Atlanta Motorsports Park - Teen driving course - really solid, worth every penny.

[325e '87]

Hello, I signed my son up for the Teen driving course at Atlanta Motorsports Park, we go on 03JAN.

Has anyone been to this place? Any experiences? We are really looking forward to it. Any advice or reviews?

thanks

[agent]

I haven't been to AMP yet but I hear it's a neat place. Did you also consider the Street Survival course offered by the BMW CCA Foundation?

[325e '87]

Yes, the street survival is definitely on the list but its hard to get into, last I checked. Maybe this summer.

I will offer my review of the experience at AMP if anyone is interested.

[325e '87]

Ok, we went to the “Drive Strong” teen driving course at Atlanta Motorsports Park last Friday. Here is what they do.

There was a driver/parent meeting at 9:00 that lasted an hour, synopsis of what to expect during the day and outlined the desired outcomes after the class was over. The students were split up into groups of 3 and paired with an instructor. All of the instructors are active professional drivers/race drivers/instructors. The one my son had was the recent SCCA championship winner though I dont remember the division. All of the instructors have well over 1,000 competition laps at Road Atlanta, VIR, AMP, the usual circuits, and Nurburgring. One important thing they did was to have all of the students remain in the car while doing the driving events, so, they all experienced everything and observed everything, which was very cool.

The first event was on a typical Autocross type track set up in a parking lot with cones. Low speed driving focusing on using the ABS in a controlled environment. The idea was to do repetitive panic stops and hard braking moves getting used to handling a vehicle with active ABS. We all know, the feel and sound of ABS can be alarming at first and the students drove for an hour getting used to it and understanding its limitations and benefits.

Second event was more geared toward driving in general through the autocross set up. Hard aggressive driving on wet pavement with the 2020 330i, all traction control off. An hour of experiencing slalom, hard cornering, braking, precision with the vehicle sliding around a bit.

Break for lunch at noon, high speed driving in the afternoon.

Third was driving the 330i on a wet skid pad (drift ring with an upslope about 500 yards long). Loss of traction at a decent speed without the aid of traction control. The instructors taught how to induce understeer, correct/recover understeer. Then, inducing oversteer, recovering oversteer, and doing three repetitions under both conditions. This was all done on the round drift circle. Then they had the students do an understeer drill, oversteer drill, upon recovering the vehicle driving up a hill attempting to keep the car moving and correcting the sliding while moving up the slope. It was all on a very slick/wet skid pad, some of the drivers entered the upslope too slowly and it was so slick the vehicle would just stop with the wheels spinning. This was an hour long session where all the students got to recover a sliding vehicle in a very slippery environment. It was awesome.

Fourth was on the racetrack. The drills were 55mph vehicle recovery where your right or left side wheels come off pavement. What they did was drive the race circuit, hitting all the bump strips in the corners which kind of effectively upsets the stability and they were coached on how to re-enter the pavement at highway speed. The goal was to help students experience what its like to run off the road and learn how to safely recover the vehicle.

The event organizer took parents on ride alongs throughout the day so that the parents could experience the same as the students and hear what the typical instruction from the instructors would be so that we could talk about everything with our kids. Now I know what the new X4M feels like, that thing is fast and sounds incredible.

It was a fantastic day all around. The Drive Strong organization is a non-profit and for $250 this course was nothing short of amazing. My son is 17 and has been driving/working on his “87 e30 for over two years now and some of the instructions was a little elementary for him but he enjoyed every minute of it.

Let me know if any of you have any questions, happy to spread the word about this. Right now, the Drive Strong website is only in the Atlanta Motorsports web site. They are a newly formed non-profit now and are in the process of developing their own web site and expanding the whole operation.