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Corvette
C8 Forum
Ron Fellows Spring Mountain Driving School - A must!
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<blockquote data-quote="Bucketoy" data-source="post: 271958" data-attributes="member: 5633"><p>My Ron Fellows Driving School Review.</p><p></p><p>Did Spring Mountain Corvette Owners school April 1/2. This Stingray is my first Performance car and after a 38 year career at General Motors of Canada, aptly plated as my BUCKETOY. Other than some “Parade Laps”, I’ve never been on a race track, or participated in an autocross event. My very limited knowledge of racing comes from the Netflix series “Drive to Survive” lol, where they document the previous F1 seasons events in detail, and occasionally watching NASCAR on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Although interested, I never thought I would realistically be able to afford any hands on racing training or experience it first hand. That is, until I heard about GM’s subsidize Spring Mountain Owners School. For $1,000. USD. It was now, at 63… or never… so I made it a priority. Let me concur with every other review from anyone who has ever experienced this program, that it is a must do, if you’ve bought a new Stingray. If for no other reason, learn what the car can do. The teaching methods of the instructors are outstanding. Never criticizing anyone, regardless of their skill level. Always offering positive meaningful instruction for each individual whether it be over the car radios each car was equipped with, or one on one in the classroom. It was a perfect balance of classroom and lots of in car instruction. Our class of 18 were divided into 3 groups of 6, and that group of 6 were further divided into 3 for more personal on track teaching. We were at the east classroom and 1.5 mile track with white wristbands. There are 3 other classrooms, Blue, Purple and Yellow/Silver and 2 other tracks. Each track have multiple configurations. They occasionally move people to different sub-groups to match skill level</p><p>. The first day included basics like common sense rules, safety equipment and how things on the C8 work, different driving modes, including cycling through the modes while driving a wet figure 8 with an instructor sitting beside you. Anti-lock-brakes, with in car accident avoidance maneuvers. Simple explanation of how to use the marker cones they placed on the track to brake, corner to the apex cone, and properly accelerate out of the corner. They wanted you to look ahead out of the side windows of the car to the apex of the next corner. One slow motion parking lot exercise (called the serpentine exercise) forced you to do this by maneuvering through 2 rows of pylons with your front windshield completely covered so you could only see out your side windows. When the first row of pylons came into view through the side window, you would then start to maneuver the car around that pylon, and have to look blindly out the opposite side window for the 2nd row of pylons before turning back around them, and so on. First day also took you out onto the track to play follow the leader and familiarize yourself with the track layout, as well as an autocross track set up in the parking lot. In car radio instructions always included simple instructions on where we were going next, why, and how. The second day built on what we learned the first day but included more advanced things like how to feel for the “balance” of the car while trail breaking on track corners. On track was never about how fast you could go down the straight, or lap times, but how to execute each corner perfectly. Just when I thought I was doing great, an instructor jumps in the drivers seat of your car to show you the proper way to corner. Then reality sets in and I can truly say, I suck! Once I accept reality, I continued on with my huge learning curve and fun aspect of it. We also had instruction and tried out the launch control feature on these cars. After playing with the different modes, best I could mange was 0-60 at 3.3sec. The second day we finished up with a friendly timed competition on the auto cross track with awards for winners of each group. The winner in my group had a time of 30.62 and I finished 1/100th behind him with a time of 30.63. Needless to say, I learned a tremendous amount in a short time, all due to their outstanding patients and instruction.</p><p>I am not going to talk much on the after hours social aspect of the experience except to say, the resort on a whole, food, service, and staff are awesome and I have never had this much fun with a group of people for a long time. I have contact information from people I met that I will be getting together with again in the near future.</p><p>The 8am to 4pm days were busy and went by quickly, so my advise would be to enjoy every second you’re there as the 2 days go by quickly.</p><p></p><p>One of my typical laps and my 2nd place autocross time...</p><p></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]94542[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH]94543[/ATTACH]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Bucketoy, post: 271958, member: 5633"] My Ron Fellows Driving School Review. Did Spring Mountain Corvette Owners school April 1/2. This Stingray is my first Performance car and after a 38 year career at General Motors of Canada, aptly plated as my BUCKETOY. Other than some “Parade Laps”, I’ve never been on a race track, or participated in an autocross event. My very limited knowledge of racing comes from the Netflix series “Drive to Survive” lol, where they document the previous F1 seasons events in detail, and occasionally watching NASCAR on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Although interested, I never thought I would realistically be able to afford any hands on racing training or experience it first hand. That is, until I heard about GM’s subsidize Spring Mountain Owners School. For $1,000. USD. It was now, at 63… or never… so I made it a priority. Let me concur with every other review from anyone who has ever experienced this program, that it is a must do, if you’ve bought a new Stingray. If for no other reason, learn what the car can do. The teaching methods of the instructors are outstanding. Never criticizing anyone, regardless of their skill level. Always offering positive meaningful instruction for each individual whether it be over the car radios each car was equipped with, or one on one in the classroom. It was a perfect balance of classroom and lots of in car instruction. Our class of 18 were divided into 3 groups of 6, and that group of 6 were further divided into 3 for more personal on track teaching. We were at the east classroom and 1.5 mile track with white wristbands. There are 3 other classrooms, Blue, Purple and Yellow/Silver and 2 other tracks. Each track have multiple configurations. They occasionally move people to different sub-groups to match skill level . The first day included basics like common sense rules, safety equipment and how things on the C8 work, different driving modes, including cycling through the modes while driving a wet figure 8 with an instructor sitting beside you. Anti-lock-brakes, with in car accident avoidance maneuvers. Simple explanation of how to use the marker cones they placed on the track to brake, corner to the apex cone, and properly accelerate out of the corner. They wanted you to look ahead out of the side windows of the car to the apex of the next corner. One slow motion parking lot exercise (called the serpentine exercise) forced you to do this by maneuvering through 2 rows of pylons with your front windshield completely covered so you could only see out your side windows. When the first row of pylons came into view through the side window, you would then start to maneuver the car around that pylon, and have to look blindly out the opposite side window for the 2nd row of pylons before turning back around them, and so on. First day also took you out onto the track to play follow the leader and familiarize yourself with the track layout, as well as an autocross track set up in the parking lot. In car radio instructions always included simple instructions on where we were going next, why, and how. The second day built on what we learned the first day but included more advanced things like how to feel for the “balance” of the car while trail breaking on track corners. On track was never about how fast you could go down the straight, or lap times, but how to execute each corner perfectly. Just when I thought I was doing great, an instructor jumps in the drivers seat of your car to show you the proper way to corner. Then reality sets in and I can truly say, I suck! Once I accept reality, I continued on with my huge learning curve and fun aspect of it. We also had instruction and tried out the launch control feature on these cars. After playing with the different modes, best I could mange was 0-60 at 3.3sec. The second day we finished up with a friendly timed competition on the auto cross track with awards for winners of each group. The winner in my group had a time of 30.62 and I finished 1/100th behind him with a time of 30.63. Needless to say, I learned a tremendous amount in a short time, all due to their outstanding patients and instruction. I am not going to talk much on the after hours social aspect of the experience except to say, the resort on a whole, food, service, and staff are awesome and I have never had this much fun with a group of people for a long time. I have contact information from people I met that I will be getting together with again in the near future. The 8am to 4pm days were busy and went by quickly, so my advise would be to enjoy every second you’re there as the 2 days go by quickly. One of my typical laps and my 2nd place autocross time... [ATTACH type="full"]94542[/ATTACH] [ATTACH alt="2nd place.jpeg"]94543[/ATTACH] [/QUOTE]
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