Spring Mountain impressions

[PrimeTime]

Yeah. But I posted the video not to critique the guy's technique, but to point out there was no one sitting next to him to critique his technique. And to ask whether there are any track sessions at this school where the participants have someone sitting right seat.

If what I see in that video is the instruction, it makes me whether I would be better served by taking my own car to an HPDE closer to home and starting all over in a Green run group.

Never where you start, how you finish I think? These cars are "learned" and then I would think I may continue to learn the car. Limits unknown for me as a driver...That's ok with me...Good post. Thanks.

 

[azeyecap]

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to pass on a brief review of my time at Spring Mountain in June. I had a great time and as this was my first track experience I have nothing to compare to. I was very satisfied with my experience in nearly every way. I learned that a car can go much quicker around a track than I thought, I got faster, i learned, and I got yelled at for not learning as quick as I could have. As a newbie, it was a lot to take in, and not having been a student in quite a while I needed some time to get into the my own grove.

I’ll do simple bullets to make this easier.
-The class consisted of the following
1) Wet Braking and steering exercise, 5 or 6 tries per student
2) Slow driving cone lesson where we drove through a maze at low speeds in order to teach us to look ahead to the next turn. The second run included them using a sunshade in the window to get us looking out the side windows more. 5 or 6 tries per student, i found it helpful.
3) Autocross lesson on a small 30ish second course. Between practice and the last day competition we likely ran the course 10 times per student. I really liked this because i could push harder without out worries about “how will i stop and turn in at 120 MPH”
4) Oval lesson with the instructor in the car, teaching braking, steering, turning on the right line etc. We went in circles for about 3 minutes twice. I found it really helpful, I wasn’t trusting the car as i didn’t know how fast it could go. On one lap the instructor told me not to brake when i 100% thought i needed to brake, thus he showed me what understeer was like and I learned a bit On how the car behaves when you are too hot for a turn. The feeling of how the car was acting is what helped me understand. I’m glad they pushed me.
5) launch control, 4 or 5 runs per student. very basic but I didn’t know how to activate this system in my own car yet, glad they showed me.
6) 5, 30 minute track sessions of lead follow. I really didn’t know what to expect from a school that came with the car, I would not have have guessed that I would get 100 miles of track time. For me, for about 1/3rd of these sessions i was following the instructors. I might have had more instructor follow because there were fewer manual trans 4 cars in school, more Auto 5 cars and I don’t think they got as many follow sessions as I did. They grouped us by skill, some other students were faster as they had track experience, i was grouped with two others drivers close to me in skill. Also, when i wasn’t following the instructor it was a but easier to work on the fundamentals as I felt less need to Keep up.
7) Classroom sessions were good as well, some were about driving on a track and technique, others were simple “this is how your car works” I found both helfpful and frankly the break of classroom time after an intense 30 minutes on the track was appreciated. One of the classroom sessions was the instructors sitting with each student with a laptop reviewing their PDR videos of our track time. Out of the car and on the laptop, i finally realized some of the instructions I was not following, and did better on the track after this “game tape” review. For example, i simply wasn’t understanding what i was supposed to do at one of the cones. I thought it as doing it correctly but the reviewed helped me get it.
8) Hot lap with the instructors to show you how far you are from what the car and a good driver can actually do. (Guests got hot laps as well, they all came back with white face/scared expressions). My first day laps were 2:00-2:10 seconds, my second day I was under 2:00 minutes. The instructors blasted the course at 1:45-50 i think. They said they were also doing 85% of what they could do.

Experience outside of class.
-My accommodations were above what i expected, a nice condo overlooking the track with a full kitchen. Easy parking, easy to get in and out of the facility in my rental car
-I never went to breakfast, but was happy with the lunches
-All the instructors and staff at Spring mountain were good, some where outright impressive to me on the engagement, ability to identify personality types, push students, they were good teachers and as someone who teaches from time to time they had the right stuff. A staff member saw me in the clubhouse eating and asked me if my first name or my last name was correct on my name tag (i have two first names). He was walking around and read my tag and he was worried they might have got it wrong, he wanted to make sure it was correct in their system so they didn’t mess up my certificate. He came back 10 minutes later to assure me it was correct and that my certificate would be correct. That was a nice interaction from my perspective, this man went above and beyond and I appreciated it.


Overall, it was great. Is there a better way to teach students? likely there is, as I would have learned more quickly with the instructor in the car (I bring this up as it was pointed out with the youtube video on the previous page). Likely having an instructor per student isn’t within the budget and I’m OK with that. I’d rather have this experience available compared to not having it because 1:1 student to instructors is too expensive from an economic perspective.

I was very impressed with the feedback i got over the radio when i was following. Your hands are too busy, you missed that apex, why are you not giving it full throttle, you braked incorrectly, these were all feedbacks that I heard over the radio and I was amazed they could pick these things up by looking in the mirrors or from the guys on the edges on the track on the side by sides. I talked to the head instructor for my class, JJ, on how he was able to provide feedback by just looking in the rear view mirrors while we are going 80mph around the track and we talked about it for a while. JJ said he had been doing it for so long and he knows the track so well that it is second nature to him at this point,. He also talked about doing the same feedback in lead/follow in open wheel cars at Las Vegas speedway where the mirrors are bouncing around and that the Cadillac school is easy when compared to that type of school.

For a class that I didn’t have to pay for directly, I am very satisfied and would encourge anyone to make the appointment and take advantage before you can’t do it anymore.

The last thing I’ll add is that I had two mistakes 1) Did a 180 at the very end of track session going on a 90 degree turn, didn’t go off track and they let me drive out of it and keep going. they made me feel better by saying my tires where likely “greasy” 2) I really wanted to win the autocross but pushed a bit too hard and understeered off the course. Fail, i was fun to try to push hard.

Ill try to attach some pictures In following posts.

 

[azeyecap]

Including the pictures from the photog that the schools allows to come and take pics in order to sell them to you. Just like the rides at Disneyland

 

[azeyecap]

Some more pics of the school. First one is the condo.

 

[azeyecap]

Testing adding video, I’m not sure if this will work. This is the launch control session.

 

[Berserker]

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to pass on a brief review of my time at Spring Mountain in June.

"Brief"? This was detailed and excellent. You answered a ton of questions I had. I was the person who was somewhat skeptical about the lack of an instructor riding along with you. You absolutely sold me on attending.

 

[azeyecap]

At the offset of my note i didn’t mean to include as much as I did! I failed on being brief, but glad you found some value in what I wrote.

 

[DustinEarnhardt]

Hi Everyone, I just wanted to pass on a brief review of my time at Spring Mountain in June. I had a great time and as this was my first track experience I have nothing to compare to. I was very satisfied with my experience in nearly every way. I learned that a car can go much quicker around a track than I thought, I got faster, i learned, and I got yelled at for not learning as quick as I could have. As a newbie, it was a lot to take in, and not having been a student in quite a while I needed some time to get into the my own grove.

I’ll do simple bullets to make this easier.
-The class consisted of the following
1) Wet Braking and steering exercise, 5 or 6 tries per student
2) Slow driving cone lesson where we drove through a maze at low speeds in order to teach us to look ahead to the next turn. The second run included them using a sunshade in the window to get us looking out the side windows more. 5 or 6 tries per student, i found it helpful.
3) Autocross lesson on a small 30ish second course. Between practice and the last day competition we likely ran the course 10 times per student. I really liked this because i could push harder without out worries about “how will i stop and turn in at 120 MPH”
4) Oval lesson with the instructor in the car, teaching braking, steering, turning on the right line etc. We went in circles for about 3 minutes twice. I found it really helpful, I wasn’t trusting the car as i didn’t know how fast it could go. On one lap the instructor told me not to brake when i 100% thought i needed to brake, thus he showed me what understeer was like and I learned a bit On how the car behaves when you are too hot for a turn. The feeling of how the car was acting is what helped me understand. I’m glad they pushed me.
5) launch control, 4 or 5 runs per student. very basic but I didn’t know how to activate this system in my own car yet, glad they showed me.
6) 5, 30 minute track sessions of lead follow. I really didn’t know what to expect from a school that came with the car, I would not have have guessed that I would get 100 miles of track time. For me, for about 1/3rd of these sessions i was following the instructors. I might have had more instructor follow because there were fewer manual trans 4 cars in school, more Auto 5 cars and I don’t think they got as many follow sessions as I did. They grouped us by skill, some other students were faster as they had track experience, i was grouped with two others drivers close to me in skill. Also, when i wasn’t following the instructor it was a but easier to work on the fundamentals as I felt less need to Keep up.
7) Classroom sessions were good as well, some were about driving on a track and technique, others were simple “this is how your car works” I found both helfpful and frankly the break of classroom time after an intense 30 minutes on the track was appreciated. One of the classroom sessions was the instructors sitting with each student with a laptop reviewing their PDR videos of our track time. Out of the car and on the laptop, i finally realized some of the instructions I was not following, and did better on the track after this “game tape” review. For example, i simply wasn’t understanding what i was supposed to do at one of the cones. I thought it as doing it correctly but the reviewed helped me get it.
8) Hot lap with the instructors to show you how far you are from what the car and a good driver can actually do. (Guests got hot laps as well, they all came back with white face/scared expressions). My first day laps were 2:00-2:10 seconds, my second day I was under 2:00 minutes. The instructors blasted the course at 1:45-50 i think. They said they were also doing 85% of what they could do.

Experience outside of class.
-My accommodations were above what i expected, a nice condo overlooking the track with a full kitchen. Easy parking, easy to get in and out of the facility in my rental car
-I never went to breakfast, but was happy with the lunches
-All the instructors and staff at Spring mountain were good, some where outright impressive to me on the engagement, ability to identify personality types, push students, they were good teachers and as someone who teaches from time to time they had the right stuff. A staff member saw me in the clubhouse eating and asked me if my first name or my last name was correct on my name tag (i have two first names). He was walking around and read my tag and he was worried they might have got it wrong, he wanted to make sure it was correct in their system so they didn’t mess up my certificate. He came back 10 minutes later to assure me it was correct and that my certificate would be correct. That was a nice interaction from my perspective, this man went above and beyond and I appreciated it.


Overall, it was great. Is there a better way to teach students? likely there is, as I would have learned more quickly with the instructor in the car (I bring this up as it was pointed out with the youtube video on the previous page). Likely having an instructor per student isn’t within the budget and I’m OK with that. I’d rather have this experience available compared to not having it because 1:1 student to instructors is too expensive from an economic perspective.

I was very impressed with the feedback i got over the radio when i was following. Your hands are too busy, you missed that apex, why are you not giving it full throttle, you braked incorrectly, these were all feedbacks that I heard over the radio and I was amazed they could pick these things up by looking in the mirrors or from the guys on the edges on the track on the side by sides. I talked to the head instructor for my class, JJ, on how he was able to provide feedback by just looking in the rear view mirrors while we are going 80mph around the track and we talked about it for a while. JJ said he had been doing it for so long and he knows the track so well that it is second nature to him at this point,. He also talked about doing the same feedback in lead/follow in open wheel cars at Las Vegas speedway where the mirrors are bouncing around and that the Cadillac school is easy when compared to that type of school.

For a class that I didn’t have to pay for directly, I am very satisfied and would encourge anyone to make the appointment and take advantage before you can’t do it anymore.

The last thing I’ll add is that I had two mistakes 1) Did a 180 at the very end of track session going on a 90 degree turn, didn’t go off track and they let me drive out of it and keep going. they made me feel better by saying my tires where likely “greasy” 2) I really wanted to win the autocross but pushed a bit too hard and understeered off the course. Fail, i was fun to try to push hard.

Ill try to attach some pictures In following posts.

Stellar review!! I, for one, greatly appreciate the substantial detail. It makes me even more excited to go myself in November!

 

[NewCaddy]

At the offset of my note i didn’t mean to include as much as I did! I failed on being brief, but glad you found some value in what I wrote.

Thank U very much for sharing. Appreciate the detail! Will be there in Oct & looking fwd to it!

 

[Ergoc5]

How does one get invited to this? I just picked up my 5 BW last Monday....do you get some kind of email notification? I have nothing yet.

 

[Blackwing518]

Cadillac V-Performance Academy

 

[Ergoc5]

Cadillac V-Performance Academy

Do you get something in the email or do you just register with V performance?

 

[Tall Steve]

Do you get something in the email or do you just register with V performance?

Just call and give them your vin number and they will take care of you.

 

[Berserker]

How many students are there per class? And what's the approximate breakdown of CT5s vs CT4s? Apologies if I missed this info in one of the prior posts.

 

[M2Cto4BW]

Do you get something in the email or do you just register with V performance?

Give Spring Mountain a ring, one of their reps will take down your details. Just need your vin, car, transmission.
They put you in the same type of car you own, so that is a specific bit of availability constraints over and above general headcount.

As of now they were fully booked out for manual 4BWs, so waiting for more of their '23 sched to be released.

 

[Tall Steve]

How many students are there per class? And what's the approximate breakdown of CT5s vs CT4s? Apologies if I missed this info in one of the prior posts.

My class had 6 students, and I don't remember the breakdown of the cars.

 

[Berserker]

As of now they were fully booked out for manual 4BWs, so waiting for more of their '23 sched to be released.

My 4BW will be a manual, but I would certainly consider taking an auto at the school. Given that the manual has no-lift upshifting and rev-matching downshifting, seems like one is not losing out on a lot of the experience by taking the auto.

For the past 18 years I've been driving nose-heavy cars that put down 258 to 290 lb-ft through all 4 wheels. Now I'll be driving a well-balanced car putting down 445 lb-ft through 2 wheels. (Three times as much torque per wheel.) I've certainly developed some bad habits, and if I'm not careful I'll be the first person in the class pirouetting off into the dunes.

Operating the transmission is the least of my concerns, LOL.

My class had 6 students

Oh, wow. Smaller than I was expecting. Thanks for the info!

 

[Throat Yogurt]

@azeyecap THANK YOU for the great and detailed review!

 

[Snowwolfe]

Some excellent reviews in this thread. I look forward to attending.

 

[Slick Blackwings]

My class had 6 students, and I don't remember the breakdown of the cars.

That’s why they have limited dates, January wasn’t for us waiting for next schedule to come out.