and/or try to wind on more steering lock, they have a reasonable chance of regaining control.

Oversteer; steer towards the outside of the bend to ensure front wheels point where you want the car to go, whilst not over-correcting. Braking or lifting off the throttle suddenly will make things worse. If the driver does recover the skid, there is a good chance they won’t correct the steering quickly enough and will drive off the opposite side of the road.

As SBZ has said, I’d advise you go for your advanced driving test with IAM as they will teach you how to drive a car, not how to pass a test. You’ll also go out with (or at least I did) a current serving Road Traffic Police Officer who was really very helpful.

Plus, it does actually improve your insurance costs (I managed to reduce my premium by 50% 😀 by having my IAM membership).

Good luck!

sounds to me like you’d be best off with one of the ‘trolley wheel’ type skid-pan sessions. there’ll be a driver training centre at most major cities i expect, just give ’em a call, and it’ll probably not cost much more than 30 or 40 quid. i did mine through a club and i think they did it for 20 quid each.
they’ll take you through all the scenarios of loosing grip. understeer, oversteer, and how to regain control over a car. it’s the sort of thing everyone ought to do when they learn to drive, really. when you know how to respond to the car’s behaviour, and you practice, it becomes fairly intuitive and natural if you find yourself in those circumstances on the road.
if want a laugh looning about in a car look at a caterham cars slalom day – much fun indeed. 😀

Thing is with any physical skill it takes practice to get it right. Being comfortable and controlling a skid in a car is not different to doing it on a mountain bike. You have to do it a lot before you become comfortable with it.

To be safe on the road its best to avoid putting yourself in that position and training in better observation reading the road will do this.

but…….

Driving a car on the limit on track is massive fun and can be very rewarding. I used to do circa a dozen track days a year for a number of years and it does improve you on the limit car control.

I also did a couple of courses with Andy Walsh at Car limits (link posted above) and that was very good but like anything you need to practice it afterwards and the road is not the place to do.

I did find however when I was doing lots of track days I did not feel the need to drive like a tool on the road so that’s good. I still don’t as its never as good as much fun as on the track so no point.

I think bookatrack are hard to beat for trackdays they are pretty good at enforcing the rules so hence its safer for everyone.

My next point of call is to start doing some track days on my motorbike so looking forward to more fun.

Understeer; reduce throttle and straighten the wheel slightly to regain grip

Hmm.. that wasn’t the best in our old Fiesta. Straightening out and attempting to re-steer would result in you being significantly closer to the outside of the bend and hence facing a far more difficult proposition – when the original corner and speed combination was too much in the first place hence the understeer.

I found what worked on gravelly muddy country roads was to steer even more into the bend whilst not braking much, this would promote some deceleration and some sideways movement of the front of the car, which would tend to help the back come out a bit more and get the car pointing more the right way.

Different for different cars and corners tho I suppose.

I did a day with Don Palmer (http://www.donpalmer.co.uk/) at Bruntingthorpe. Spent the day on a coned off course on the runway, essentially learning to steer and feel the grip. There was a little bit involving braking towards the end though, and how to ensure the car didn’t understeer.

It was in my own car, plus my mate also did the day in his car. We swapped between the two cars taking turns at being instructed – pretty much one on one coaching. Tyres got a real hammering (especially early on when we were rubbish) and we burnt a lot of fuel.

It was in the dry so the speeds we were doing were way more than would be sensible on public roads. What we learnt would still apply to driving in the wet/ice/snow/on grass (as was demonstrated).

I learnt a lot about the limits of the car and being able to detect when I was nearing the limit. The course was not about controlling skids, it was more about avoiding them in the first place.

I’d really recommend it – but it wasn’t cheap.

I found what worked on gravelly muddy country roads was to steer even more into the bend whilst not braking much, this would promote some deceleration and some sideways movement of the front of the car, which would tend to help the back come out a bit more and get the car pointing more the right way.

Different for different cars and corners tho I suppose.

That only works because your tyre scrubbing reduces speed to a point where the tyres can grip again. You might find you would have had control earlier if you had reduced the lock slightly its counter intuitive but it does work.

When the car is not turning most people turn the wheel more, this is wrong.

There are some exercises you can do in a big off road area which will make this clear. One of which is to drive in a circle at a constant speed without under-steer increase speed slowly until you get under-steer. Hold it like this for a short while then take off a little steering and miraculously the car grips again. If you think of the physics its obvious but its not obvious when you are heading for the lamppost 🙂

This was somthing I did with Andy Walsh at the “On the limit” driving course I did.

We also did some things that were really helpful in saving yourself if you happen to go into a corner to hot. You may exit the corner slower than if you got it right but at least you are on the black stuff still 🙂

You might find you would have had control earlier if you had reduced the lock slightly its counter intuitive but it does work

Depends what’s on the outside of the bend 🙂 I went through all sorts on that car, I’m confident I had it down.

Only that car tho, later cars a) had much more grip and b) were driven much more sensibly, so that’s as far as my experience goes 🙂 Like I say, it depends on what the surface is and why you are skidding/not gripping. Gravelly skids at lower speeds aren’t the same as tarmac ones at high speed.

Depends what’s on the outside of the bend I went through all sorts on that car, I’m confident I had it down.

Only that car tho, later cars a) had much more grip and b) were driven much more sensibly, so that’s as far as my experience goes Like I say, it depends on what the surface is and why you are skidding/not gripping. Gravelly skids at lower speeds aren’t the same as tarmac ones at high speed.

Makes no difference what’s on the outside of the bend you will track a tigher arc and be less likely to get to the outside of the bend IF YOU REDUCE LOCK. The physics are the physics its to do with the maximum slip angle of the tyre for a given speed. Grip increases with slip angle up to a point where it falls off quickly. So reducing lock and slip angle will get you round the corner better.

You watch a rally driver on the loose as soon as he looses front grip he will unwind the steering find grip then wind it on again.

It really does not matter if you are on tarmac, mud, ice or custard you caney defy the laws of physics captain 🙂

It really does not matter if you are on tarmac, mud, ice or custard

It does matter. Different situations have different requirements.

It really does not matter if you are on tarmac, mud, ice or custard you caney defy the laws of physics captain

Indeed – we did some exercises driving on the grass instead of tarmac to show the car behaving in exactly the same way in terms of losing grip and recovery. It was just that the point of losing grip was much lower on the grass.

It does matter. Different situations have different requirements.

The only time you do something different is when you know you have no chance and you then just hit the brakes and put your head against the headrest and hope to minimise the damage.

But I am happy to here an explanation of how it is different.

Not trying to have a go, just want to know where your coming from.