When it comes to making you a faster, safer, and more analytical driver, there’s one thing that is most effective: that’s right, today we’re talking about the essential “driver mod”. If you’ve been involved in the car community for a little while, chances are you’ve heard someone throw that term around before, but you may not know what it means. “Driver Mod”, for the uninitiated, is usually what someone says to either point out that a particular car is fast because of its driver’s skill, or to indicate that someone may need to get a little more seat time to become a better driver. Although it’s used primarily in a joking context, there is some truth to the idea behind the elusive driver mod. Now that everyone’s familiar with the term, let’s get into it!
Photo By: @Leyt5
As drivers, we tend to spend plenty of time (some would argue too much time) trying to get the most out of our cars, even if it’s just so that we know it has a proper setup. Whether we’re planning our next modification or trying to schedule an event to get some seat time in, we always strive to make our cars and, more importantly, ourselves better at what we do. While modifications are important and can make a very big difference in our car’s performance, the qualities that come with more experience behind the wheel in a high-performance setting are vastly more important in most scenarios. When talking about gaining that valuable practice and experience, there are two surefire ways to go about it that are both safe and an extraordinary amount of fun: Autocross events, and track days / HPDE. Now, this is a topic with varying opinions and personal tastes, so we’re going to try and keep it as informational as possible so that you can form your own opinions and preferences instead of being told which one someone else thinks is better. First up, let’s talk about Autocross!
Autocross often gets looked down on and sort of reduced down to nothing more than dodging cones in a parking lot at 30 miles per hour, and from the outside in, it does kind of look that way. However, once you participate in your first autocross event, you’ll realize that it’s really not that simple. Autocross, while lower speed and arguably not as intense as track time, does have some good points to it! To start with, it’s much cheaper to get into at the entry level with most events requiring less than $100 to enter, some of which either don’t require helmets to participate, or the organizer provides helmets to rent which means your safety gear already has a head start. Due to the lower speeds, you and your car are also dealing with a much less demanding environment, meaning that you may not put as much wear and tear on your car as you would at an HPDE event, and because you’re going slower in an open parking lot, the possibility of you having an accident and damaging or totaling your car is greatly reduced, although not eliminated completely. Events are held more regularly, with some clubs even hosting events weekly or bi-weekly. As far as skills are concerned, autocross can teach you some very valuable things. Because of the tight and technical nature of autocross courses, you are able to learn a lot of low speed car control as well as throttle control and techniques that are applicable not only in other high performance scenarios, but also in emergency situations on public roads that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to avoid. Autocross is also valuable to anyone who enjoys driving the mountain passes due to the similarities in technicality and layout. It’s not a perfect 1:1 scale, but it does transfer a lot of things over that are quite surprising.
Track days, also known as HPDE events, are another amazing example of seat time that can be extremely valuable. Despite the cost and preparation needed for an HPDE, they are excellent tools that you can use to gain experience and proficiency behind the wheel. Drivers are often intimidated to set foot on track for the first time, but once that first session is over and they’ve had time to cool down, the reaction is priceless: you just had your car on a real race track and were able to drive it as hard as possible with no worries! At a track day, you’re going to spend a ton of time learning: lots of organizers even require their newer or less experienced folks to take time throughout the day in a classroom setting to learn various things ranging from track signals to car control and weight transfer. The biggest downside to HPDE is the cost: although some organizations do provide loaner helmets, there are certain things that you and your car need to have or upgrade before putting it on a track due to the much higher stress you’ll be demanding from your car than it normally sees. Items like tires, brakes, and fluids should all be up to the task, and you really should prioritize making sure that your car is in tip-top shape and passes the tech inspection with flying colors. On top of mechanical items, you’ll also likely have to account for the cost of a hotel room to stay for at least a night as well as the travel expenses. After all, there are only a handful of road courses in the United States and you’re very likely going to have to take a pretty decent road trip to get to the nearest one. However, if you can make the expenses work, a track day is well worth the price! At a track event, you’ll learn so many things about both your car and proper car control that you’ll be surprised you were even able to drive it down the street and back before!
Now that we’ve visited the two main topics of today, you might be wondering “how does this relate to mountain driving or my spirited drives”. The biggest reason that seat time is important is not about how quick you are or how good of a driver other people will think you are. Instead, it’s about how safely you can operate your vehicle and how in control you can be while driving in a more risky environment. We all love to take off to the mountains and have fun, but it’s important to keep in mind that it’s still on public roads and as such we need to be responsible in our handling and control of the cars we’re driving and how we conduct ourselves. Nobody wants to cause an accident and we all want to have a good time out there, so keep these things in mind! Remember, we’ve got nothing to prove and we’re not out to set speed records, we just want to have fun, so keep that in mind the next time you’re out driving! Oh, and maybe look into hitting the track or autocross event sometime! It’s always a treat to see enthusiasts out driving their cars the way they were meant to be enjoyed!
That’s all for this edition of Touge Weekly! Be sure to check out some of our other articles for more great reads and interesting topics
ARTICLE BY: Ben Duncan @justdr.ve
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