You’ve undoubtedly seen shooting course After Action Reports (AARs) posted by students on gun forums; this will be like that, but for three driving schools we attended in September 2025. I’ll tie everything together at the end with some takeaways and life lessons.
First, some background information.
Other than driver’s ed when I was 16, I’ve never taken a driving course before. Like I’ve mentioned in my past blog posts, I have always been a big proponent of taking courses but in the past they have been primarily firearms related with some medical and wilderness survival mixed in for good measure.
Danielle and I have both always WANTED to take a high-performance driving course but never pulled the trigger until now.
So how did this all come about?
Well, last year I bought my first baby sports car, a Toyota GR86 in pavement grey. I called it a poor man’s Porsche, but it could also be my midlife crisis car. Either way, it was a fun, affordable way for me to do some spirited driving on my daily commute. It is in the classic sports car format: lightweight, rear wheel drive with a manual transmission. It is super fun to drive.
To be honest, Danielle was doubtful at first because it does have a little bit of a “rice rocket” feel to it. She likes big beefy vehicles like her lifted 2005 Sequoia. A GR86 is not the first thing when you think of a car for the president of a company and a middle-aged dad! Where I live, the first thing that comes to mind would be a full-sized truck. Preferably lifted with a crew cab, in other words: an Idaho luxury vehicle.
I’ve done the truck thing for many years, and we have the Sequoia for towing and off-roading, so this time around I opted for a fun car. Word of warning for anyone considering something similar, the back seats are worthless! If you have really small children, they would fit, but my 5’5” teen daughters can’t sit comfortably. I just treat it like a two-seater and keep the seats down, I joke that now it is my minitruck! I CAN fit a 53” precision rifle case with a scoped rifle and attached suppressor, so I’m good. Every car utility should be measured by what rifles it can fit in it. I couldn’t fit a Barrett 50cal, but since I don’t have one, I’m good for now. #goals
So driving this car is fun but I knew there was a lot more I could learn. In fact, one of the first things a fellow CEO asked me when I mentioned I bought the GR86 was: “Are you going to track it???”
I honestly hadn’t thought to do that. When I bought the car, it came with a complimentary membership to NASA – not the space guys, the race guys. Since there wasn’t anything close to me, I actually forgot about it. I just wanted something fun to drive on my commute. But it got my wheels turning.
I started looking up high-performance and racing schools around the country to see what was out there. Many of the manufacturers of sports cars have a school you can attend….BMW, Ford, Lexus. Along with dozens of independent schools. It is a lot like the firearms training community, actually with a mix of large schools and smaller ones or independent instructors. Heck, there is even a course that Ford Raptor truck owners can attend called “Raptor Assault”.
We figured the best way to dip our toe in would be a one-day course driving the GR86, unfortunately, since we live in Idaho, the closest schools are in Washington and Utah. Luckily, I found two schools in Washington that were close together that offered different driving experiences: Proformance Race School in Kent, and Dirtfish Rally School in Snoqualmie, only about 25 miles apart. We were able to book 1-day courses at each school with only a two-day gap. We booked an AirBnB, drove the 7.5 hours to the Seattle area, and had a mini-vacation driving cars!
Proformance Driving School, Kent WA
One Day Performance Driving Experience
This was our first course, an introduction course. This was also the only driving course we would use our own car – the GR86. The funny thing about this school is that the school vehicles are all GR86’s as well! They are a great car to learn performance driving.
The course was held at Pacific Raceways, a racetrack and dragstrip with a history going back to the 1960s. Our intro to racing started in the classroom to discuss fundamentals sprinkled with some racing war stories from founder and lead instructor Don Kitch Jr. who is a little bit like the Clint Smith of the racing world – someone that has “been there, done that” and now runs a school and teaches others.
After the basics, it was out to our cars to practice what we learned. The first part of the day was spent really getting to know the limits of our vehicle through various drills. For example, we started out with an accident avoidance drill to mimic something suddenly on the road ahead of you that you needed to swerve to avoid. They would tell you which way to go at the last minute using a directional flag. Going right meant that you would simulate going off the highway over rumble strips. A very realistic scenario in everyday life. The goal was to focus on the escape route even if it took you off the roadway.
Another drill we did got us to experience fully locking up our brakes while attempting to control the car. We learned that your car tires can only do one thing 100% of the time – it is either steering or braking; they can’t do both at 100%. So the trick with extreme braking is actually to lighten up the brakes and give some capacity back to your steering wheel so you can control the car. It was eye-opening.
Also, something the instructors pointed out is that not many people have tried to do an emergency stop outside of an actual emergency. Honestly, you feel like you are going to break something in the car, but you won’t. In fact, Danielle started that drill a little too hesitantly for that reason – it just doesn’t feel natural to try to jam on the brakes 100% and crank the wheel hard!
The afternoon was spent on the racetrack with an instructor in the car. The instructor drove two laps then it was our turn. We spent the rest of the day alternating between the race track and the classroom to incrementally improve our driving technique. The entire time was spent with an instructor in the car, educating you at every turn and straightaway. I can honestly say that day was exhausting! Between the mental focus needed and the physical side of pushing your car to the limit, we ended up going to bed at 8:30pm!
Dirtfish Rally School, Snoqualmie WA
One Day Rear Wheel Drive Program
Two days after the road course we took a rally driving course at Dirtfish in Snoqualmie, WA. We chose to take the Rear Wheel Drive program because they used modified Subaru BRZ’s – essentially the same car as our Toyota GR86. Actually, it would be more accurate to say the GR86 is a Toyota badged BRZ because it is built by Subaru and has a Subaru engine in it.
This course was completely different from Proformance. First of all it was entirely on dirt and not on pavement. Second, the speeds were much slower but surprisingly equally as stressful! Much of the knowledge was similar to the road course we took, but tweaked slightly for the off-pavement world.
We again started in the classroom to cover dirt driving basics and car handling fundamentals. After about an hour of class time we hit the dirt and got our cars and instructors. The first exercise was driving around an oval course and learning how to control the car and transfer weight effectively. We did this by left foot braking – right foot on the gas and left foot on the brake. It was a strange feeling, especially for me after driving a manual for so long.
Once we got the hang of it, we could take corners confidently with a little bit of weight transfer to the front tires, steer and, if needed, counter-steer and then throttle. I felt like I could drift around a dirt track all day! It was that much fun.
After the initial drifting activity to get our hands dirty, we did a slalom exercise, a hard braking exercise like we did at Proformance, more classroom instruction, and eventually a full dirt rallycross course. Each lesson built on the last and the overall experience was a blast. There is no doubt that driving a rally car is a different set of skills than driving on the asphalt.
I won’t lie, we both gave serious thought to converting our GR86 to a rally car…
Originally, those two courses were supposed to be the end of our driving experience, but since I was on the mailing list for a bunch of schools, Radford Racing School had a fantastic 1 day 50% off sale that I had to jump on. It meant that we had to act fast and fly down to Arizona but it was well worth it. This time we took our youngest daughter (18yo) with us..
Radford Racing School – Chandler, AZ
3 Day High Performance Driving Course
Danielle and I both agreed that for some reason, going to Radford felt like “the real deal”. Not that the other two schools weren’t professional or even large operations, Dirtfish certainly was, but Radford was on a whole other level. To see a school with dozens of Dodge Challenger Hellcats and 392’s with its own private racetrack was awe-inspiring.
Danielle and I both choose manual transmission cars and unfortunately they didn’t have any Challenger Hellcats that were also manual, so we drove naturally aspirated Challenger Scat Packs with the 6.4L V8 “392” engine. Our daughter on the other hand was driving an automatic and got a bright orange Challenger Hellcat with a supercharged 6.2L V8. It was a thing of beauty when that supercharger spun up! I was a little jealous.
Over the three days we spent at Radford, we reinforced all of the lessons of car control we learned at Proformance for asphalt driving and added to our knowledge base. When we hit the specialized skid cars, some of our lessons from Dirtfish came back to us – though we weren’t left foot braking and honestly there doesn’t seem to be any substitute for dirt driving in the asphalt world – they really are two separate disciplines. Maybe if we had enrolled in a drifting course we would have seen some similarities?
At Radford we were introduced to the autocross – a timed course set up with cones. The goal is to improve your lap time by perfecting your driving lines, proper braking and well timed acceleration. In our group, the fastest time was from a 16 year old kid who was driving a manual 392. I ended up being the second fastest. I guess I just couldn’t push my focus and aggressiveness all the way to 11 like that kid could. Maybe that is why so many race car drivers are young guys (and gals).
After various car control exercises, driving the racetrack oval, and lead / follow with instructors, the third day we finally got to spent 2 hours on the racetrack alone in our car. No instructor with us this time. Nothing but our thoughts and 4,200lbs of sheer muscle car. It was exhilarating but also exhausting! I will say that it was also a great stress reliever – there were no thoughts about life outside the racetrack. I was 100% focused on driving the proper lines, throttle input and braking pressure.
Tying it All Together
So what did we learn after five days of high-performance driving school? Here is a breakdown of the technical skills, then I’ll translate them into actual life skills.
The first thing you learn when you attend a high performance driving course is that driving is all about weight transfer. As one instructor put it, you aren’t a driver, you are an automotive “weight manager”. For example, braking transfers the weight to your front tires so you can steer more effectively. Stepping on the throttle transfers weight to the rear tires (which is why powerful sports cars are usually rear wheel drive) giving you more traction when and where you need it most. By using the brake, throttle and steering wheel you can shift weight around as needed.
In some cases we learned that you might not even need to brake, but instead lifting off the gas pedal to shift the weight from your rear tires to your front tires was enough.
As I mentioned before, your tires can only do one thing at 100% so don’t try to both steer and brake hard. If you need to brake hard, do it with the wheels straight THEN turn. Feather the brakes as you are going through the turn to keep the weight forward on your steering tires, then gradually apply gas to transfer weight to the traction tires as you approach the apex. You should be fully on the gas as you exit the turn headed for the next apex.
We learned about “threshold braking” which is the exact opposite of how you brake during normal street driving. On the race track you want to brake hard as you approach a turn (in the straightaway) then gradually lift off the brake and transition to the gas after you cross the apex of the turn. In everyday driving, when you are approaching a stop, you will gradually apply the brakes and increase pressure if you find you aren’t stopping as quickly as needed.
We learned that racing is all about taking the most optimal line. This is why you’ll see race cars do strange things like all form in a snake as they move from corner to straightaway to corner. They are taking the most optimal line. Below is an example from our Proformance course at Pacific Raceways. Follow the blue driving line to see how it differs from every day driving.
Another important lesson was looking far, far ahead. The faster you are going the farther out you need to look. Everything is coming at you so fast that you need to be looking way out in front of you to give yourself more time to react.
Which actually is a good segue into life lessons…
Life Lessons
How does racing relate to life? There are a surprising number of parallels…
Look where you want to go, not where you don’t. The classic example is while driving or riding a motorcycle, you see a pothole, if you keep looking at it, you are more likely to hit it. Or another example is when a car jumps out from a side street. If you stare at it, you’ll hit it. Instead, you need to look for the path that avoids the obstacle. We learned that by doing accident avoidance drills, don’t look at the obstacle, look at the safe path. Another example was taking a corner, as you approach a corner, you want to look at the apex. As you get near the apex you want to look through it to the other side. Always keep your eyes on where you want to go.
Life Lesson: Fixate on your goals not the obstacles in your way.
Aim for consistency not perfection. On the track, every action you make needs to be smooth and consistent. You can’t jab at the brake pedal, you need to apply pressure firmly and feather it lightly as needed to keep your weight forward. Your steering inputs need to be smooth and not jerky. You need to roll on or off the gas at appropriate times. When you are driving 100+ mph even a small jerky movement can send you spinning out of control. As you drive the track and do everything correctly, the more consistent you are, the better your time will be.
Life Lesson: Consistency has a compounding effect. Eating right, working out, reading, saving money, you name it consistently doing something will get you to your goals.
Your only opponent is you, not others. This was especially true on the autocross track where you raced a clock. Each lap you would know if you did better or worse based on your time. The better you applied the fundamentals the better your time would be. In our courses we didn’t do any actual racing but in real racing with others, you are still your own worst enemy. If you aim to run the best most consistent race you can, you’ll beat others most of the time. This also applies to shooting competitions, when you think about it, you are actually shooting against the clock as accurately as you can.
Life Lesson: Measure your progress against your past self, not others. It doesn’t matter what you see on InstaTokFaceX… What matters is whether you are doing better than you were last week, last month and last year. If not, figure out why and correct it.
Proper maintenance prevents disaster. In every course we took, the cars were meticulously maintained. In fact, at both Dirtfish and Radford the cars were moved to the shop and checked by mechanics while we were at lunch. They knew after a morning of driving hard they didn’t want to send students back out with a questionable vehicle. Race cars and aircraft are two very good examples where proper maintenance prevents disaster.
Life Lesson: Do the preventative stuff now so you don’t have an issue later. That goes for your car, your home, your body, and even relationships like your marriage.
Put the pedal down – even when you are scared. When you are driving a car around a race track it is a scary thing that is outside of most of our comfort zones. There are times when you have to trust the machine and fight through the discomfort you are feeling in order to improve. There is a famous quote from Mario Andretti: “If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.” This applies to racing and life.
Life Lesson: Getting outside of our comfort zone is where we grow. Sometimes you have to fight the urge to take it easy, not let up on the throttle, and just “go for it”!
Read the full article here