Return to School

It was time. For over a decade I'd longed to participate in an open-wheel racing school. At last, thanks to Editor Brown's suggestion ("You better get your butt to this school so you learn how to control Project M3!"), I was schooled by one of the industry's best--the Derek Daly Academy.

Derek Daly, founder of the school, is well known in the world of motor racing. His career took off in 1978 when he joined the F1 circus, driving for Frank Williams over the next five seasons. At the end of 1982 he made his debut in an Indycar and qualified on pole for the Indy 500 just months later. In 1988 Daly placed 4th in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the TWR Jaguar team and won the 12 hours of Sebring three years in a row for Nissan in the early '90s. He retired from driving race cars in 1992 and now enjoys commentating for telecasts of the Fed Ex CART Champ Car Series on the Speed Channel as well as running his racing school.

Daly started up the DDA in 1996, offering the ultimate in high-performance and racing instruction for all levels of driver, ranging from first-timers to fully sponsored racers. All of the school's handpicked instructors have plenty of experience in motorsports. If your working environment includes competitive coworkers, corporate programs are available at DDA as well.

The school is situated at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, so if you have any energy left over at night, there are plenty of shows to see and plenty of...well, there's lots of stuff to do.

A few months ago I attended DDA's 2-day GT Performance School (see ec 5-02), which expertly taught basic and advanced techniques in car control on a road course and practice oval in the school-supplied BMW Z3 Roadsters. And what a blast those cars were.

This time I experienced heart-pounding G-forces in DDA's 3-Day open-wheeled Racing School, driving a Nemesis SC01 Formula Ford 2000. A 2.0-liter Ford motor delivering 120 bhp powers these formula cars, and though this may not sound like much, when you've got only 1100 lb to haul, you're looking at a lb/hp ratio slightly better than a new BMW M5.

Performance street radials are used in these sessions to get the drivers accustomed to open-wheeled cars. These tires do the job just fine. In the even more advanced school DDA offers, full racing slicks are used, and there you face extremely rigorous lateral and braking forces, and, hopefully, quicker lap times.

In my 3-day school there were only five students and two instructors. DDA likes to keep the student/instructor ratio at no more than three-to-one, so you really get your money's worth. Our two instructors were Jeff Schafer, who raced in Formula Palmer Audi and the Toyota Atlantic Series, and Rich Zimmerman, who raced the Formula Ford 2000 Series as well as touring cars in Mexico. Day One started off with an introduction and classroom instruction on how the cars are operated, and driving the proper line on the technique oval. Once on the oval, half of us got to get acquainted in the Formula cars, practicing trailbrake and throttle-steer techniques--I think everyone had the pleasure of experiencing the car's snap-oversteer in this exercise. The other half of the class, meanhile, practiced extreme understeer and oversteer in the school's BMW 318 sedan skid car (see ec 5-02).

Before the next driving session we were brought back to the classroom for instruction on properly shifting gears, including the heel-and-toe dance. Driving these Nemesis cars is hugely different from driving a conventional street car. Your butt is about two inches off the ground, and your feet reach forward almost to the nose.

But, if there's nothing else that makes you feel like you're an Andretti in these cars, it's shifting gears. These racing gearboxes can be upshifted without the use of a clutch, needed only when rolling off the line or downshifting. It's the greatest feeling in the world when you're accelerating full-throttle, shifting gears as fast as you can flick your wrist, and heel-and-toeing was a snap.

Day One was completed with the accident simulator exercise in the BMW Roadsters, similar to what I had done in the 2-day GT School. This exercise really drills into your head that the reaction distance one needs when traveling at a certain speed is exponentially greater than when traveling just a couple of mph slower, even more so at highway speeds. The exercise builds up your reaction time to effectively maneuver around an accident.

Day Two was where the extreme fun began--driving on the road course. The morning started off with an extensive discussion on the road course. Shortly after we got a few hot laps in the DDA extra-long twelve-passenger Van with Jeff Schafer behind the wheel. He showed us the driving line, as well as what happens when you turn in too soon and go off course--and he couldn't have thrown me around any more, being I was in the very back seat.

Shortly after we were back in the Formula cars. I couldn't believe we had two more exciting days of this stuff. The road course we used is a highly technical track with 9 turns. In turns 1, 4, 5 and 7 you're very hard on the brakes. Turns 2 and 9 involve a small lift off the throttle to get the front tires to bite, and Turns 3 and 6 are flat out, if you choose to do so. The best part was coming out of Turn 6 at over 107 mph; as soon as you straighten out the wheel, you stab the brakes hard, quickly execute a 4-3-2-1 triple heel-and-toe downshift, and trail-brake into Turn 7 as you ease off the brake pedal. The tricky part was Turn 8, a double-apex left-hand turn involving lots of trailbraking with a heel-and-toe downshift in the middle of the turn, and sacrificed exit speed to properly set up for Turn 9, a very important right-hander leading to the front straight. As you can see the track is every bit challenging.

The entire day was spent doing lapping sessions with breaks in between. Each car was equipped with a Stack Data Acquisition System; a tool which, in my opinion, helped me learn the most throughout the course of those last two days. The system registered everything we did on the track to the nearest foot, including how hard and where we apply the throttle and brakes, if and where we missed a shift, and what our speed, time and rpm were through turns and stretches. Our laps were also overlapped on others completed by the instructor or laps we did earlier, showing us exactly the areas on the track or in our driving we needed to most focus on, giving us sort of an instant replay effect--a powerful learning tool! Naturally, everyone improved their lap times with each session, and we entered the next always hungry for more.

Day Three had yet another full day of excitement planned for us. On the road course again we practiced passes on the instructors, and vice versa, for clean racing. At this point the adrenaline pump in my body got kicked into overdrive. Going deep into a turn, side by side with not much room to spare, yet hard on the brakes at the same time, takes a lot of concentration.

The latter half of the morning was spent practicing rolling race starts a la CART. This is where it was time to put into practice some of the SCCA racing regulations we learned throughout the course--something very important because you can qualify for an SCCA regional racing license if you successfully complete the school. After these morning exercises, if the thought "I want to be a race-car driver" is not dancing in your head, you should probably stick to your ballet lessons--no offense.

The rest of the day was spent hot lapping and trying to improve on each session by way of the data acquisition systems. Previously, I had asked what the fastest lap ever turned in by a student was, and Jeff Schafer told me a 1:26.2--I made it my goal to beat that. But by the end of the day I was down to no faster than a 1:27.0. It wasn't until later that I learned that the student he was talking about had plenty of open-wheel experience, including testing for Formula 3 and driving in Formula Ford Championship races. Not only that, but he came to the DDA fully funded by his country's government. Okay, so I wasn't so hard on myself after that. I guess it just went to show that I learned a whole heck of a lot--well more than I bargained for--at the Derek Daly Academy. Problem is, I've got a new fascination with open-wheel cars and I'm craving to return. Well, I'm engaged and getting married soon. You think a honeymoon at DDA's five-day school is too much of a "gearhead" move? I mean, it's still Las Vegas, right?

Special thanks to Debbie Kamen and Ernie Beckswith for giving me the driving experience of a lifetime.

Derek Daly Academy
7055 Speedway Blvd. Suite E102
Las Vegas, NV 89115
(702) 643-2126
Fax: (702) 643-2161
www.derekdaly.com