Can driving schools help experienced racers? Yes!

Images by Jeff Zurschmeide


share
tweet
email
By: Jeff Zurschmeide 5 hours ago


Are driver schools useful for experienced SCCA racers? Terry Earwood says the answer is yes

Terry Earwood has a racing resume that few can match. He’s not only in the Drag Racing Hall of Fame, but he’s a champion autocrosser, too. He drove in the Firehawk series back in the day, and he won the IMSA National Touring championship. He’s been the chief instructor for Skip Barber since 1984, and he’s taught performance driving to more than 30,000 enthusiasts. In addition to everything else, right now he’s an assistant chief steward and driver coach for the SCCA Pro Racing Trans Am Series. Consequently, when Fiat invited SportsCar to a one-day Skip Barber Racing School refresher school, where Earwood would be the coach, we couldn’t resist.

Image by Chris Clark


The vehicles we piloted were the Fiat 124 Abarth and Fiat 500 Abarth at The Ridge Motorsports Park in Shelton, Wash., but, as Earwood points out, the cars are simply a means to an end. “A car’s a car,” Earwood explains. “I don’t care if you drive a cop car or a Fiat 124 to school.”

Simply put, Earwood believes in mastering the fundamentals of performance driving and, as a result, his one-day school is pretty much the same for novices and professional racers alike. The day begins with a chalk talk that starts with the basics of grip, radius, and speed. Earwood understands that everyone is eager to get in a car, so he keeps it moving, and the classroom session is no longer than necessary.



“We’re going to start the morning off with [the] skid pad and autocross,” he explains in the classroom. “We’re working on knocking the rust off. We do a heel-and-toe exercise so you can work on proper downshifting, and then we go out on track and do lead-follows and just keep the pace up.”

The sequence is important, however, and the reason for it is simple. “It lets us ride with you for a few minutes and see where you’re at and work on your habits, good or bad,” Earwood says. “If you haven’t ridden on a skid pad with a coach, you don’t know what you’re going to do.”

Out on the wet skid pad, Earwood presses each driver to increase speed until the car loses traction. “We practice the CPR system,” he explains. “That’s Correct, Pause, and Recover.”