Feature: Training Wheels
08/01/2005
Knuckles crack, pens click, and fingers drum tabletops on this sunny Monday morning, day one of the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. The couple dozen students sitting in the air-conditioned classroom near Phoenix have grown fidgety, anticipating what the next few hours–and the next few days–will bring.There is no typical Bondurant pupil. This group ranges from a high school
senior who enrolled so that he can follow in the footsteps of his father, a
professional racecar driver, to a Detroit adman who would like to learn how
stunt drivers practice their profession. A Z06 owner who just crashed his car
wants to avoid any more expensive mistakes. Some are here on friends’
recommendations. Two received their places in the class as gifts from their
wives. An Army captain, a driver and personal security guard to one of America’s
highest-ranking military officers, is brushing up on some of the skills he
learned in an antiterrorist course that he took several years ago. Fresh from
Iraq, he also may be here to unwind.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
When evasive maneuvers fail, students learn how to disable an
offending vehicle, paparazzi-style: Aim for the end that doesn’t have an
engine. (Click image to enlarge)
Of Bondurant’s one- to four-day courses–Intro to Racing, Highway Survival,
High Performance Driving, Grand Prix Road Racing, and Advanced Road Racing,
among others–the elective for which we have signed up, titled Executive
Protection, carries the highest tuition at $5,645. Despite the relatively
expensive fee (prices generally average $1,200 per day), demand for a course
that includes antiterrorist training has increased in recent years.
Regardless of their purpose for enrolling or their prior experience, all Bondurant students hone their driving skills by beginning with the basics. Proper braking, steering, and shifting techniques are standard lessons that are new for some and good review for others. These are followed by sessions that address driver smoothness, vehicle weight transfer, and skid control.
The instructors also spend time teaching all students how to look and think ahead–how you should point your eyes in the direction you want to go. “Your eyes tell your hands and feet what to do,” explains chief instructor Mike McGovern, “and by extension your eyes tell your car where to go.”
To those in Executive Protection training, instructor Will Parker assigns a bright orange Mustang GT for use in basic and advanced training. While driving laps around an oval, students practice cornering lines and trail braking, which is the habit of extending braking into corners to keep the front tires weighted for better traction. Students also rehearse steering while emergency braking, a feat made simpler by modern antilock braking systems, or ABS. Bondurant claims that ABS stands for the “Ability to Brake and Steer,” because such systems enable drivers to apply full brake pressure while steering around an obstacle.
Next come the “accident simulator” and “skid car” lessons. The former takes
place on a coned-off, three-lane highway with green lights above each lane. As
the driver approaches the lights, two of the three turn red, simulating a
sudden roadblock. The trick is to “lift, turn, and squeeze”–lift your foot off
the gas pedal, turn quickly into the open lane, then straighten the car and
squeeze back on the gas to stabilize. The drill is designed to teach the
potentially lifesaving practice of finding an opening and driving through it
rather than jamming on the brakes and skidding into the obstacle.The skid cars ride on outriggers that hydraulically lift their front or rear
wheels to reduce traction–either slightly or completely–and simulate slick
conditions. The driver steers the car in a figure-eight pattern while the
instructor plays with the traction–and the driver’s mind–to teach essential
skid-control techniques. When the front tires lose traction, or understeer, and
the car will not turn, you simply raise your foot off the gas, wait for tires to
reclaim traction, then steer in the direction you want to go. But when the rear
tires break loose, or oversteer, you must first “countersteer” in the direction
the rear is moving, then quickly steer back to prevent a skid in the opposite
direction. In any skid recovery, you learn to look in the direction you want to
go and to rely on your peripheral vision to view the rest of your surroundings.
Look toward the ditch, and that is where you will wind up.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
Orange Peel-Outs: Though most Bondurant courses make use of new Corvettes and Cadillac
CTS sedans, previous-generation Mustang GT couupes still take the occasional thrashing. (Click image to enlarge)
To practice techniques specific to the Executive Protection course, we use
retired Ford police cruisers. On the first day, Parker has us practice forward
and reverse 180-degree turns. At moderate speed, it is surprisingly easy to jam
on the parking brake–which locks up the rear wheels–turn one way or the other to
spin the car around within the width of the road, release the brake to catch the
slide, and accelerate away in the other direction in a cloud of blue tire smoke.
When the car is stopped, the driver can throw it into reverse, stand on the gas
to gather some speed, then lift off the gas, crank the wheel in either
direction, shift into drive as the car is turning, and as soon as it is pointed
in the right direction, floor it.
This is enough excitement for one day. On day two, we practice “takeouts” using old police cars fortified with steel brush bars. The idea is that when bad guys pull alongside your vehicle–trying to shoot you or force you over–you nudge into their rear fender, then steer into it, and accelerate to spin them around. With practice, this technique works wonderfully–they are in the ditch or off the cliff, and you are down the road with minimal damage.
To complete Dukes of Hazzard—style crashes through roadblocks, you had better know what you are doing. For our practice, Bondurant drags out a junker car to ram with another, once in back and once in front to demonstrate the difference. Unless the bad guys already are shooting, the trick is to slow your approach so they think you are stopping, and then accelerate into the obstacle car just behind its rear wheel (the lighter end of a front-engine vehicle), which will spin it out of the way without causing major damage to your car. Hit it too fast, or on the heavier, engine-anchored front end, and you may end up with a smashed radiator, immobilized.
The itinerary for day three has us running the Mustangs around a timed autocross circuit in a coned-off parking lot; and then around a larger, faster oval; and finally on a full road course. Aside from being terrific fun, this also is relevant antiterrorist training. The more adept you are at driving safely on twisty roads, the better your chances of escaping less-skilled pursuers.
On day four, having learned the road course in Mustang GTs, we are turned loose by Parker on the same track in big Ford sedans. But we drive in the opposite direction we had grown accustomed to the previous day so that the roads are unfamiliar to us. Then Parker and another instructor initiate terrorist scenarios, approaching from ahead or behind and blocking the roads with their cars. This forces us to quickly decide on and execute the best escape technique: brake, accelerate, or 180-degree turn.
Years ago, as an overconfident novice, I regularly and foolishly challenged
the limits of control. I was lucky to survive my youthful mistakes, but too many
do not. At a minimum, skid control and accident avoidance training should be
mandatory for all drivers, from beginners to veterans. By the end of the
four-day course, with graduation certificate in hand, I was satisfied to have
learned new skills that with any luck I will never find reason to use.IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Bob Bondurant, president of the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving,
was once a fine racer himself. Bondurant drove GM’s Corvettes to victories
in California and went on to perform on the world stage in Shelby’s Cobras and
Enzo’s Ferraris before injuries from a crash ended his racing career in 1967.
Having trained actors James Garner and Yves Montand for the 1966 movie Grand
Prix, Bondurant opened his own driving school at Orange County raceway near Los
Angeles in 1968. The first week, he had three students. The second week, only
two: Paul Newman and Robert Wagner, who were training for the movie Winning.
His growing operation moved to nearby Ontario Motor Speedway in 1970, then to Sears Point Raceway near Sonoma, Calif. in 1973. Following 17 successful seasons there, Bondurant achieved his longtime dream of opening his own purpose-built driver-training center at the Firebird sports complex, just south of Phoenix, in 1990.
Now an energetic 72, Bondurant has instructed and befriended so many top drivers and celebrities through the years that you never know who might be around on any given day. At this most recent visit for Executive Protection training, I found him working one-on-one with former Cobra racer turned author and poet Dan Gerber, who has recently resumed racing Cobras in vintage events. Gerber’s latest book of poetry, Trying to Catch the Horses, takes on new meaning when you watch him chase Mustangs around a track.
Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving
800.842.7223
www.bondurant.com