BMW Driver Training... (56K WARNING)

I just confirmed my registration in May 23\'rds Montreal Advanced Driving course (lvl 1).  I\'m really, really, really looking forward to it.  I\'ll (if I remember) borrow my dad\'s digital and post some pics.  If it\'s as good as I\'m hoping, I\'ll for sure take the perfection level (2) course... cause it\'ll be sweet to use their M3s....

Check the site/intro for info... anyone local who wants to join me, I\'ll be showing up in a green civic.... with vanity plates.

BMW\'s Driver Training Site

Well.  Naturally, my terrible memory made me completely forget to take a camera... luckily, they\'ve got a guy with a digital clicking away all day, so I\'ll have some pics in a week or so (they put them up on the site, after a couple of weeks).  

You start the day with some classroom instruction, and I learned a lot of new information, and some great tips (over and above my YDoC course - Young Driver\'s), including seating position, new mirror positions, and wheel handling techniques.  That\'s about an hour and a half.  Then you work on practicals.  In the morning, my group worked with 330i sedans, we did braking and understeer/understeer recovery.  That took us about 3:30 hours.  We had our catered lunch break, and then did more practicals in the afternoon.  Emergency manouver (lanechange), and understeer/understeer recovery.  After 3 hours of that, we did the slolem (race), which my team came in third (2.2 seconds apart... first place team was only .4 seconds apart!).

It\'s absolutely first-class the whole day, the drinks, cars, track.  They wet the track with a water truck about 20 times in the day, the food is great, and the cars are sweet.  You can (obviously, you need to) turn off all the driving systems in the cars with a switch, but you also get to test them, and they\'re pretty darn neat.  It\'s virtually impossible to throw your car into a rear wheel skid at reasonable speeds with the bmw systems on (understeer is possible, of course, but that\'s easy to recover from).

I\'m certainly going to take level 2, perfection level driving, but level three might be out of my price range.

Level 1 - Focused on defensive techniques, 4 excersizes, $480, full day, in 330i sedans.
Level 2 - Seven excersizes, 4 defensive, 3 performance (ie, rear wheel controlled skid around a 180 degree turn and recovery at speed), full day, 330i sedans and m3 mixed, $870.
Level 3 - $2900 (yikes!), two full days, 15 excersizes, all performance related, at a different location, on a track fully approved for racing.  In M3s exclusively.

Prices are in CDN dollars, not including tax.  The program is available in I think around 17 countries in the world now.... and the certificate is accepted from any country to anther.

Damn thats crazy. Was the control skidding initiated by the hand brake? Just wondering. M3\'s are ...damn great. I love BMW\'s. Much sturdier ride than mercedes. Not to say they arent good. Meh. Where was this and how did you hear about it?

Heard about this online.  Controlled skidding (around a corner) is lvl 2, so I haven\'t done that yet.  We were learning how to recover from front and rear wheel skids (which necessitated putting the car into a skid), but we put the car into them on a wet donut, by gradual up-throttle, or sudden up-throttle (front/rear).

The M3s they had we didn\'t get to use at lvl1, just the 330i sedans.  The instructors had M3s and Z4s (jerks!).

[videoholic]

I do driving school in a 330i Sedan every day.

Get outta my way granny!!!

Glad you had fun.  I want to do one.  They do it near here every few months.  I\'d love to do it.

Originally posted by FatalXception
The instructors had M3s and Z4s (jerks!).

Damn! I want to drive a Z4!!!!!!!!:mad:

As promised, the pics of my day, from May 23.  I\'ll write a bit about what\'s going on in each one:

1) My team, driving car 16 (a stick), with me on the right.  This was 3 days into growing my goatee, so give me a damn break.



2) Here\'s a shot of us all admiring some of the other bmws they had there (there are other shots and cars, but I only included this one).  The guy sitting in the car is the senior instructor, and the guy leaning over him with the brown shirt is the second instructor.  Both have lots of racing experience.



3) Here\'s a shot of us all lined up before the slolem (race at the end of the day), so you can see the nice cars the two instructors get.  Oh well... level 2 awaits me!

4) Here\'s a picure of two cars circling the wet donut, about to throw their cars into a skid, and then recover from them.  In this particular excersize, the sticks had it a bit easier, cause it\'s easier to both cause and recover from skids in sticks.  All BMW systems had to be disabled to be able to do this (we tried with it on... you just can\'t make the car skid at reasonable speeds).



5) Here\'s a picture of one of the cars (not me, I was good at this) who DIDN\'T manage the "recovery" part of the skid.



6) Here\'s the last pic I\'ll put up.  It\'s of the emergency avoidance.  Again, it wasn\'t me (if anything I oversteered and wiped out the outer cones).  You can see that this person wiped out the center "avoid" cone.  It\'s REALLY close to the gate, so you barely have room to throw the BMW into the gap.  It\'s waaaay easier with the systems on, too, because part of the excersize is to stop right after you balance the car (after avoiding the cone), and the system really helps do that.

[videoholic]

I\'ve shut the Suspension controls off a couple times.  IT makes it a heck of a lot easier to brake your tires loose.  Well considering you can\'t break them loose at all with it on. hehe  One time I jumped on it when I was doing a ubie and forgot I had it turned off.  Car whiped right around.  May have looked cool, but it cought me off guard all to hell.

I\'m such a puss.

Would have been bad ass if somebody did a full out drift on the wet recovery strip. If they could just hold out and moderate the throttle with the steering:) . Why no pix of yerself?

My S2000 does not have any traction control or stability system, so you have to be constantly aware of the road surface and conditions at all times.  It sounds weird, but I actually like it better this way.  I could definitely see myself getting lazy if I had driver assist systems to save my ass every time.  I think it might create more problems for me than I have now.  

BTW, why does everything in Canada have a maple leaf on it?  I know we have all sorts of crap with red/white/blue on it down here, but I swear we don\'t have nearly as much as you guys have red maple leafs.  Stupid stuff like the logo for "Joe\'s Plumbing" will have a maple leaf in it... as if not to be confused with the evil american "Joe\'s Plumbing?"  

[videoholic]

Anything and everything that comes from Canada and is imported into the US must have a leaf on it.

Originally posted by Lord Nicon
Would have been bad ass if somebody did a full out drift on the wet recovery strip. If they could just hold out and moderate the throttle with the steering:) . Why no pix of yerself?

Believe me, we had full recoveries, all sorts of scenarios were played out.  As for pics of me.  READ CLOSER