Taking it out for a spin
BIRMINGHAM, ALA.--So you think you're a good driver? So did I--until the first 20 minutes on the track at the Porsche Driving Experience, a two-day instructional thrillfest for well-heeled motoring enthusiasts. My group of six is teeing up for the first exercise, three simple-seeming lane changes at about 60 miles per hour, a quick turnaround through orange cones, and three more lane changes. Our instructor, a congenial, 49-year-old racecar driver named Jack Baldwin, has emphasized one thing above all: Hammer the brakes. And do it before you turn.
A couple of my classmates seem hesitant. When my turn comes, I race smoothly through the lane changes. But then I brake too late, and take out a few cones in the turn, before navigating back through the last three lane changes. Suddenly, Baldwin's sunny demeanor has clouded over, his boyish grin usurped by a Jack Palance sneer. "We get a lot of guys like you here," he drawls, glancing under the 911. "There's a cone stuck under your car." For the next two laps, the orange appendage signals driver overindulgence, until a kid working the track comes over and fishes it out.
Humility, it turns out, will be a prevailing theme of the course. And for this, about 20 car buffs--most of them men, about two thirds of them Porsche owners--have waited months and forked over $2,695. Despite the steep price, Porsche insists profit isn't the goal. The real purpose, says Jeff Purner, 40, the program's operations manager, is to let Porsche owners experience the cars in ways they can't on the street, and to persuade others to become Porsche owners. "We want people to understand what Porsche is all about. Having fun," he says.
With about a six-month waiting list, Porsche is planning to add more track days next year and introduce bigger and cheaper classes. It may expand to other tracks as well. Other manufacturers have the same idea. BMW offers several programs at its driving center in Spartanburg, S.C., ranging from $400 to $3,650, and it has started using a racetrack in North Carolina for a $4,650 advanced class. Audi runs driving schools in central Florida, near Atlanta and Toronto, and in Fort Worth, with four programs costing from $500 to $975. Even Mazda has rolled out a low-budget driving program in 15 cities to promote its new Mazda3 economy car, with group instruction, driving clinics, and timed laps for a $40 fee.
Porsche's lure, of course, is the chance to zoom around the track here at Barber Motorsports Park in the latest 911. The course begins with a lecture on the physics of driving. The 20 students are all ears, but after about 45 minutes, the attention wanders. There's a collective impatience to wrap up the classroom work and get behind the wheel.
Slip sliding away. Soon enough. While Day 1 is still young, the drivers head to the track in vans and select their own 2004 911 Carrera. Each is a rear-wheel-drive production model with a six-speed manual transmission and sport suspension, clocking in at about $80,000. Baldwin leads one group to the lane-changing set-up and a slalom course. The reason for all the emphasis on braking becomes evident. On the third exercise, an autocross--a wiggly figure eight about 200 yards long navigated in a Porsche Boxster--several drivers drift onto the sidelines during the first curve, the result of braking too late. Then on the skidpad, watered down to simulate black ice, virtually every driver experiences the kind of tailspin that can result from hitting the brakes and turning the wheel at the same time. Worse, the students learn, is pressing the gas before the car's nose is pointed in the right direction. "The dumbest organ in the male body," advises instructor John Lewis, 36, "is the right foot." His point: It's about control, not speed.
Despite the emphasis on discipline, everybody's having fun. "These are road cars?" gushes Alan Robson, a 63-year-old accountant from Raleigh who's going through the course with his 21-year-old son, Peter, after a lap on the autocross. "It's unbelievable." There's a ringer among us: Chris Lee, a 19-year-old freshman at Wake Forest University. He posts the best time by far on the autocross, and a bit of probing reveals he has more than youth on his side: He's a recent grad of the Dodge/Skip Barber Driving School (a national program unrelated to Barber Motorsports Park).
The Porsche instructors offer a few driving tips. Doc Bundy, 49, suggests holding the wheel at 9 and 3 o'clock (instead of the customary 10 and 2), since that's less of a a reach and provides a more balanced grip. And instead of fixating on objects right in front of the car, he says look slightly ahead. Peripheral vision, he insists, will pick up the rest.
Once lunch is over, it's time to open it up on the main track. Baldwin leads the group slowly through the course, a scenic, undulating track with 15 challenging curves. He points out the apex of each curve, the point to hug to make best use of the available road. The instructors have helped to curb overenthusiasm by erecting large signs that say BRAKE at key spots where a curve is upcoming and it's time to start slowing down.
By the end of the day, everybody is smiling. "The learning curve is huge," says Byron May, 41, a pharmacist from Apex, N.C. "But you go around with a grin on your face." On Day 2, however, the instructors throw a curve. There's a lecture on heel-and-toe downshifting, an awkward racing technique that involves tapping the accelerator pedal briefly with part of the right foot, while applying the brake with the same foot. The idea is to raise the engine RPMs while you're downshifting so they're in sync with the speed of the rear wheels. "Your biggest enemy today," says Bundy, "will be your mind."
It turns out to be a fearsome enemy. At the skidpad, there's even more humiliation than the day before, since most of the students can't pull off the fancy footwork under such slippery conditions. The instructors seem to enjoy watching the group struggle. "Ooh," winces one of them, Chris Hall, 46, as student Peter Robson careens toward a curb. "He slid off into the next country." The autocross is a break, though, since the Boxster is an automatic. And today it's a team event--three laps per person, with a combined time that will be scored against the other groups. There's a two-second penalty for every cone knocked over, which prompts the group to drive conservatively. Baldwin urges more aggressiveness: "Hustle a little, man!" The group dings only two cones, but it loses time when a couple of drivers get tangled in the seat belt during changeovers. Despite some stellar laps by Chris Lee, which impress even the instructors, the team time turns out to be uncompetitive.
No brakes. Following lunch is the main event, several hours of track time. The drivers take a few warm-up runs behind Baldwin; then each rides with him for a lap. He seems a bit bored, racing through the curves with one hand on the wheel, the other waving a radio he uses to transmit messages back to the students. "At these speeds," he confides, "we don't really need the brakes." (He's hitting nearly 100 on the straightaways.) By normal standards, the driving is aggressive, with rapid acceleration, split-second turns, and a lot of exertion to keep the brakes hot. The drivers are learning to let the car unwind itself coming out of a turn. The track is so bendy that after a few laps it feels like traversing a giant Mobius strip. A Zen-like sense of satisfaction settles in. All the rising and falling, the speeding up and slowing down feel so fluid it's practically soothing. "I'm breathless," gasps Brian Tully, 37, a Web developer from Danbury, Conn. "I've never done anything like this."
At the end, enthusiasm is sky-high. The instructors make sure to mention some of the other programs Porsche offers, such as a similar two-day event driving the Cayenne SUV, or a $2,995 "master's" program that teaches more-sophisticated techniques and allows students to lap the course without an instructor. Back home in North Carolina a few days later, Alan Robson is still buzzing. "I'm still excited when I think about it," he says. "We were so focused on the driving we forgot to take any photographs!" Sounds like the perfect excuse to come back for another try.
This story appears in the April 19, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.