Catching up with SCCA President & CEO Michael Cobb
Images by Philip Royle
59 shares
share
tweet
email
By:
Philip Royle | May 15, 2018 6:27 AM
Focus is something Cobb is good at. Jumping between the classroom and seat time during Cal Club’s Driver’s School is hard enough, but Cobb managed it while juggling conversations with Region leaders and other racers interested in chatting with our new president, and not once did I see him miss a beat. It’s also important to note that Cobb didn’t register for the school as the president, he registered as a member, facing the same hurdles as everyone else at this Driver’s School.
“As I went through the entire school endeavor, I found some friction in our own processes; I found some redundancies in getting multiple membership cards, and I found redundancies in communications,” he admits. “You can assume you know what’s going on, but that’s not what I want to do as a leader – I want to go through the experience and understand it, both the opportunities that come with it and the areas where we can improve. I’ve already used that experience in service of the Driver’s School with the team here at the National Office.”
These learning experiences aren’t limited to road racing, either. In his time on the job, Cobb has been educating himself on all aspects of SCCA competition, from RoadRally to RallyCross and beyond, including some of SCCA’s relatively small-yet-complex specialty creations.
“Starting Line is a very good program, but we’ve learned some things in how to best optimize that program going forward,” Cobb says. “Targa Southland is a very good program, too, but it’s also a very complex program to execute at the local level. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea, it just means that if you want to take it on, you have to have the game plan, the strategy, the people, the resources, the locations, and the ability to pull it off. Not everybody can do that. So, what we’re trying to do at the National Office is have ideas and conversations from an enterprise point of view and then connect those conversations to the Regional conversations.” Think Chris Robbins and his Region Development team again.
My final questions to Cobb were, perhaps, the most obvious ones – but, as with any question posed to Cobb, his answer revealed more than the question implied. “Was the Driver’s School fun? Will you road race again?” I ask.
“I have to admit, I enjoyed it more than I thought,” he replies, beginning a train of thought about street cars that would make great racecars. But as soon as he starts, he stops, admitting that starting a road racing career wasn’t the reason he came to Buttonwillow.
“For me, I learn by doing and by example and by experience,” he says. “I’ve got to get out there and experience those things in as many communities as I can to really expand my knowledge and understanding of the Club.”
For the record, Cobb beat me to the line during Sunday’s race, albeit by a scant four seconds. This may have been his first shot at this track and this race car, but he showed he makes the best of any situation in a very short time.
Preparation is key
Attending a Driver’s School hosted by one of SCCA’s Regions is stressful enough so don’t add to it unnecessarily. While you may have driven on track before, you’ve probably never raced wheel to wheel, and there’s also a good chance you’ve never piloted a real, bona fide race car, either. Now you’re going to do both while jumping back and forth between the classroom and on-track sessions. Stress will be high, your time will be limited, and keeping concentration is critical. In this situation, pre-event prep is vital.
“[It] is going to be a very busy two days for all of you,” Ceci Smith, office manager for Cal Club Region, wrote in her introductory e-mail to all students of the Driver’s School that Cobb took part in. The Region also supplied a number of tips for the students via a letter from Race Chair Mark Smith, including everything from getting to the event location early to bringing a friend (“You will have little time to work on the car,” the letter said). So, as a student, how do you set yourself up for a successful Driver’s School?
The first step is bringing proper driver safety equipment. In Cobb’s case, while a frequent autocrosser, he had no equipment that would pass driver safety gear inspection at a Club race. As such, Cobb showed up to the track with all new equipment in the form of an SA2015-rated Pyrotect helmet, an SFI/FIA-approved Simpson Hybrid head-and-neck restraint, and Momo fire-resistant clothing in the form of an XL One suit paired with Xtreme Pro gloves and GT Pro shoes (all holding FIA 8856-2000 certification, with the suit also having SFI 3.2a/5 approval).
Driver safety equipment isn’t cheap, but chosen wisely and meticulously maintained, the gear will last for years. In fact, barring an incident, the helmet will be the first to be replaced, and that won’t be for another eight years. Meanwhile, the Momo suit might never need replacing.
The next key component is what was hinted at in Cal Club’s letter: you need a crew and a reliable race car. For Cobb, he was flying to the event and utilizing SportsCar magazine’s editor as crew, so a race car rental would have been perfect. But to keep things interesting, SportsCar contacted Honda Performance Development for use of the racecar Honda debuted at the 2017 PRI Show in Indianapolis.
The HPD Civic we borrowed for Cobb’s use is actually the same race car multi-time SCCA Solo National Champion Tom O’Gorman will be racing this year in the Pirelli World Challenge pro racing series: a new Honda Civic Si. Dubbed a “Spec Civic,” this 1.5L turbo Civic, wearing big brakes and race suspension, has been classed by SCCA’s Club Racing Board in both Touring 2 and Touring 3, with the car also fitting in Super Touring Under. Best of all, the car started with the push of a button every time – fast, reliable, and fun. Perfect for a school.
The next step was tires. The demands of a school weekend are harsh, so we ordered Maxxis Victra RC-1 tires. With a 100 UTQG rating, these Maxxis tires might not be the setup for the fastest ultimate lap, but they do offer both durability and consistency, which are key. Not knowing the car, we started with a square pressure setup, leveling off the pressures around 40psi. The tires never missed a beat and held up well through the school’s 3.5 hours of pounding track time of a tight, twisty course, in addition to the near hour of track time during Sunday’s qualifying session and race.
The moral of the story: only bring equipment to an SCCA Driver’s School that you know will withstand the harsh demands (“I’m exhausted, and I’m not even racing,” SportsCar’s editor was heard saying during the school), because if anything fails during the Driver’s School, well, that would be stressful.