Ground School

Every year, we introduce a number of Miata owners to the world of high performance driving at our track day. But it can be a bit overwhelming at first. The Ground School is designed to help novice drivers get comfortable with the track so they can enjoy themselves and learn without intimidation.

We'll start with a classroom session introducing some of the fundamental concepts of track driving, such as the concept of a racing line, good driving position and the traction budget. The goal isn't to overwhelm everyone with information, but to provide the basic knowledge and vocabulary of track driving.

We'll then load up the students in a four-door car for a guided tour of the track. This won't be at full speed, but will be a talking-through of how the theory is put into practice. The emphasis will be on track driving in general, not on how to extract a minimum lap time out of this particular track.

Finally, we'll send each student out in their own car with an instructor riding along for some private instruction on how to have a safe, fun time at the track. The school should take approximately 2.5 hours and is limited to 20 students.

We'd like to thank Porsche guru Allen Johnson and karting champ Sabre Cook for helping out with the instruction.

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