At C/D, we spend a good number of days fitting the occasional piece of writing around playing with cars, so it was pretty much status quo when an offer to attend a Skip Barber racing schools crossed this author’s desk. Skip Barber programs are offered at racetracks across the country, with the curriculum spread over one, two, or three days and occurring in cars ranging from street machines to purpose-built racers. We snagged a spot in a three-day course at Road Atlanta in the mid-engine open-wheeled Skip Barber Formula race cars.
Temperatures hovered around 60 degrees during out program, but the first two days were soaked by unrelenting rain. Happily, Road Atlanta’s 2.54-mile circuit is wide, leaving plenty of room for a rain line. For those thinking about attending a Skip Barber school, it’s nice to know that instructors will run you rain or shine, because these classes aren’t inexpensive. It also provides the opportunity to bolster your all-weather skills. Here’s how our experience went:
Day One: Classroom and Acclimation
The first day started with an extended classroom session during which three instructors covered the basics of performance driving. Rapid-fire tutorials covering where to look on turn-in (through the apex), contact patches, weight transfer, and over- and understeer attempted to bring students of various abilities up to the same speed. For those who have never given a thought to tire loading or lift-throttle oversteer, the lessons could perhaps be longer, but nothing was new to us, so the length was just right.
The instructors split us up into two groups, sending half of the dozen students to a mini autocross course set up in a paddock and packing the remainder into a van to recon the full track. (Each student was given a “partner” of relatively equal size in the other group, with whom they were to share a car for the three days.) Pre-running the road course in a van was helpful, and the instructor stopped at each of the 12 turns to discuss the technique for each. But we wouldn’t be running laps there yet, instead heading over to the autocross.
Wetter than river flowing through an ocean, the autocross course made for a nice intro to how a mid-engine, open-wheel flyweight breaks traction (see below for more on the cars), and students were encouraged to spin, both to get familiar with the sensation nailed and to get any land-based orbits out of their system before hitting the main course.
After a quick lunch, it was back to the cars to work on our shifting technique—the Skippy cars switched to sequential ‘boxes fairly recently, so some practice was in order. You use the clutch to launch the car—the less slip, the better—then go full throttle until it’s time to shift. At that point, you lift off the gas half an inch, yank the stick back one click, and mash the throttle again, repeating the process through all five gears. No clutch work is needed to upshift the dog-type gearbox, but you do use the third pedal for downshifts. As you’d expect, heel-and-toeing returns the smoothest results. We ended the day with a few lead-follow laps before heading in to dry off.
Day Two: Action, Then Stopping
The day started with a short classroom session covering basic race flagging and penalties. Then, we spent four hours switching off with our partners between driving and observing. To allow you to get a feel for the car, the instructors impose rpm limits that start at 3800 rpm and go up throughout the day to 4500; max engine speed is actually close to 7000. We made a stop during each lap on the back straight to allow for proper spacing between cars and to hear radio feedback from instructors working various corner stations. It was still pouring rain, and several students (that weren’t us!) spun or slid off the track, thankfully without hitting anything.
After lunch came a quick classroom lesson on threshold braking. This critical racing skill requires you to hold the brakes right at the edge of lockup, which would prove challenging in the non-ABS Formula cars on a sopping-wet track. Our skills were tested at the end of Road Atlanta’s downhill back straight, where you’re expected to halt in a stop box made of cones; there, an instructor provides more feedback and issued a challenge to brake even later. Yes, a few students locked ‘em up and slid straight through the box and off the track.
Day Three: Freedom!
Day three started on a high note, with a hint of sun poking through the dreary clouds. Happily, the third day also happened to mark a noticeable uptick in intensity, with a quick classroom rundown on passing preceding an exciting on-track passing exercise. The track drying out and the lessons over, the instructors opened things up for lapping with passing limited to straightaways—diving to the inside in braking zones is strictly forbidden. The stop box on the straightaway was gone, so we were running full hot laps at this point. The laps weren’t timed—a great decision for obvious reasons—and the instructors limited their feedback to the times we were out of the car and our partners in the second group were on-track.
After several hours of hot lapping, we were called in for a wrap-up and to receive our diplomas, which are fast-track tickets to an SCCA racing license (to be accompanied by money, of course). Despite the three-day course being the longest Skip Barber offers, it feels all-too brief, yet the amount of improvement this author made was remarkable. Partly focused on inspiring confidence in the car and partly on building technical skills, the class allows you to grow in ways that simply aren’t possible on a street or even at a regular track day. Every enthusiast should really try to take a performance-driving class, because feeling out a car’s limits on the track—with instant feedback from knowledgeable pro drivers—makes fast driving elsewhere more stress-free and more fun. Who knows, you could even join the well-populated ranks of the professional racers who started with one simple Skip Barber course and now make driving their careers.
The Track: Road Atlanta is a fast, challenging course situated about an hour outside of Atlanta. Its 2.54 miles of pavement wends over rolling terrain, and encompasses 12 turns. Turn one, coming off the main straight, is a dead-man’s corner intended to be taken at near top speed, with only a brush on the brakes. Speeds here in the Formula cars are about 125 mph. Then there are the esses, which plunge downward from turn three and also should be taken near flat-out. Quite a few folks in our course spun in this section, especially in the wet. The track’s most brutal corner is 10a, the 90-degree left-hander coming off the back straight, with a downhill braking zone. Many of our fellow students overshot this corner into the gravel trap or simply spun.
The Car: The Skip Barber Formula car is unique to the school—and its accompanying racing series—but is similar to a Formula Ford or Formula 2000 car. It has a 2.0-liter single-overhead-cam four putting down about 150 horsepower and weighs less than a ton. Fiberglass bodywork is wrapped around a narrow tube-frame chassis, and even though it has front and rear spoilers, we’re told they’re intended more for limiting speed than producing meaningful downforce. They sure look racy, though, while the five-speed, dog-type sequential gearbox actually is racy. Inside, there is only a tachometer and gauges for water temperature and oil pressure—no speedometer is present. Finally, the car rolls on street-derived BFGoodrich G-Force Comp 2 tires, which proved invaluable in the wet.
The Driver: Students should arrive with a deep sense of maturity and responsibility. This is because there is no rental-car–like insurance for the race cars; drivers must pay for all damages out-of-pocket. There is a damage-liability reduction waiver available, which limits total out-of-pocket liabilities to $3000, but it costs $500 up front. We never got too out of sorts and thus didn’t come close to paying to repair someone else’s car, but it’s still best to keep a level head out on the track. Doing so makes the instructors happy, and if they’re happy, they’ll likely let you go faster sooner. A helmet, well-worn racing suit, and a head sock are provided, although drivers can bring their own gear. To that, we’d suggest bringing a nice set of racing gloves, which make gripping the Formula car’s tiny wheel more comfortable.
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