High Performance Driver Education (HPDE) - Taking Notes

I was fortunate enough to have Ross Bentley as a guest "group coach" at my first HPDE event with Audi Club NW in November 2011. He has a gift for explaining the esoteric bits of high performance driving in easy to understand terms. Looking back at my history on amazon.com, I bought his book "Ultimate Speed Secrets" the very next week.

One of the topics he touches on multiple times in the book is taking notes and debriefing how a track session went, usually in conjunction with a track map to jog your memeory. This resonated with me, as my learning style is such that the process of hand writing notes seems to cement the lesson - I used it a lot on college.

When I'm approaching a "new to me" track, I make up one of these sheets, print off a dozen copies or more and take them with me. After a session, I'll jot down some notes. I'll confess that the notes were at first pretty banal, like "entry - outside", "apex - inside", "exit - outside". In time, they got more informative, like, "entry - half a car width from edge of pavement", "apex - very late, touch berm", "exit - track out mid, transition to next entry".

As an instructor, I typically provide these note sheets to my students either in the initial email exchange or at the track. I have yet to have a student use them in the same way I do; we all have different learning styles.

Washington

Oregon

California

Nevada

Texas

Virginia

* notes are examples only of how I use these sheets, and are not to be relied on as guidance.


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