Bondurant School Of High Performance Driving I hate to become another lawsuit lemming in our litigious society, but I'm about to go Class Action and you're invited. My high school Drivers Ed. teacher and the DMV are next on Court TV.
Courtesy of Mr. Bob Bondurant and his car-control gurus, I discovered that the months spent in high school studying the perfect three-point turn and parallel parking numbed my mind and feet and duped me into believing I was a good, safe driver.
What opened my eyes was a seat in Bondurant's excellent Advanced Road Racing school, which I attended at Firebird International Raceway in the Arizona desert. My lawsuit will seek to establish a fund good for a class at the Bondurant School for anyone who suffered through a mediocre Drivers Ed. experience and endured a 4-hour visit to their local DMV. Once the case is settled and Bob and his instructors make the world a better place to motor, I will begin solving world hunger and/or fixing the hole in the ozone layer.
Class at Bondurant was startlingly simple, simply because the schooling is so well thought out. Each morning an instructor leads a session that breaks down the day's subjects and goals. A chalk talk, a brief Q and A, and then a ride-along in the instructor car to learn the nuances of the exercise set you up for the actual driving. And then you drive a lot. Seat time is a big attraction at Bondurant.
The concepts of car control, vehicle dynamics and accident avoidance are woven throughout the program. Basics such as proper seating position are followed by more elaborate topics, such as heel-and-toe downshifting, trail braking and finding and driving the proper racing line. The instruction is presented in a manner that helps build confidence and skill simultaneously. I would recommend the Bondurant program to anyone who wants to be a better driver on the street or on the track.
People from all over the U.S. attended my class, and the skill level ranged from a driver with a total of three weeks of seat time to Porsche and BMW club racers to returning Bondurant graduates. I was impressed to learn that a new Porsche owner had driven his 3.2 Carrera from the Bay Area to Arizona so he could do the school in his car.
Bondurant instructors are not football coaches, Home Ec. teachers or others roped into teaching high school sophomores how to pass the DMV test. They're actual racers competing in ALMS, ARCA, ASA, Grand Am, IRL, NASCAR Busch and SCCA racing series. When I needed a little help with heel-and-toe downshifting, the instructor assigned to my group of four students, Chris Cook, jumped into my car and watched my every move, reinforcing what I was doing well and helping me through the parts where I was deficient.
The beauty of Bondurant's methodology is how layers of skill are acquired and applied. This is the same approach to its 1.6-mile road course. Starting with an oval section and then adding downshifts, trail braking and various apexes, we practiced executing and building skills. As you master a technique, you experience how it dovetails with the next, to build, as they preach at Bondurant, smoothness, consistency and concentration. These stunningly straightforward words were never uttered in any combination in Drivers Ed. anywhere, I don't believe.