Best place to learn to drive my new F430

I recommend that you attend a professional racing school at Fastlane @ Willow Springs or OC Race Craft @ El Toro. Both are great and they have professional race car drivers instructing you. It'll be about $500 whole day. I personally know a very good instructor at OC Race Craft that drives for Mazda factory team. If you need additional info you can send me a PM.

www.raceschool.com
www.ocracecraft.com

Alan
1998 Lotus Esprit V8

 

On your new F430!

 

Do the Pilota Ferrari courses. They teach you specifically what your car can and cannot do.

 

Try the 91 Fwy, you will be able to have short bursts of wide open throttle punctuated by lots of 1st gear take off practice mixed with some heavy swerving to avoid moving objects. After a couple of hours you will be an expert in the 430 and ready for a second clutch.

On a slightly more serious note I second Darth550's recommendation.

 

If you want zero pressure and learn at your own pace just upping your comfort level a mile per hour at a time just do a begginer group at speedventures.com or redline, or arosc.org or otr all based in socal and running local tracks like wsir. brp, and fontana. You can learn regimented with skippy school, fastlane, scca, nasa, p-bug owners club etc. but quite frankly they have too many rules and you probably just want to go out have fun, not damage your car. Just use common sence and don't let others drive your car and show you. At the beginner level there is not much to be gained by some guy thinking he is hotshoe run your car off turn 9 at wsir. I started in the hot ferrari of the day as the slowest guy on the track. I got the bug and now race vettes in scca. You can go as far as the bug takes you. Except for the summer I'm on the local tracks racing or doing trackdays a few times a month. Rad on Fchat runs his 430 often with speedventures doing trackdays and auto-x. He can give you specific tips on the 430 but right now it really does not matter. You WILL be way way under what the car can do but you will have fun. It is alot like skiing. The better you get the faster you have to go to get the same thrill.

 

Why not just go to the canyons and take it easy and get the feel for the car that way? Other than that you'd have to step up at the track etc. See what the Ferrari club offers?

 

Go on the FCA or FoC drive events. Good way to share experiences and get used to some adventerous roads.
FCA has the first Sat. of the month run-meets at Beverly Glen/Mulholland-great scenery and great roads.

 

No one wants to stay in the SV white group for long. People will start in it and move out by sunday. There is alot less traffic happening in an SV white group than the 405fwy even at 5 am. Everyone in it is chicken so it is not an issue. You are not going to find any less people on track except a small private group doing a day on maybe a thursday limited to say 25 cars or so. Or if you are big bucks you can rent it yourself like 1/2 a loop at brp for like 5000/day or something like that. The problem is the less developed the event the worst the safety crew. Contrast the typical hpde with scca for example. scca will not start an event unless the medical chief who is an MD is on site and certifies the start and there is on site certified people who can provide advanced cardiac life support. It is real hard to buy that kind of service yourself or know how to set up that kind of emergency response. So in this case bigger is better in some ways you hopefully will never see and never need. a casual way to start with decent instruction if that is your thing is to do arosc.org and do their performance driving school to time trial to race school progression. They are a great group of guys and they have an intro group to take you around the track at freeway speeds just to let you see what a track is like that runs at lunch. The cost is like 40 bucks. The next event oct 16/17 but I'll be racing with scca that weekend. The guys are friendly and if you want to show up for the lunchtime intro I'll put you in contact with the right people. After that alfaclub is november at BRP. Look for #88 blue T1 vette raccar and introduce yourself. meet some people and get enthused about joining the alfa school in feb 2011 that is at the streets of willow. It is alot of fun and you will learn alot. There are probably some old pics floating around on the website. I was #53 red 348 ferrari