Skid Pan/Skid School Training

[mph999]

Thurxton is pretty good, they use both front and rear wheel drive cars, the front wheel drive being Mini.

If you want completely realistic, Mark at Bespoke Driver Training will take you somewhere such as Bruntingthorp /Mira - but be prepared to lose a mm or two from your tyres.

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otolith said:

The Silverstone facility is good. I don't know for sure whether they will let you take your own car out, but when I was there I said it would be interesting to drive my Elise there and the instructor didn't seem to think it would be a problem.

I like the kick-plate system they have there, because you have to correct a skid that you didn't initiate - when you know in advance which way the car is going to go, and you have deliberately put in the input which causes it, removing it is a lot easier.

There is also the Prodrive facility at Kenilworth. Did a couple of days there years ago with the RX-8 owners club. They've got some low friction surfaces for skid training.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ayL_8ZfWU

I did the low-friction surface at Porsche Silverstone in my BMW. About half of the cars on that day were non-Porsche. That was 2012, so they may have changed since then.

[Pan Pan Pan]

otolith said:

The Silverstone facility is good. I don't know for sure whether they will let you take your own car out, but when I was there I said it would be interesting to drive my Elise there and the instructor didn't seem to think it would be a problem.

I like the kick-plate system they have there, because you have to correct a skid that you didn't initiate - when you know in advance which way the car is going to go, and you have deliberately put in the input which causes it, removing it is a lot easier.

There is also the Prodrive facility at Kenilworth. Did a couple of days there years ago with the RX-8 owners club. They've got some low friction surfaces for skid training.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ayL_8ZfWU

I found the kick plate section at the Porsche track particularly good, and probably could have spent a whole morning on it alone.
One of the problems I had (which according to my instructor, is quite common) is that if and when as car goes out of control, many drivers tend to `freeze' or lock up (it was certainly something which I tended to do) although my particular mistake tended to be to make the correct initial control input, but `then' freeze up.
By spending some time on the kick plate, I learned to remain `loose' so that after putting in the correct control input, I was ready to put in further inputs to catch whatever the car was going to do next.
I was a long way from getting it right every time, but the difference in my response to `fully' correcting a skid between when I arrived there, and when I came out, was worth the
cost of attending the event on its own.