With great trepidation, I drove north to the New Hampshire International Speedway today, to attend an Advanced Driving Skills School organized by the Boston Chapter of the BMW CCA.
At the Driver School Prep back in March, signing on to an ADSS seemed like a good idea but this week I got really stressed over it – nearly did not go! I think I was concerned that I would be useless and learn nothing except how to be embarrassed …
The reality however is that the event is so well organized with such great instructors that even I was able to learn! We started the day with braking tests – first in a straight line. The idea was to brake to but not past the cars limits. At first I was late in really pressing the pedal hard, then locked ABS to stop in about “4-1/2 cones”; after a few tries and various advice I was getting the pedal down hard earlier, easing off to avoid ABS, and stopping in less than “3-1/2 cones” – pretty happy!
Next we did braking while cornering – this was embarrassingly easy for the MINI! Number of cars were eating cones but the MINI only ever behaved perfectly, even with the instructors tightening the curve and encouraging greater speed.
After that, lane change exercises – this was one of the hardest parts of the day for me! You drive at 30mph straight at an instructor standing in the center lane or three. Last minute he will indicate left or right and you have to change to that lane then stop. But you have to keep the accelerator unchanged during the lane change – you are not supposed to brake till you get in the new lane. Some hope!
With the tension watching the instructor, when he suddenly moves my first reaction is to switch from accelerator to brake! I did improve and got reasonable at this exercise, but it was really hard to resist letting off during the lane change. Of course the MINI was perfectly happy.
After that we did double lane changes – easier in some ways since now you knew to go down the right lane, then switch through the middle to the left lane before braking. No instructor standing in the middle and waving at you. Once again the MINI had no trouble, while I had to learn …
After a pizza & coke lunch, we switched with the other group and moved to the skid pad.
Here we practised continuous turns, holding steering and accelerator steady while the car revolved round and round a wet area of track. First the instructor runs your car round with you as a passenger – I could not comprehend what he was making the MINI do – unbelievable!
When we switched I found the MINI very predictable; once I had it turning nicely, the instructor encouraged us to try more and less gas – more gas starts the car sliding very calmly and the turning radius expands; less gas and the car comes back. Very easy and impressive! I know lots about understeer now, and I love how well GBMINI behaves at its limit – it never did anything that surprised me.
Next they linked the two skid pads to create a figure 8 … by now this was getting a little dull, so the instructor started pulling the handbrake to induce loss of grip at the rear – oversteer. Again extremely predictable in the MINI, unlike some of the rear wheel drive cars which were doing 180s.
We ended the day with an “auto-cross” track laid out with cones – I did this once with the instructor driving, then once with me driving (I wonder who was quicker!) It was a lot of fun!
I strongly recommend this day to anyone that wants to see how well the MINI handles, especially in comparison with the other cars …
M&I / GBMINI 
Ian, looks like fun. I’d love to find an event like this down here near NJ and see just what the MINI can do!
Gee Ian if I had known about this I would have signed up for this .
Joe,
It was a very good day … I learned about it during the Driver Prep Day; check the Boston BMWCCA web site for more dates later this year (July 11, August 28, September 25). I plan to go again!
how come you were instructed to avoid the ABS? certainly in the past a good driver could modulate braking pressure and do a better job than ABS, however my understanding is that in modern cars, the ABS can do a better job than virtually any human.
The goal of the instructors is to teach control of the car rather than giving it up to the car. The instructions were to brake just not quite as much as ABS trigger, and see how well you could brake with no assistance.