Monday through Wednesday this week, I took Jim Russell's three day Techniques of Racing course at Infineon Raceway. I attended a couple of one day events with Russell last year, so I had high hopes for this class and I was not disappointed. Of the tracks I've been on (Thunderhill, full Reno-Fernley course, Infineon and Laguna Seca), Infineon is my standout favorite so I also intended this class as a chance to perform an in depth study of my favorite racetrack. We ran turns 7a and 9a, which was a configuration I;d never run before.

The course was taught using 125bhp, 1095lb, carburated, open wheel, rear engine racecars. Revs were limited throughout most of the class, starting at around 3000rpm and increasing about 200rpm per session (except when they forgot to bump them...) up to full revs of 4800rpm after lunch the third day. I had a fair amount of trouble getting started with the car as they have a very heavy clutch, making them easy to stall when trying to launch slowly. The motor would bog if I romped the gas at low RPMs, which I assume is a side effect of the cars being carburated. The shifter felt very notchy at first, the brake pedal was the heaviest I've ever experienced, non syncro mesh gears, etc, etc, etc. However once I got used to the car, starting probably midway through day two, it became incredibly easy for me to drive. There was no slop so everything action had to be right on or I'd grind gears or upset the balance of the car or something.

Lap times were provided once we were using the full course on the afternoon of day two, but the instructors didn't make a big deal of them. They really only told us our own lap times and did not in any way emphasize that one person was faster or slower than any other. We were welcome to compare times, but the instructors did not do that for us.

There were a total of nine students in the class versus fifteen in the Advanced Racing course running concurrently. There was a good mix of people in the Techniques class, ranging from some guys who had never been on a track before to one guy who races a BMW 318 in SCCA races. Next to him, I seemed to have the most track experience of the students in the class but I had a little trouble hearing some of the guys when we introduced ourselves.

We had a lot of room on the track due to the small class size and I think I only had to pit for space once to get out of traffic the entire 1.5 days we ran the full course. My quickest lap was 2:15.6, with the SCCA racer topping the class at 2:11 and change. Of the ones I saw, my 2:15.6 was second best time for the class after the SCCA guy's laps.

We spent the morning of day one doing heel and toe downshift exercises, punctuated with a couple of short classroom sessions. Accelerate to maximum (limited) RPMs in 4th in a straight line, start braking hard at the first cone, heel/toe into 3rd at the next cone, into 2nd at the next, then to 1st, turn around and repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat for 20 minutes. At some point, the skies opened up and out came the rain coats. Afternoon of the first day was spent mostly in the classroom talking about weight transfer, passing and other theory, punctuated by some track drives of the full course in Explorers. We also did some instructor lead lead/follow sessions on the full course. The cars did pretty well in the rain, though I did have a bit of a moment when I locked my front wheels under braking going into turn four during a lead/follow lap. Visibility was pretty much crap due to the wind and rain, but we dealt with it and drove anyways. Apparently at the end of the day, the weather was approaching the level where Russell will stop running, even though they're rain or shine. Still, we wound up getting through a full day of driving with no major incidents despite the weather.



Morning of day two was spent on the technical upper half of the course, consisting of turns one through six with a hard, first gear right hander at the bottom of turn six onto the drag strip. They had setup cones marking out a heel/toe exercise in the braking zone at the end of the drag strip and then a right to return to the front straight. In the afternoon, they turned us loose on the full course with open passing. Weather for day two was sunning but pretty cool (40s) in the morning with gusty crosswinds in the afternoon. Wind is a new experience in an open wheel car and some of the gusts were strong enough that I couldn't hold my head up straight.



All day of day three was lapping the full course. 25 minutes on, 25 minutes off, alternating with the Advanced students. Weather was ideal: sunny with highs in the low 70s. I had my only spin, coming out of 9a, during the second session of the day. After our final session, we got one session in the 150bhp, 1150lb cars used in the Advanced course. The instructors told us that they didn't do this for every Techniques class (we didn't have any major incidents) and admitted that this was their marketing ploy to get us to come back and take the Advanced Racing course. I had a lot of trouble shifting the Formula Russell car (what I thought was a correct seat adjustment turned out to be too far back) and they limited revs to about 5200 of 7000rpm but i have to admit that it's good marketing.



It was a great experience overall and I learned a lot that I think will apply directly to going faster in my Lotus. The only problem that I have is that now the Lotus feels like a bus after driving the racecars!! I drove the Exige to the class and the first time I tried to drive it, I couldn't move the car at first. There was miles of space before the clutch engaged!

Another interesting data point is that I started working out with a trainer about three months ago and I'm really feeling the positive effects (combined with the Yoga I've been doing for the past six years) in my driving. I never really got tired throughout the entire course and I'm the sort of guy who is used to sitting out the final session of a HPDE track day. The guys who had no track experience were wiped out by the end of the class.

The only downer was that the Lotus wouldn't start the morning of day three at the hotel and again at the end of day three when I went to go home. Embarrassingly, I had to be push started both times. This was the first road trip since installing the Braille battery and I'd been worried about starting issues - though not too worried, since I was putting about 30 miles on the car per day driving to and from the track.

Her: Is that your car? That's a beautiful car!
Me: Thanks!
Her: What kind is it?
Me: It's a Lotus.
Her (to her male companion): It's sooo beautiful! Can you buy me one?
(she puts her arms around his neck and smooches him)
Me (to him): You can pick them up used pretty cheap.
Him: *glare*
Me: I'm not helping, am I?
Him: No.