Advanced/Performance Driving Courses?

[ilmiont]

I'm wondering if anyone can endorse/recommend a performance driving course. Not sure if this forum really caters to this kind of question but would be interested to hear from Volvo owners if anyone's been on one.

I'm looking for something intensive, probably only one day, focused on driving at/beyond the limit and learning and practicing performance driving technique. Ideally applied to road driving (I'm not a track driver and although may one day go on a trackday, it's not my focus at all). I'm NOT looking for "driving in all weathers", "speed awareness" or "anticipating bends", which seems to be what a lot of "advanced driving" courses advertise; I'm seeking mastery of the car and driver-car connection.

I'd like to have the opportunity to push myself and the car to the absolute limit while getting immediate feedback on my technique and how I could improve. I'm a road driver with a completely stock 2005 S60 2.5T (no plans to alter its factory-standard nature - discussion is not about the car).

I feel like I know where the limit is and I do have good instinctive car control ability (which my driving instructor noted). Yet I'm also only 22, have only had the car 11 months and am acutely aware I have made mistakes, some of them stupid, and that I will make more mistakes. I'd like to either prove to myself that my car control is as good as I believe it to be - or, more likely, be found out, told my technique is poor, and shown how to improve it. I've read a great deal of performance driving theory/literature but I would like to practice it in my own car.

If anyone's done a genuinely "advanced" driving course that doesn't break the bank, would be interested to know details. Thanks.

[eternal optimist]

Go to a track day, find a coach, pay them to sit alongside you for a few hours on track.

[S60D5-185]

Originally Posted by eternal optimist

Go to a track day, find a coach, pay them to sit alongside you for a few hours on track.

Correct, as has been said several times already, the road is not the place to find your limits.

I was on traffic for several years and the advanced driving course was a very intensive 3 weeks . The big difference with this compared to civilian advanced driving is that you are often pushing on at 140mph plus on a daily basis and believe me that is very tiring, particularly once you start having to do commentary, as well as being all too aware of the SAFETY OF OTHER ROAD USERS.

I can remember finishing the course with a Class 1 and thinking that I was quick. I then got crewed with a guy that had been on traffic for years and the difference in speed and ability was massive. It takes time but driving very quickly on a daily basis hones the skill to another level.

Sad to say that I have well and truly lost that edge now and am happy to bimble about listening to Classic FM.............😁

[eternal optimist]

Originally Posted by S60D5-185

Correct, as has been said several times already, the road is not the place to find your limits.

I was on traffic for several years and the advanced driving course was a very intensive 3 weeks . The big difference with this compared to civilian advanced driving is that you are often pushing on at 140mph plus on a daily basis and believe me that is very tiring, particularly once you start having to do commentary, as well as being all too aware of the SAFETY OF OTHER ROAD USERS.

I can remember finishing the course with a Class 1 and thinking that I was quick. I then got crewed with a guy that had been on traffic for years and the difference in speed and ability was massive. It takes time but driving very quickly on a daily basis hones the skill to another level.

Sad to say that I have well and truly lost that edge now and am happy to bimble about listening to Classic FM.............😁

I don't know....finding yourself behind the wheel of a Vauxhall Senator, or maybe an SD1, it might all come flooding back!

[Polestar Pete]

... or a Hillman Imp ...

[john.wigley]

Originally Posted by Polestar Pete

... or a Hillman Imp ...

You may jest, 'Polestar Pete', but I actually took my IAM test in a Sunbeam Imp Sport! The examiners were all ex grade 1 Police drivers, and what 'S60D5-185' said about commentary driving is dead right - I found it tiring at normal / legal speeds, so I can only imagine doing so while things are flashing by at twice the national speed limit! Huge respect to those who do this on a daily basis. It certainly sharpens concentration, and is a technique I still practice today when I find myself in difficult situations or unfamiliar surroundings.

Regards, John.

[S60D5-185]

Originally Posted by eternal optimist

I don't know....finding yourself behind the wheel of a Vauxhall Senator, or maybe an SD1, it might all come flooding back!

The 24v Senator that I used on ARV was great and so tough but the last one I drove was an 850T5..................wonderful car................👍

[ilmiont]

Thanks all for the helpful comments.

It seems the divisive thing, as ever, was I mentioned road driving, performance driving and "at the limit" in the same paragraph. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not intending to drive like I'm on a track, on a public road. I'm more looking to develop an optimal driving style that allows you to have "fun" on good roads, without endangering yourself or others, focused on gaining more control over the car and awareness of how it's impacted by your inputs.

The trouble I've got here is that it's proving difficult - irrespective of how or where I ask - for me to communicate the level of knowledge I have, or where I'd like to be at, without seeming either complacent or like I want to be running three-digit speeds all over the country. That is not the case.

I've read Ben Collins' "How To Drive" cover-to-cover multiple times (amongst other driving manuals), which is mostly applied to road driving, and it was really enlightening. Simply adopting rotational steering, which I understand Roadcraft is moving towards/has moved towards (?), greatly increased the sense of being one-with-the-car. Then I began aiming for smoothness and trying to minimise multiple inputs to the car - so being off the brakes before entering the bend, and only getting back on the throttle once back out. Collins writes extensively on how you need to think of the tyres and not the car, and how each input impacts the tyres. Having this awareness opened another layer of connection.

Now I'm constantly thinking about how my inputs are going to affect the tyres, how the balance is going to shift, what the surface is looking like and how that will impact the balance, trying to project where the car's going to end up on the road, and what I'll need to do after that to maintain the desired course. And I do this wherever I drive, whether it's a 3-mile trip into town at 30mph, or a 300-mile day trip. But I still feel I'm missing something, I must be, because everything I've adopted is based on theory with no chance to apply it. I suspect I've developed my own "ilmiont-roadcraft," which while based on valid principles (single input, smoothness, thinking in terms of tyres), is largely derived from interpretation of written material.

As a comparison, I'm a self-taught pianist, and I can play fairly advanced pieces to a degree, and sometimes it's even really quite good. Yet I knew I didn't do everything right, I had bad habits, there were obvious deficiencies in technique. Just a brief time with a teacher helped that. So I don't pretend driving is directly comparable, but I do suspect that having someone else in the car will help no end and bring me much more satisfaction.

The other thing I do is constantly replay drives in my head, identify what could have gone wrong, and then try and imagine how I'd have responded if it had. E.g. a vehicle pulling out from a side-street into oncoming traffic on a narrowing road. Misreading the surface and going wider than expected. If a tyre had blown out, what would I have done. I'm constantly doing this, in breaks at work, while going to sleep, sitting in the evening, just trying to think about how the car was responding at particular times and what I'd have done if a danger had arisen.

So to bring this back to my original thread, maybe I can be more specific here. I'm looking for a competent coach to teach me the things they don't, but probably should, teach you in driving school. Why? Because I know I'm not the best driver imaginable, I'm nowhere close, but I'd like to make an effort to improve that. It seems we're in a strange situation where the majority of the population has no interest in advanced driving, then labels any young inexperienced motorist (as I'll happily state I am) a boy racer (which I'm not) for making any effort to try and improve that.

I feel I'm at the limit of what I can achieve by reading alone; I want to practice safely, without posing a risk to anyone else, while getting immediate feedback. Which is why I'm looking for a course/coach, I've thought of solo track days but while it would be good fun, I'm not sure it'd help me become a better driver.

Originally Posted by eternal optimist

Go to a track day, find a coach, pay them to sit alongside you for a few hours on track.

This is something I'm considering, I'm just not sure how well it'd apply to the road. Maybe it's clearer what I'm looking for from the above.

Originally Posted by XC90Mk1

I did the IAM which was good but not what you look for. I think it’s really hard to give advice on for road work. Talk to anyone who tracks cars etc and they invariably have ‘offs’. On a track that’s more often than not into lovey soft gravel, buff the scratches out and on you go.

On the road you will likely have an off also but it will be straight into someone que investigations, prosocutions and such like (if you are lucky and don’t kill someone).

You don’t need a course for on road driving, put the money towards track days and such like would be my advice.

Don’t want to come across judgemental, but I am late 30s and it’s not worth the performance driving on the road isn’t worth it.

I never had any problems but others I actually know we’re not so lucky 😳

Thanks. I've tried to clarify above what I mean by "performance driving" on the road.

The IAM courses webpages don't seem to have much specific info on what they include but I might investigate this further.

Originally Posted by MikeGMT

I have lost count of the money which I have spent on advanced road driving courses, and don't regret a single penny, probably the best thing I ever spent on a car.

Regarding your question of the best way to proceed. You are looking for something intensive, and there lies the problem of doing a half or one day course, they are very intensive by their very nature. If you have never had any experience of advanced driving techniques you will find that after a few hours your concentration starts to drop, and believe me you really have to concentrate, and from thereon you driving will start to deteriorate and you will probably come away with more questions than answers.

As you may realise a good coach for a half or one day course doesn't come cheap, a ball park figure is probably around £400/£600 or even more depending what they include, does that break the Bank? An alternative is to do a course with either IAM Roadsmart or RoADAR, both are very similar in approach and are based on Roadcraft, price around about £160 and include as much tuition as you need, and will give you a good grounding in the techniques. Thereafter you can do more intensive courses if you so wish and you will have a good understanding of the basics to build on.

You mention a few things that you are not looking for, but infact a advanced course will include all of those, with quite a lot of emphasis on some of them, Bends in particular. It is easy to anticipate a bend, there will be a sign or you will see it coming up ahead, it is how you approach, drive through and exit that will make or break your driving.

Another option if you just want to see what your car is capable of is a Car Limits Handling course, again not cheap and you might have to budget for some new rubber at the end.

Thanks. I'd say I'm comfortable with £400-£600 for a respected course. I'll look at your suggestions, not come across RoADAR before actually. It's not really money that's the issue, more just I want to be sure that whatever I choose is actually going to be helpful and not just like doing the standard driving test again.

If it's not clear from the above, I found driving lessons and the test extremely disappointing. I do feel as though I've learnt much more about driving by the efforts I've made to research and read the theory in my own time, but again, as soon as I start saying this, at my age, people (rightly) start questioning it but are then reluctant to offer any help.

The driving test seems to go out of its way to avoid any notion of driving at speed, or even to acknowledge that things might go wrong (for any reason). Excepting the basic emergency stop (which in driving test land consists of "get on the brake and let ABS save you", you're not taught how to respond to an incident, let alone how to recover the car out of a slide... surely these things would be worth teaching, if only to help keep cars out of hedges in winter? I've never had my car in a slide (thankfully!) and while I have the theory of what I'd do, I'd love to actually do it. I am very, very conscious that no amount of replaying drives in my head, practising in a simulator, or reading the theory is going to help as much as having done it for real, if I were to ever lose the car for any reason and have milliseconds to assess the situation and commit to a course of corrective action.

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Replies to posts #7 (Polestar Pete), #8 (JamesN7), #9 (S60D5-185):

Hopefully some of the above helps clarify that I'm not intending to be on the limits of traction on the public road... but, of course, even the very safest driver you can end up on the limits of traction unexpectedly, through no fault of their own, and as part of this I would like to experience what that's like (in safety).

This thread was brought about out of recognition that my car control skills are "almost certainly nowhere near as good as you think they are," and that came about after I started reading books about the driving techniques that weren't even mentioned at 17 during test. I should probably get a copy of the Roadcraft manual as I haven't read it yet.

I like JamesN7's distinction between the car control aspect and the Roadcraft/duty-of-care to others aspect; really I suppose I do want both although I have mostly been looking at the car control side.

Originally Posted by S60D5-185

Sad to say that I have well and truly lost that edge now and am happy to bimble about listening to Classic FM.............😁

I too listen to Classic FM.

Everyone here has been surprisingly receptive to my question, in other quarters it does sadly seem that 22 years and "advanced driving" are an immediate taboo. Yes I really am a Volvo driver and Classic FM listener, really don't want to be associated with other forms of young driver, that's part of why I'm committed to making tangible efforts to improve technique.

[garethXC]

Try giving james a call:

https://www.wardadt.com/

Im sure he can tailor something suitable or even point you in the right direction.

[JamesN7]

Originally Posted by ilmiont

Everyone here has been surprisingly receptive to my question, in other quarters it does sadly seem that 22 years and "advanced driving" are an immediate taboo. Yes I really am a Volvo driver and Classic FM listener, really don't want to be associated with other forms of young driver, that's part of why I'm committed to making tangible efforts to improve technique.

Your attitude is not typical of most 22 year olds, sadly. I certainly wasn't anywhere near as sensible at that age

I had a dig through some [very] old email conversations with like minded folk (including a chap who used to be a class 1 instructor instructor - ie taught the people who teach the class 1 drivers) and found another book for your reading list: "Mind driving" by Steve Haley

Also, get a pre-1997 copy of "Roadcraft" if you can (It got watered down after that). Abe books has a tonne of them for little more than beer money.

Worth a look:

http://www.high-performance-course.com/

Some other reading material (via archive.org as no longer online AFAICT):
https://web.archive.org/web/20110222...rds/index.html

J