A couple of weeks ago, the G Luxe crew was out in Arizona at the Bondurant Racing School. The school is located on a 60 acre racing facility in Chandler, Arizona (not too far from Phoenix) and is stocked with a large fleet of GM cars including Corvette Coupes, Corvette Z06, Cadillac CTS and CTS-V, Pontiac Grand Prix GXP, and Pontiac GTO. In addition, they have a number of superkarts, including a six-speed shifter kart that can go from 0-100 mph in six seconds. The school offers a whole host of courses ranging from a one-day Intro to Racing, which we signed up for, all the way to a four-day Executive Protection/Anti-Kidnapping course for all of you wannabe commandos.
If you're a racing enthusiast, there is nothing more fun than learning to drive a high-performance sports car around a race track. If you think you're already the second-coming of Lewis Hamilton because you can out-drag that neighborhood MILF in the Lincoln Navigator, you'll be surprised how little you actually know about getting the most out of your vehicle.
We decided to start our racing adventure with a three-hour session on the shifter karts. To be clear, these aren't those lawn-mower engine karts that you find chugging around the parking lot at your local country fair. No my friends, these racing rockets are powered by a 38 horsepower Honda engine and can top out at 120 mph (38 horses is an amazing amount of power for a 200 lb vehicle). Imagine going almost twice the freeway speed limit just one inch off the asphalt. I guarantee that will get those butt-cheeks of yours clenched nice and tight. We spent the first hour learning about the karts and how to handle the basics like braking and shifting. The instructors then took us around the track showing us the proper lines to take and which gear to be in. After we were all fairly comfortable with the karts and the track layout, they turned us loose for lap after lap of pure racing bliss.
The next day started bright and early at 6:30AM in order to avoid as much of the brutal mid-day Arizona heat as possible. We were each provided with our own Corvette coupe for the day, which we used to go through various driving exercises. The first lesson of the day was learning how to perform a heel-toe shift which was mind-bogglingly difficult. We then hopped into a modified Cadillac CTS that was equipped with hydraulics on the rear and front ends of the car, which enabled it to simulate loss of traction. We each took turns learning how to get the car back on track after it starts going sideways (basically, how to avoid hitting pedestrians if you're driving too quickly in rain or snow). The rest of the day was filled with more driving exercises including a timed auto-cross, oval laps, and finally a lead and follow on the main track.
Probably the most thrilling part of the day was when our instructors took us out on "hot laps" around the track. It's quite amazing what a skilled driver can do with a street legal car. As we went barreling down the straightaway and into the corners, we had visions of flying through the air and cart-wheeling to our exciting but untimely deaths. But the world-class instructors managed the track with ease and we all lived to drive another day.
The G Luxe Crew agreed that our two days at Bondurant was one of the coolest things we've ever done. You'll never truly understand what your sports car can do until you drive one hard on a race-track. The most important thing that we took away from the course is the confidence that, if necessary, we can drive our cars to the edge and still stay in control. My biggest problem was when I got back home and had to fight the urge to replicate some of the things I did on the race track.
Courses at the Bondurant Racing School aren't cheap ranging from a few hundred bucks for the superkarts to a few thousand dollars for the multi-day sessions. But if you've got that inner Speed Racer that's just dying to come out, it will be money well spent. Go to bondurant.com to learn more.
