Unofficial Honda FIT Forums - Solo Pro Race School? Who is in?

Unofficial Honda FIT Forums (https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/)

- Greater Calgary Community (https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/greater-calgary-community/)

- - Solo Pro Race School? Who is in? (https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/greater-calgary-community/52333-solo-pro-race-school-who.html)

Solo Pro Race School? Who is in?

Hey guys,

So if they decide to run the Solo Pro race school again this year who is in?

Course is amazing, the guys who run it are all seasoned professionals with multiple championship wins at SCCA for North America. You get a lot of one on one seat time with them.

Cost was 300$ per day, first day is a basics course and the second day was the competition course. They design them to work together, I really can't say enough good things despite the steep price.

I am not exaggerating when I say; "This is the single best thing you can possibly do if you want to be competitive at autocross!"

Last year it took less than a week to totally fill up and there was a waiting list right away. If you are interested post up and I will do my best to keep you informed of when it is happening.

(Yes, I see you Vancouver guys eyeing this thread... last year we had a few guys drive out to take it, even as far as Vancouver. The reputation of this course is unsurpassed by any others.)

Tennative dates are looking like June 26th and 27th

Subscribed.
Want to give Auto X a whirl this year. (Also posted to SASC - Southern Alberta Solosport Club )

The only (somewhat local) schedule or driver school I've seen up so far is the RDSCC's
RDSCC Red Deer Sports Car Club

C

That is the same one I am talking about; The driving school put on by SASC is awesome, easily one of my highlights for last year!

Just make sure to sign up right away once they announce it, it tends to fill up super fast.

Nick if you need some new RE-11's in a 205/50/R15, Bon has a sick deal on some brand new ones right now.

I'm up in the air right now, it will all depend what the bonus looks like this year and it's not looking good right now.

I still have a race motor to finish building and that is far from done, I need new r compounds and probably some brakes too.

I still have around 85% on my RE-11's from last year so I should be good for another season... if I buy another set of tires it is going to be R-comps for sure.

I would totally buy another set of RE-11's and then use my current RE-11's as summer tires... but I just bought a set of new summer tires last year! lol

Jay usually organizes a group buy for Hoosiers around this time of year... I wish I could afford them :( I blew most of my race budget on the Hummer this year; I have just enough left for race school, membership and event costs.

Probably a good thing in the end; I really need to buy a car specifically for racing before I start buying R-comps anyway.

Yeah those tires will completely own your current suspension setup.

They are running a winter driving school this year, here are some pictures one person took from today (Jan 23rd)
Image hosting, free photo sharing & video sharing at Photobucket

There is another school on the 30th in the same location I am signed up for, cost is 30$ per person. Is a pretty awesome course from what I have been hearing.

lol, I just noticed my Rep is at maximum power again! woot

FitFreak is so awesome!

Nick, thanks so much for posting the winter driving. I likely would have only found out about it until after it happened.
This was so much fun for someone without any motorsport experience! Threshold braking and turning is much more achievable (LOL) on ice. The volunteer instructors from the SASC were great.

The day went something like this for me:
Meet at lake 8:30am. There’s lots of different types of cars, and a full size chipped turbo-diesel Chev with a decent lift kit. There's 3 Fits (2 GD’s and a GE) and about 20 students and 7 instructors. Instructors varied in experience from people who instruct part time with at least one US national SSCA title, to autocrossers with 10+ years experience.

Sign waivers, brief tech inspection, register, and intros. What do you want to learn/get out of the day? Warnings, what to expect, instructions particular to driving on a frozen lake (don't wear seat belt, park and keep twice the usual space around the vehicles, keep a window down, what to do if vehicle goes through the ice). The organizers had been out with some ice-fishers two weeks ago and the ice was 3 feet thick, apparently only 1 ft and it’s safe for vehicles. Given the -12 deg Celsius with wind only a couple kept windows partially down.

Then the students were broken into two groups and the armada set out to the far shore of the lake where two courses of differing difficulty were set up. Both courses were roughly ovals with slaloms in between. My first one, the west one, was easier. One slalom was exaggerated with 10m offsets from a centreline and the other was only a bit kinked. The sweeping corners had an equal radius and the other a decreasing/increasing radius depending on the direction. We did a little bit of fooling around on the way over with e-brake generated slides etc. We did a loop of the course following the instructor's vehicles versus walking the course.

Then everyone lines up and each person did three laps with an instructor. The first run was a control or baseline run, for the instructors to figure out where everyone was at. The instructors talked with each other while changing vehicles when possible and otherwise asked what you were working on. There was some dead time between laps, but not much. Should have been writing down notes between laps I guess.

The level of the course was to be introductory. There were some pretty experienced students who were also exercising their mind in the off season.

After the second set of laps, the students starting practicing turning, sliding, etc west of the course before getting back in line. After the third lap, the instructors took a turn in the vehicles and you watched how they drove your car through the course. Very useful because they’d tell you what they were seeing and thinking.

Then one more lap with an instructor.

Then they started taking students out west of the course to practice slide recovery. OK get going about 40km/h and do a wide sweeping turn. Without telling you when they'd pull your e-brake and you'd have to recover the slide.

They had the students demonstrate how if the car goes into a spin, it wants to straighten out. We were taught to push in the clutch and the brake; two feet in when you’ve given up. The tire marks in the snow really drove home how the car goes in a straight line even though when you loose it and you are initially trying to recover it doesn’t feel like it. Did some 270’s, but didn’t manage any 360’s.

The scan gauge paid for itself. I had P0339 pop up and the car went into limp mode when I stalled it once.

Then we reversed and did the course backwards two or three times. We were then were given permission to go out on the course on our own everyone having gotten a feel for what the safety spacing etc was. During this the instructors would then take each of us over to an accident avoidance simulation. We’d start at a gate get up to 30-40km/h drive through another gate offset to driver’s right, turn left and aim for the middle of three cones. At what felt like 40ft (probably closer to 100ft) the instructor would tell you to swerve left, right or brake.

Then we broke for lunch. Our group and some of the other group, headed to Cochrane for lunch while most of the rest ate in their cars. We did a debrief at lunch before the food arrived of what people had learned, what was working, and what we were working on before the food came. It was good to get the other’s perspectives. Many of us were working on the same things and were trying slightly different approaches. The places were the ice had been pushed up and were rougher/broken were white instead of green/blue/clear. You hit these and could do almost all your braking, turning, acceleration on them.

When we got back to the lake, the other group was mostly running through the west course and some were just going through the east course on their own. Both courses were starting to get a bit polished. The east course was U-shaped with a tighter slalom into a tighter equal radius 180 turn, and ~20m offset centreline slalom that was spaced tighter together.

My first run was: this is easy, whooah this is slippery, this is almost as bad as my first run. I felt like I hadn’t learned anything. Before starting again, I’d been thinking I’m starting to get this. ie Hmm, sure would be nice if they’d starting talking more about lines through corners and get into more advanced stuff. Both of my first two instructors wanted me to go practice on the constant radius circle and practice slow hands. One described it as micro turning. It was good for realizing what happens when you upset the car. For example just adruptly letting off the gas made the back end slide out.

On the course I’d be using the slow hands, looking ahead to the next turn or end of the turn. But when I’d start to slide out, usually under steer – it was a lot harder to get over steer (Progress RSB?), my instinct was to try turning too quickly after straightening the wheels to re-gain traction. I’d feel the traction (or not) and think stay on the course instead of focussing on the traction.

So I spend a good hour driving around in a circle trying to go a little bit faster all the time before getting back on the course for a few laps. The lady (the course was easily 50% women – I’d recommend it to anyone if they do it again) with the Chev let me do a lap in it. It was interesting how different the steering felt in 4wd versus 2wd never mind how the back-end would come around. Because it was so much heavier, and rwd, in 2wd once you lost it, it was pretty much gone. I couldn’t go nearly as fast. There was also a woman with a white miata that was having a lot of fun. Apparently the car was really neutral handling, so the instructors felt it was the most fun to drive. We all couldn’t stop smiling.

At dusk we had a debrief with whomever was able to stay right to the end at 5pm. The organizers were encouraged to have a few more winter training days. We chatted a bit and drove the west course until 6:30pm and it really started snowing rather heavily. It was pretty neat driving around the course with the lights on and being able to see the others out of the corners of your eye. One more experienced women had studded tyres (and more skill), so she’d gradually catch up to you and pass once you’d made a mistake and slid out or you let her by. Kind of (pretty different, but the turning headlights were similar) reminded me of the night scene in Tokyo Drift.

Over beers afterward we talked cars, upcoming events, about the local scene, movies/documentaries, and tyres. Great day.

That is great you were able to come out!

I did not realize you were the other SSM Fit there!! I didn't have a chance to meet a lot of people in the other group; however I did see your Fit and the white GE8 Fit skidding around the track in the distance though!

I had to run right at 4:00pm so I didn't get a chance to go for beers with everybody afterward as well.

One of the club members came out in the morning with his BIG camera, he is really talented and usually posts up pictures a few days later on SASC. I will put up a link to it, he probably got some good drifting shots of everybody!

I did post up a thread in the Fit Racing section, take a look if you have a chance!
https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/fit-...tml#post807302

If you enjoyed that you are definitely going to want to try and do the Solo Pro school too... that is a lot of fun!

Right on, thanks.

Update on the Solo Pro school; over beer (and soda pop) the SASC was briefly discussing it for May 29/30 (second w/e they have rumoured to possibly have booked for an autocross event - the others May 8/9).

:hyper:

Good to know, I would rather do it early on in the season than in June.

Feb 20, 2010 Winter Driving School

Third and last installment of Reijo's awesome winter driving school.:vtec:
Same fun format, slightly different courses (same constant radius circle though;)).
Only 14 students in the end, so tonnes of seat time (I used up over twice the amount of fuel as the last course) A the end of the day we put the two main courses together into one big course and ripped around until 6:30pm and almost full dark. In the two stitched together slalom's we were getting up to 100km/h. One of the instructors, Kyle, and I took turns driving the Fit and timing eachother. I wasn't doing too badly against his times, but still have some work to do on consistency and always looking ahead to position the car properly.:cool::hyper:
Good link mentioning some things I was working on that I found afterward;
ANDY'S TOP TEN AUTOX DRIVING TIPS - MX-5 Miata Forum

There's some photos up at:
Picasa Web Albums - JForceRacing - Winter Drivin...#

School looks to be a go for May 29/30.
Looks like they are going to be $50 deposits in the next day or so.
Lot's of local people have expressed interest so far on other local forums.
2010 SASC SoloPro School - SASC Forum

Sweet, thanks for posting it up!! I am signing in right away.

Last year a lot of people ended up on the waiting list!!

Only three spots left for anyone on the fence. The Saskatoon (SSCC) is looking to hold one in early June too, but otherwise your options appear to be Winnipeg or one of the Evo Schools at Packwood.

SSCC :: View topic - 2010 SoloPro Driving School?

The local school in Edmonton ( ASA May 1) and Red Deer (RDSCC May 8) are full.
VCMC May 22 by Vancouver looks like they may have room?
Registration for Velocity 1, May 22nd 2010

The ARCA school for solo 1 or wheel - wheel racing on May 1 looks like they might still have 1 or 2 spots too - check out Karelo.com

C

wow, that filled up crazy fast!!

^^Did you pick up a CG lock for the event on the 8th and 9th?

Yeah less than a week, heck after two days it went to 18 spots. We might have to be really on the ball to get into other events this year?

Yup - looked into it and defintely seemed worthwhile. Read on the CSCC forum it was similar to baby seat tie-back buckles. From what I remember (I've only ever installed two baby seats in my life so far) the straps are a different size, so I just got it.

Have fun in BC next w/e!

C