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July 4-7, 2000

It had been over a dozen years since I last attended the Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. Back then, the school was located at the Sears Point raceway in Sonoma, CA. This time I would be taking my 16-year old nephew Erik to Bondurant in Phoenix, AZ, and in July no less! I still remember several years earlier how it got so hot in Phoenix that they would not let the planes take off from the airport. We were going to be spending the days driving racecars with full suits and helmets, and no A/C!

Erik had been driving for about 6 months, so we signed him up for the “teenage driving” course. The hope was that we could make him safer and understand how to really handle his V-8 mustang GT. The course in my opinion is something that every new driver should take, especially teenage males who drive muscle cars!

As for me, I was once where Erik is now. My first car was a Camaro, followed shortly by a Mustang GT and then finally a Callaway C4 Twin Turbo Corvette. There is really nothing like the sound of a nice big V-8 at full scream! Raw engine torque and power is a drug that you can never seem to get enough of. Unfortunately, there is more to driving than simply slamming on the gas pedal and going in a straight line. Of course, I wrecked the Camaro in pretty short order. My best friend at the time soon thereafter wrecked his Mustang GT (the only guy back in high school who had a faster car than me!), so we were both sent off to Bondurant. Knock on wood, neither of us has ever had a major accident since then!

Really what I remember the most about the experience was that I came in as a typical cocky and inexperienced teenage male driver, and came out realizing how much my driving skills needed improvement. I soon got involved in the SCCA, and was a quasi-regular at the local autocross scene. Ready to make the jump, I returned to Bondurant again the following year to get my racing license with the full 4-day Grand Prix racing course. While not everyone wants to get into racing, the more basic course offered by Bondurant still covers weight transfer theory, skid control, accident avoidance, and overall handling of your car at the limit, along with a fair amount of track time. I figured that Bondurant was exactly Erik needed, even though he had yet to get in his first accident.

Marc & Erik ready for some high-performance driving!

The first day- Erik is looking pretty stoked checking out the digs, and row after row of race-prepped Mustang GT’s. Thinking the same way I do with my NSX, he was already planning on asking the mechanics for a list of mods and go-fast parts for his car back home!

After the initial introduction and tour of the facility, the first thing they do (and this has not changed since the days at Sears Point) is take you on a totally outrageous van drive around the track at full speed. This is to impress upon you how effective all these advanced driving techniques are. The van in front of us was actually raising up his left front wheel going into the turn. These are totally stock 12-passenger vans that feel like they are about to flip over!!

I figured that since I was going to be there with Erik anyway, I might as well take the 2-day high performance driving course myself. This course ran in conjunction with the teenage driving course, so I would have much the same track exercises and classroom sessions as Erik.

The course is basically the same as the full-blown 4-day grand prix course, except that you miss out on the last 2 days of track time. Im not normally one to pass up track time, but we had trouble fitting the 4-day course into our schedule (and budget!).

Im really not looking for a racing license this time out, but I figure I can really brush up on my track skills to be better able to keep up with some of my fellow “weekend warrior” NSX drivers at the next TWS Motorsports Club track event. Before I got my NSX about a year ago, I had been driving an SUV for about 5 years. But the sports car bug bit me once again, and so it was time to trade in the old Jeep. After much research, not to mention a couple of fun test drives, the choice was an Acura NSX. Click here to read why. Anyway, getting back on the track is not as easy as you may think after all those years. It’s not entirely like riding a bicycle. There are many subtle nuances and skills that fade over time, such as being able to perform silky smooth toe-and-heel downshifts at speed under pressure. Or how about proper trail-braking technique? This all fades with time.

After the famous van ride, it’s 2 hours of classroom lecture, introducing the new teenage drivers to basics of weight transfer, oversteer and understeer.

Classroom theory is great, but you won’t really get an appreciation for half this stuff until you go out to the autocross course and “transfer some weight” yourself! :)

Here’s yours truly on the autocross course. It was about 107 degrees in the shade!

After the first day of classes, we met up with Jane Basch of Basch Acura Service in Phoenix. Mark Basch was still on his way back from racing in Amsterdam. The Basches had been kind enough to let us test drive their Gruppe-M Supercharged NSX. This was certainly not an opportunity to pass up, as there are probably only about 5 or 6 of these cars in the U.S.!

Erik was happy just to gas up this supercar!

Man, that’s some SERIOUS plumbing!

Back at the shop, we got a bit of a tour of the operations. Here I am with the old 3.0l motor out of the Dali Racing “candy stripe” race car.

The second day was almost all track time, with a little bit of advanced classroom discussion. You can’t see it too well in the picture, but this is me out on the track giving the “thumbs up” signal. This was a lot of fun!!!

They let us all loose on a small part of the track called the “Maricopa Oval” which had a constant radius turn and a trickier decreasing radius turn.

Just in case there is any doubt, here is proof that we both graduated! :)

This means that both unsuspecting drivers now have to watch out for Erik in his Mustang roaming the public highways, and certain fellow NSX’ers who shall remain nameless (but they know who they are) have to watch out for me next time at TWS! :)