ggc bmwcca club racing school '08

So I made it to Willows sans ambulance at 3:30am.

I set an alarm for 7am, surprised myself, and actually woke up when it went off. I checked my phone and groggily listened to voicemail from Scott Clough. He snagged a spot under the shade structure for me. Scott C is now my favorite Spec E30 driver.

I spent the weekend in the BMWCCA Club Racing School. This was a 2 day school tailored to prepare an advanced driving school student for club racing with the BMWCCA (sans other experience, it's a requirement to apply for a license). I was hoping to learn some secrets from old salty dog racers and have a good time.

I didn't learn what I expected to, and in hindsight, this school probably wasn't for me.

I have 10 or so races under my belt by now, so I was a little bit aggressive relative to the rest of the class. The school catered to the sheltered BMWCCA driving school student who has come up through the ranks and restrictive rules of the BMWCCA. The most advanced run groups in BMWCCA are passing with a point by, which produces timid, polite advanced level students who are distinctly lacking experience passing in turns. That said, most of the other students took to the new freedom of open passing pretty well. Our race "qualifying" ended up being a simulated NASA HPE4 rungroup, but with lots more polite drivers ;)

The school allowed anyone with a street car and a helmet to participate. This was a little odd for racing, as not all cars had the usual safety equipment. Because of this, the instructors set a tone of safety above all else. Any contact was not to be tolerated (though this was more of a 13/13 thing).

We did a couple of sessions with specific exercises:
- drive the track 3 wide, switch position every lap
- passing drill
- rolling start practice (wish I recorded video of this!)

There were also extensive classroom sessions. This is where I was hoping to learn a lot about racecraft. It turns out the classroom sessions were more administrivia about how BMWCCA club racing works, and how you should organize yourself for your race weekend. While this is probably useful for the complete newbie, it didn't really help me much. My big take away was that it provided a time for me to reflect on my own routine. There were also lots of good stories, but very little in the way of what I was looking for (tips and tricks for passing and defending, commentary on things they saw me do at the track, etc).

This was the first weekend on a new transmission and clutch (and motor mounts and trans mounts and short shifter). They all performed flawlessly. The new clutch allows me to shift a little too fast at times, but I like it. The short shifter is the stock shifter from my e36 M3. It's a little weird and probably needs to be bent a little, but I like it just the same.

Anyway, back to the actual driving part. The weekend culminated in a mock race (they called it a "simulated racing exercise"). Here's video with my first attempt at commentary overlayed on live video:

GGC BMWCCA Club Race School @ Thunderhill 2008-08-10 from Adam Lazur on Vimeo.