How do you continue to grow and develop a skill? The classic saying is that you have to "step out of your comfort zone." I recently did just that. The next goal is to checkpoint where my skills are now and see how I can improve. How do you push yourself out of your comfort zone in the high performance driving world? Sometimes you have to get a bit extreme.
For many of us with young kids, the prospect of shipping ourselves off to a far-flung race track in a far away neighboring country...like Connecticut...to do something that is all about us, well, it's quite a challenge. Trekking to Lime Rock for the Skip Barber school was great fun when I did it back around 2008 but, amazingly, it feels like we all have even less time for things like that as the kids grow up! But there is a more convenient way to do it suddenly! Skip Barber's instruction is coming soon to Thompson Speedway just 35 minutes from Providence in Thompson, CT!
Have you ever wondered how much faster than you a pro driver would be in your own car? I often have. But how would you ever find yourself in a situation where you could find out? Well, I found myself there just the other day. And here is how I did.
Photo of Lee Carpentier, Lamborghini Trofeo race driver, from his Facebook page
A Driver's Education (DE) event with the Porsche Club has become one of my more favorite things to do. But it has been an evolution to get to that place. Despite my normal love of driving and, now, amateur car-control events, I'll admit that my first trip to drive my own car on a real race track in 2013 was a bit nerve-wracking. Everyone thinks they are the world's best driver, especially before they have ever been trained (where we learn we aren't nearly as good as we think we are...). So I at least had that going for me. Yes, I had driven other people's car on a race track before - Skip Barber High Performance Driving School at the historic Lime Rock Park track in CT - so it wasn't that I hadn't been on a track before. Tracks are certainly a bit intimidating, especially New Hampshire Motor Speedway with it's full NASCAR stands around the oval. You really just don't know quite what to expect.