Story by Matt Mullins
It’s a natural progression: You’ve bought a sporty car, attended driving school, and now you’re headed to the track with your pride and joy to drive it as its engineers intended.
The track is one of the last great frontiers for the car enthusiast and the gateway to full-on racing. The allure of the track can …
I just wanted to say I like that S-Type R. That is all.
All I'll add is:
Many people may be familiar with Myers Briggs (DiSC) personality study / training. Getting an instructor that works for you is no different; some personality types mesh better than others.
I'm very much a Chatty Cathy, despite having the word analyst in my job title, I always ask the student what they do for a living. If they tell me they are an engineer I forewarn them about my being chatty and tell them if it get's to be to much to let me know right away.
I let students know that I'm going to observe them for two laps then start giving feedback. The point being so that I can see what we need to work on. At the end of every debrief I let them know what we are going to do for the next session.
With that said some people will be overwhelmed by to much planning as they already may be stressing. For those folks I still have a plan but I keep that to myself and work on getting them relaxed. I try to casually introduce a subject just before we go out "let's work on your looking ahead" etc.I've mentioned it before.
My one red flag is instructors who are coaching people to go faster. New drivers are still working on fundamentals and having them try to go faster is a recipe for an off. It may seem obvious but I've seen guys do it.
Well now you changed the lede photo and I look like a dummy.
In reply to Tom1200 :
You sound like a pretty good instructor, your students are lucky to have you.
I've had a couple of bads ones but have been lucky to work with more really great instructors. My first instructor with our club was in the twilight of his career and was only there for the Saturday (fortunately), he was so nervous in the passenger seat of my car at any speed and the feedback was barked and yelled but not clear at all. I went out for a ride with him in his car after lunch and quickly realized he was no different when he was driving being very nervous and frustrated driving in the instructor group (WHY'S EVERYONE DRIVING SO HARD, PEOPLE NEED TO SLOW DOWN! as another car goes by after being held up waiting for a point by). I don't think he had any fun that weekend and I have not seen him since. The following day I had the opposite experience and it saved the weekend for me. He was the perfect follow up, calm, relaxed and encouraging, it felt like we were flying around the track. Since then they have all been excellent and I look forward to working with some new ones this year.
In reply to adam525i :
Thank you; maybe an add to this is ask the instructor why they became an instructor?
In my case it's mostly because I hate to see people struggle. I see people thrashing around and I know they're getting frustrated and not having fun. I love motorsports and just want to share the passion and fun.
fatallightning said:Well now you changed the lede photo and I look like a dummy.
Like those of us who spend large sums of our money chasing our friends round in circles are complete geniuses.............you're in good company here.
In reply to Tom1200 :
Meyers-Briggs...wow...
You're letting out a big secret!
Check out "Please Understand Me" by Kierseys, especially if you interact with lots of people in your day job.
Try to (always) speak to people in their own language....if you know what their job is and can speak that language, you're miles ahead.
And, for sure, no reason to urge to go faster...let it develop
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