MSR Apex Event June 14 2008 from a novice point of view

[jmiller]

I have to say thanks to John & Georg at Apex for having a great byoc event for us Saturday June 14th. We contacted John back in March about scheduling an event at MSR for our Corvettes of Tyler corvette club. We opened the event to any Corvette owners, and had a few of our members that opted to drive one of their "other" cars. (it was funny to hear the guys moaning how they were passed by a Cadillac) Apex has never had an accident in over 5 years of doing driving events. That is one of the main reasons we opted to go with Apex. We had 12 novice drivers that had never really been on a road course, and everyone left having a good time. Apex ran a novice, intermediate & advanced groups. We ran the 1.3 mile course. We were accident free! No one went off course in the novice group. No cars were hurt. We used a little gas, left a little dirtier, sunburned, sweaty (it was over 100), and tired. Had a great time, and plan to do more events with Apex. We started out our morning in the classroom. Then went to the track. Instructors drive your car and show you the lines, then you drive slow learning the lines, and back to the classroom. Apparently our slow did not match our teacher's expectation of slow. (75-85 mph was a little faster than they wanted, and we all came to an understanding after great debate) We all learned that a room full of Corvette drivers when asked to drive slow, thought 75-85 was slow enough. Which after our debate, we learned driving slow was actually 45 mph. The next session had a speed limit of 45, and we all obeyed. So, fyi to you novices, when they say slow, you should ask for clarification. It will save you some serious lashings... For those of you that have not done a driving event, I highly recommend Apex. Novice drivers never go on the track with the experienced advanced drivers, which was a big relief. And if you do an event, make sure you take the time to ride with your instructor in their car. My speed improved by 20-30% after riding with my instructor. It really helps when you can experience how things are supposed to feel, look, etc. Jeff