How good are your driving skills?

Not for me!

I race cars capable of 3G's and the Ferrari is still fun for me. It's about more than the absolute performance of it.

For an interesting comparison, I recently bought a sport bike. It's amazing and destroys any car wrt fun factor on the road. But it doesn't make the Ferrari unenjoyable, it just puts its performance in perspective. If you're just after the adrenaline rush, no question, even racing spec racer ford is going to kill what used to be your idea of fun in a car.

Now if you look at, say a corvette, I've been working on mine for awhile (modifying the suspension) and today I went for the first spirited drive in it in quite awhile. Bo-ring. (Even though, trust me, a "normal" passenger would have been hanging on for dear life during this drive and afterwards would not have been able to shut up.) So the vette doesn't do it for me anymore, yet the Ferrari still does ... (even though the vette is quite a bit faster)

 

Great point. I think everyone should experience driving a large truck to understand how much better even the most sloppy handling car is.

 

Pardon me, Sirs. I don't mean to be disagreeable, but I'd say you two would be better placed for learning these sorts of things than someone without the benefits that only age. maturity, and wisdom provide. To illustrate the point:

• Young drivers have yet to lose the illusion that they are immortal. Age brings the realisation of mortality and the consideration that injury is a realistic prospect if you move too quickly beyond your abilities.
• Young drivers don't yet know what information or skills they lack. Age brings the realisation that there may be issues to learn that you have not yet considered or are aware of and makes you likely to seek advice to avoid potential mistakes before making them.
• Young drivers may be too concerned with looking good and saving face than actually being good. Age brings the wisdom that everyone must start somewhere and you would be more likely to concentrate on mastering technique before trying to impress or avoid 'embarrassment'.
• Drivers with age and maturity can better determine the degree of 'functional reserve' required in any given situation to accommodate for the unanticipated. While younger drivers may drive at the limit and get caught out with potentially devastating consequences.

I'd say give it a/another go and get some track tuition so that you can enjoy your car sanely, in a safe environment, and at a higher level than road driving.

Also, I would refer you to the follow posts, both of which I concur with:

I'd say that's true of any car... just the bite is far more exacerbated in a high performance machine like a Ferrari, particularly models without electronic stability/traction control systems.

That said, it must be very rewarding to drive such a car with precision (I wouldn't yet know).

8 years ago, my very first car (a Peugeot) was written off 8½ months after passing my test when a drunk driver in a rental van hit me head-on in an unavoidable incident. After the collision, he restarted his engine and rammed my car off the road into a ditch with my girlfriend and me still inside trying to get out. What a way to begin my life as a driver! Afterwards, the police failed to track down the driver who abandoned the rental van in a city centre and the man who was renting the van (by the day) reported it stolen 3 days after the accident. The police never questioned why you would pay daily for a rental van and not even look at it for 3 days. Furthermore, they never asked why there was no sign of forced entry or tampering with the ignition, the van was never examined for fingerprints, the beer bottles in the footwell were never forensically examined, and the van's insurance policy refused to replace my car because the 'theft' part of the policy did not cover collateral damage by the supposed thief's driving. I'm convinced the guy who rented it was also the driver on the day in question, but the police weren't interested... at least we escaped with only light injuries. On a side note, airbags are not nearly as fluffy and soft as you might imagine. Actually, it feels like being punched in the face with a very large boxing glove.

Later, I would be rear-ended twice whilst stationary: once at a traffic light, and again while waiting to oncoming traffic to pass to turn off a main road. The latter incident totalled the car that hit me and caused £2500 of damage to my car. Fortunately, no injuries in either incident and both cars hitting me were fully insured.

So I seem to have had a rather harsh initiation into what it means to share the road with those who don't respect it or the other vehicles around theirs, and consequently have a somewhat warier view on road use compared to most others in their 20's. I therefore have a very defensive approach to road driving and pay particular attention to road conditions and what other drivers are doing.

Do you notice a difference between the ages as well?

^ Says the man who drives the 348 - incidentally, the very 348 that's now my desktop background. I'd say I'm more qualified to determine what would be a 'low horsepower car', given that I drive a 90bhp MINI ONE (i.e. a de-tuned MINI Cooper, for those of you in the US).

Actually, it's quite a bit of fun... I've modified it to enhance chassis rigidity, improve the brakes, and uprated the suspension for sharper handling - but I quite deliberately left the engine unmodified despite the cheap availability of an ECU remap that would add 33bhp by removing the electronic restrictions governing the throttle body. Somehow, it's charming and very rewarding to drive a car that requires a lot of driver interaction to keep it moving swiftly and giving it more power would detract from this by removing the necessity for frequent gear changes.

That's an interesting perspective! Have you been talking to my father? He always says people would drive much more defensively and with greater situational awareness if there was a large spike in the middle of the steering wheel rather than an airbag.

I also agree.

I've participated in a track day using one of the organisers cars, but I was a little afraid to push myself in an unfamiliar car - even under instruction. I'd love to try it with a car that I actually own as: firstly, I'd already be familiar with some of the basic handling characteristics of the car and, secondly, I'd feel less awkward about damaging a car I owned than one belonging to someone else.

I think in Finland, advanced driver courses for skid-control and judging road camber are a requirement of the driving test. Perhaps that's something that other countries should consider too.

Impressively put!

And I do play that game actually... though, with added emphasis, I find that the quality of the roads is so poor in Scotland that I'm constantly rebuilding the suspension on my car as the potholes shake it to bits - sadly, it's impossible to avoid all the ruts, bumps, and holes.

Speaking of driving a large truck... I got caught out driving an F350 Superduty Dually (yes, a Ford) belonging to my parents. I was taking an entry ramp onto a highway in the wet, doing about 35mph, and put my foot down to catch up to the speed of traffic for merging. Unfortunately, as someone normally accustomed to driving a 90bhp, front wheel drive MINI ONE I was wholly unprepared when the rear tyres spun and the back end of the truck went into a power-slide. I got off the throttle immediately, steered into the slide, and managed to straighten up the truck before gingerly getting back on the throttle to catch up to traffic. On reflection, a 6-ish litre turbocharged diesel engine puts out a heck of a lot of torque to deliver through rear tyres that are relatively unloaded at the back of the truck, even if you're already moving and there are four of them on the ground back there.

Fortunately, this didn't end badly - and I certainly wouldn't encourage anyone to try it - but it was certainly an eye-opener for me. In normal situations, the truck is a rather big, ungainly, and dull thing to drive... but I gave it much more respect after that!





Well, I think that's a sufficiently lengthy post for now, so I'll leave it there. Thanks to anyone who read most of it, I realise I can be quite verbose at times.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

By my personal experience every time that I go to the track is always the oldest people doing the best and fastest laps.

 

Thanks very much.

Ah, I had thought (erroneously, it seems) that perhaps those who were very young might be more prone to wanting to go too fast too soon - irrespective of natural ability.

I'd certainly like to do another track day, but with instruction in my own car this time. I must have a word with someone at my local circuit about that as soon as my thesis is written and out the way.

And your final note is quite a good one - I'll remember that!

All the best,
Andrew.

 

Raced for nearly 20 years and the older I get the faster I WAS

 

Considering i've been "Driving' for 4 months, i can't say too much.

Taking a defensive course AND an "Advanced high performance" courses at Mid-Ohio next year...which I imagine will help.

 

And, I bet, the more consistent your lap times became. It ain't easy doing it over and over and over again. Muscle memory is big part of racing.

And it's just not age, but experience. There are a lot of 20-somethings out there with 10-15 years of racing experience, starting out in karts. My most humbling track experience was being passed on the go-kart track by a bunch of 10-year olds. Of course, they had a huge weight advanatage (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).LOL

 

I was making a funny. I meant I was faster in my memory. Actually I found I was quickest in my early 30's. As I got older I found the love of life and limb would kick in more and maybe that turn I would take flat out regardless (e.g. the kink at Road America) I would be more cautious around. I'd still take it flat out most of the time but not 100% of the time. The flip side is I destroyed a lot less equipment as I got older. In fact, the last season or two, it was pretty much maintenance and tires.

 

About 4 years ago, in July at TWS with a friend in the passenger seat at a Ferrari track day, I was driving my F355B on street tires wtih M6, chasing 360s with r-compounds and F1s and dong a good job at it.

Anyways, about 6 laps into the session, I entered T2 a little on the fast side, kept my foot in it, and for several second knew that I would drop a lest 2 tires off the track near the trackout point. It was like in slow motion, fretting about this and that and powerless to do anything about it. In actuality, all 4 tires left the paved surface, but the funny thing was that the car continued rotating as if it were still in T2. Somehow in all of this, the car finds itself back on the paved surface pointing straight at the armco (well near 45 degrees to it). A big correction was thrown into the steering wheel, foot still flat on the floor, the car started to come back nose first. A second big correction took all the steering input out and the car settles on the road. I hit the brakes for T3, downshift, and enter T3. All in all I had lost 10 feet to the 360 durring this event; drivers from behind had all taken slow down precautions fearing that an armco+car event would not be pretty in front of their racign line.

But what I remember most was thinking:: "If I'm going to dirve like this, I need a roll cage and fire supression equiptment".

We chased the 360 the rest of the session, got out and had a big laugh.

After this point in time, I never wanted to drive that car that fast again (99% is OK, 105% is not). I want the car to stick around for a goodly long time.

 

Wow Mitch, that's a pretty frightening story!

Glad you and the car both made it out in one piece.

All the best,
Andrew.