Ron Fellows Performance Driving School.
Across the United States, schools that specialize in performance driving offer courses that include instruction in open-wheel race cars, rally competition, winter drifting, evasive driving maneuvers, and even four-wheel-drive rock crawling. As for the curriculum, students can expect coaching on the importance of vision, progressive throttle input, the often-overlooked principles of braking, selection of the proper driving line, and how to cope with—and control—understeer and oversteer.
Everyone from teenagers who just earned a license to longtime amateur enthusiasts to professional racers can benefit from purposeful exercises intended to hone such fundamentals. What’s more, the training at any of the following academies is intended to also make you a safer driver on public roads—and that’s always a win.
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Radford Racing School
Image Credit: Radford Racing School Located just south of Phoenix, Ariz., Radford Racing School operates in the same facility as the former Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving and employs many of the same long-tenured instructors. Courses range from half a day to a full week in duration, and can include classroom time, skid-pad training, and road-circuit driving.
Students are able to progress from Dodge Chargers and Challengers to Dodge Vipers, and, eventually, open-wheel Ligier Formula 4 race cars—all while learning how to brake harder, set the front tires before turning, and exit from the apex to reach full throttle as quickly as possible. Additional offerings run the gamut from lessons on drag racing in Dodge Demons to law-enforcement driving techniques to defensive driving.
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Skip Barber Racing School
Image Credit: Skip Barber Racing School Rather than sticking to one track or facility, the Skip Barber Racing School offers classes at various locations across the country, including Lime Rock, Sebring, Virginia International Raceway, and WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. Former students include NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon and Indy 500 winners Josef Newgarden and Alexander Rossi.
Skip Barber’s coaches teach an introductory driving academy course intended to transfer racing techniques to public roads. Also available are GT and Formula-car track experiences that vary from one day to three days in length.
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Ron Fellows Performance Driving School
Image Credit: Photo: Courtesy of the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School. Perhaps the easiest driving school to work into a vacation is held at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nev., less than an hour from the Las Vegas Strip. With the largest road course in the United States, including the new Charleston Peak circuit that was built in accordance with the FIA’s Grade 3 requirements, the Ron Fellows Performance Driving School also offers lodging directly next to the track. Expect to learn the joys of mid-engined sports cars while ripping around in a C8 Corvette, though Spring Mountain also plays host to the Radical Academy and the Cadillac Academy.
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Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School
Image Credit: Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School Drag racing may seem easy: point the car in a straight line and mash the gas pedal. But in reality, the timing and techniques required to achieve a clean run down the quarter-mile stretch require a copious amount of practice.
Attending a program like Frank Hawley’s Drag Racing School, which has courses at locations all over the United States, will help introduce students to burnouts and the importance of tire temperatures, line lock, and transmission braking, as well as how to handle oversteer and skids. All of that is then put together for full-gas pulls. As for the practical application, the drag-racing lessons learned about throttle application and avoiding a loss of control also apply when driving today’s eminently powerful street-legal sports cars and supercars on the road.
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DirtFish
Image Credit: DirtFish DirtFish teaches the art of rally racing, the internationally popular off-road (usually) form of motorsport competition that somehow flies under the radar in the United States. In the woods east of Seattle, students get to choose between fully caged Subarus—either the all-wheel-drive STI or rear-wheel-drive BRZ—as well as whether to practice with an automatic or manual transmission.
DirtFish’s coaches regularly compete in the American Rally Association series and provide invaluable insight on how to hone car control and confidence while skittering around sideways, seemingly beyond the limit of traction. As a bonus, fans of the TV show Twin Peaks can expect to recognize many filming locations on the property that now serves as the school’s training ground.
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Team O’Neil Rally School
Image Credit: Team O’Neil Rally School In Dalton, N.H., anyone looking to refine winter driving skills can count on Team O’Neil’s expansive 583-acre gauntlet to provide a strong intro to the principles that can make rallying, winter driving, and off-roading safer. O’Neil provides courses using all-wheel-drive, front-wheel-drive, and rear-wheel-drive cars to better serve every student’s specific needs.
Programs range from one day to five days and cater to individuals, groups, and corporate clients alike. In addition to racing instruction, the facility also specializes in tactical driving for military and security personnel.
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Barlow Adventures
Image Credit: Barlow Adventures Barlow Adventures presents a series of classes throughout the picturesque deserts of the American Southwest, specifically Moab, the Rubicon Trail, Table Mesa, Glamis, and Prairie City. Offerings vary from clinics that teach the basics of line selection and recovery, to fundamentals of vehicle prep, dune running, and four-wheel-drive mechanics.
More advanced 4×4 enthusiasts can also sharpen winch skills and their acumen with safety procedures, trail navigation, and rock crawling. They can even learn how to become instructors themselves. There is also the option to enroll in fully guided excursions that include Jeep rentals and support services.
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Cory Kruseman’s Sprint Car and Midget Driving School
Image Credit: Cory Kruseman’s Sprint Car and Midget Driving School Popular sentiment has it that most professional racers respect dirt-track competition the most. Enrolling at Cory Kruseman’s Sprint Car and Midget Driving School, in Ventura, Calif., will provide an introduction to one of the most exciting, if somewhat niche, forms of motorsport on the planet, which features wildly powerful cars racing wheel-to-wheel around a short course at top speed.
For context, the sprint cars at Kruseman’s school weigh 1,150 pounds and carry a 700 hp V-8, while the midget cars weigh 900 pounds and are fit with an alcohol-injected, 190 hp Ford Focus 2.0-liter mill. Once shoehorned into the vehicles, students can progress from finding the right driving line and apex to reading track conditions while continuing to deliver faster lap times.
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Lamborghini Esperienza Neve
Image Credit: Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A. Learning to drive at top speed in dirt, without losing car control, can make full-traction tarmac racing seem almost elementary. Yet nothing exposes a driver’s skill level quicker than a session on ice and snow. For those willing to venture into the cold, Lamborghini hosts a series of ice-driving courses at Canada’s Lake Sacacomie, about a two-hour drive north of Montreal.
Each day starts with figure-eight practice, followed by slower circles in each direction, and eventually sessions on a frozen-lake rally circuit—all with participants behind the wheel of either Lamborghini’s Huracán Tecnica, Huracán Sterrato, or Urus.
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California Superbike School
Image Credit: California Superbike School Every experienced motorcyclist knows how much riding can also help enhance the ability to pilot a car. Despite the name, California Superbike School hosts sessions at tracks throughout the U.S. The training reinforces techniques for leaning in corners, braking and balance, body positioning, and recovering from slides.
Videotaped laps also allow instructors to point out a student’s strengths and weaknesses, which can be hard to detect otherwise while pushing hard on a bike. Understanding and maximizing the level of grip that motorcycle tires can produce, despite a bike’s inherent instability, are skills that can then transfer over to driving cars surprisingly well, especially when it comes to finding the proper racing line and braking points.
