HPDE
For the unfamiliar, an HPDE is a driving school where you drive your own car in on-track sessions and skidpad sessions with an instructor riding along. Passes on track are only allowed in specific passing zones and with a point-by from the car being passed to help ensure everyone stays safe. Theoretically the focus is on car control skills that will help you even when you're away from the track. In practice, it seemed to vary between instructors focusing on daily driving applicability and others focusing purely on driving a racetrack quickly and safely.Saturday
My weekend started with a skidpad session Saturday morning - my first time ever on a skidpad. The instructor was hoping to practice both understeer and oversteer but my car only wanted to oversteer (I think I had my rear tires over-inflated). Still, it was a lot of fun getting to practice detecting and correcting oversteer. The hardest thing was letting the car slide further out and then getting used to just how much and how quickly you have to get your hands around to catch it.
Immediately after that was my first track session of the weekend. It took a few laps to learn the track - especially with how many blind turns there at Shenandoah. I had a hard time at first getting used to where to go when another car was passing me. I was so used to lapped traffic in Formula One moving off-line to allow faster cars to pass. In the HPDE though, you treat it more like a real pass for position, where the car being passed stays on-line and the passing car goes off line to execute the pass.
During the classroom sessions throughout the weekend, it became obvious that everyone else in my group (the second of four student groups, ordered by estimated speed on track) had a lot more track experience than I did. I was the only person in the group who had never been on any of the tracks at Summit Point. I think I was also one of the only people in my group driving a bone-stock daily driver as my track car. One of the classroom sessions even focused on the yearly maintenance you should be doing to help keep your car track-ready. As someone who does zero work on my car myself and will probably make it to maybe one track event every year or two going forward, I felt pretty out of place.
Despite the disparity in track experience though, I seemed to hold my own just fine on track with the B group. Between track sessions, my instructor took the time to go over the track map with me in more detail and discuss adjustments I could make to go faster. I also spent some time quietly driving the track in my mind and thinking about where I wanted to be through each turn. It must have paid off because pretty quickly it felt like I was doing a lot more passing instead of getting passed.
One of the really interesting aspects of the weekend was the track "exercises." On Saturday we did a "no-brakes" exercise where you coast into each turn and take the turn as fast as you can without having to touch the brakes. It was crazy hard to overcome the muscle memory of hitting the brakes during the approach to the turn. Once I got used to not braking though, it was amazing to see how much speed you could take into a turn and then have it scrub off as you squeal the tires around the corner.
Unfortunately, the no-brakes exercise would be my last time on track of the day. A brake warning light came on prior to the session, and while inspecting the brakes afterwards I noticed a bubble in the sidewall of one of the tires. My first thought was that my weekend was over, but I managed to find a Merchant Tire in Winchester that had a replacement tire. It wasn't the exact same tire, but it was close enough get me back on track Sunday which was a huge relief.
Sunday
Sunday morning's track session, despite the mismatched tires, turned out to be my best of the weekend. It started off a bit strangely - a few laps into the session my car went into "limp mode" and I had to come back into the pits and cycle power to reset it. When I went back on track, everyone else was already up to speed and I really went into attack mode. I had the tires squealing through every turn. I was consistent lap to lap too, which meant it was a lot easier to make small adjustments lap to lap to improve corners since the approach speed and car placement were the same each time.
When the checkered flag came out, my instructor had glowing praise for how well I took every section of the track. He was really happy with how well I implemented all the adjustments we had talked about. He was also impressed that I didn't let the car going into limp mode rattle me and mess up my head for the rest of the session. The session certainly felt great to me, and it was awesome hearing that the instructor was happy with how I was doing.
When the checkered flag came out, my instructor had glowing praise for how well I took every section of the track. He was really happy with how well I implemented all the adjustments we had talked about. He was also impressed that I didn't let the car going into limp mode rattle me and mess up my head for the rest of the session. The session certainly felt great to me, and it was awesome hearing that the instructor was happy with how I was doing.
After my great morning session I didn't push the limit quite as much the rest of the day. My car went into limp mode yet again (later I would find out it was a boost pressure issue) and the brake pedal started feeling a little squishy at times. As my confidence in the car declined a little, I tried to drive easier on the car but I had a hard time doing that and still keeping the pace up through the turns.
The exercise for Sunday was an "off-line" exercise where you practice staying off of the racing line. It was a lot of seat-of-the-pants driving where you're just going off of feel and your best guess at how fast you can take a particular route through a turn, since you can't rely on the same kind of repetition you have when you've learned the racing line. I feel like I did pretty well moving the car into weird sections of the track, but I was surprised at how challenging it was to go back to taking the proper racing line after all that off-line work.
Prior to my group's last track session on Sunday, we learned that an A-group driver went off at the karussel and rolled his car. It's a hairy spot on the track because there's such a sharp edge at the top of the banking, so if you put a wheel over then you're basically guaranteed to go into the wall. Fortunately nobody was hurt in the wreck. The instructor in our classroom session had already stressed that, with cars and brains tired, you shouldn't be going "ten tenths" in your last track session of the weekend. The roll only helped to reinforce that point. My last session was indeed deliberately pulled back from the limit, and it was satisfying to close out the weekend without any scary moments or off-track excursions.
What I Learned
I was really happy with the quality of the instruction at the school and with how well I drove. I was nervous going into the weekend that I would be one mistake away from sending my car off track and into a wall somewhere. Luckily that wasn't the case! In fact, I was able to build up speed and learn the track in what felt like a safe manner. Even when I was really pushing the limit, I was able to notice and correct mistakes without ever feeling like I was in danger of going off track. I certainly still have a healthy fear of wrecking, but I was pleasantly surprised at how much buffer it felt like I had on track.
Another take-away from the weekend was just how much it felt like I was punishing my car. By the end of the weekend, the brakes were feeling weird, the brake warning light was on, I had ended up in limp mode twice, and I had replaced one of the tires. Overall it felt like my car wasn't set up for track work in the same way that a lot of other cars there were. And even though the event itself was relatively inexpensive, the shop work before the weekend and after the weekend turned it into a much more expensive weekend than I was expecting.
The weirdest thing coming out of the weekend was that it wasn't more "fun." Given how much I love racing, I was surprised that my on-track time wasn't just absolute heaven on Earth, and I've been trying to wrap my head around why that might be. I think part of it is getting used to the risks involved in motor racing - both to the car and to myself. It was also a little weird driving on track and not having the immediate feedback of lap times (though I've since gone back and calculated lap times from the GoPro videos). I think the biggest thing though was how focused I was on learning and doing well that I forgot to have fun.
One of the best parts of the weekend was having my wife and 4-year-old daughter there to watch me drive. It was so cool that they had fun watching me on track and I feel really lucky that my wife is so supportive of my hobby. This was also our first time in Winchester and we loved it. All three nights we went to Old Town and got dinner and walked around. It was like a great little vacation surrounding the track days and I'm sure we'll be back.
What's Next
As the days have gone by since the HPDE, I've found myself longing more and more to get back out on track. Public roads now seem so slow by comparison. But how best to get track time?
One option is to go to more HPDEs, but set up my car better for the track - mostly track pads and dedicated wheels/tires. This is probably the cheapest option. The biggest drawback is that the HPDEs are still an environment based mostly around learning, which seems kind of pointless if you're never going to get to apply that learning outside of the "classroom" (even if the classroom involves driving 110mph on a racetrack). Maybe knowing what to expect and not being quite so laser-focused on the learning aspect would make it more fun though.
Another option is to buy a dedicated track car, or to partner with some other racers on a track car. The biggest downside of this option is the big up-front cost of buying a car that has no use outside of the track. Plus with no desire to wrench the car myself, I'd be signing up for paying some shop even more to keep the track car in proper shape.
A third option is to do some track time or races with Skip Barber. The biggest advantage there is that you don't have to own your own car or worry about any maintenance costs whatsoever. The huge downside is cost though, with race weekends running close to $4,000.
Currently my plan is to maybe do a couple more HPDEs over the next several years as my minuscule racing budget allows. If I can manage to set aside enough money, maybe there's even a Skip Barber MX5 race somewhere in my future.
Final Thoughts
Even though this weekend was an eye-opener for just how expensive the sport is, it's great to have broken back into track driving in some form. The last time I was on track prior to this weekend was in 2003 in a Formula Dodge with Skip Barber - 13 years ago! While I've spent the intervening years video game racing, indoor karting, and doing autocross, there's just no replacement for the feeling of actually being on track.
There's something about that sequence of approaching a corner at speed, turning in and hitting the apex with the tires singing, and rolling back onto the throttle as the car tracks all the way out to the curbing that is just beautiful. The flame has been reignited, and I can't wait to go back.