Bondurant's School of High Performance Driving - The Art Of Control

The training wheels start to come off on Day 2, so we donned a head sock and helmet. Bring your own if you have one; we borrowed one of Bondurant's.

Afterward, we picked up our Vettes and headed back to the Maricopa oval to apply all the previous day's lessons, meaning we were heel-toe downshifting when appropriate. Naturally, speeds increased and the lessons learned in the skid car helped greatly with our car control confidence, as the higher speeds resulted in greater rotation, or yaw, through the turn. We were much more precise today having lost a few bad habits.

After lunch, we spent a little time with Tim in the classroom getting a briefing on our next challenge; the lake loop combined with the carousel. Here, we'd find examples of every major type of curve as well as a long straightaway.

Note the tire marks; we weren't really using them on the oval, but the lake curves both ways so the racing line involves using the curbs as part of the track. The reliefs in the outer curb are there to let drivers know how close they are to the edge before dropping a tire off the track.

In some cases, it's not just corners where the curb is the ideal line; on this section of the lake loop we follow the curb all the way to the last cone before turning into the next corner.

There are plenty of places for newbies to get themselves in trouble on this track, so lapping begins with a lead-follow behind the instructor Caddy to illustrate the correct line. We did several laps with ever increasing speed. Tim then spaced us out and left us to try what we'd learned.