May 8th Drivers' School Observations

[SharkD]

Yesterday's drivers' school was generally as great as I've come to expect from the National Capital Chapter. I credit Doug, Bill, Adil, the corner workers and, of course, the instructors for another job well done. That said, I did have a few nits to pick, some of which I remembered to put on my eval form and some of them I didn't...

(These were pulled out of another thread, for the sake of keeping that thread on-topic and positive.)

• In B-group, there wasn't any free time (even with "Free" sessions) before lunch (especially if you were an odd number) -- this meant that there wasn't any opportunity to make much-needed post-track adjustments to the car, or even to relax. I understand that the early calls to grid-up reflected the need to keep on schedule (and this school seemed more on-schedule than most), but this seemed a little ridiculous.
  
  I had upped my pressure to 42psi all the way around prior to tech inspection (on the track, I normally run 40-43psi in my AVS ES100's), but after the first lapping session, my front passenger wheel was under-pressure and my rears were equally over-inflated & I didn't get time to do a more than cursory check after dropping a wheel off the apron on track-out in 7. (Mind you, I did get a chance at lunch, but that was after two track sessions and time on the skidpad -- all with an overly loose rear and a soft outside front.),
  
  
• The drivers' meeting seemed a bit too 'loose' -- maybe I just got used to Miriam's gestapo methodology (I kid, I kid), but assuming that the first DS usually has the highest number of new drivers of the season, the sometimes vague instructions and the lack of any demonstration flags struck me as odd, (if need be, I'll chip-in part of the cost for a set of dedicated demo flags)
  
  
• I was also shocked by the extremely laid-back on-site tech inspection -- they never opened my hood, performed a straight-line brake test, looked inside the passenger cabin, asked if I'd checked the torque on my lugs, or even checked or wrote a single thing on my tech sheet (including a signature). All they did was look at my helmet, look in the trunk and stick a blue dot on the windshield.
  
  Now I know that the onus lies heavily on the student and the outside mechanic to ensure that the car is safe to drive in an "enthusiastic" manner, but I'd hate to think of what could happen to the future of the NCC BMWCCA drivers' school program -- one of the best marque club programs in the U.S. -- if somebody was hurt because of something that would normally have been caught in a trackside tech inspection,
  
  
• Pocket-size schedules were sorely missed, as were the neck lanyards and long-sleeve t-shirts (not absolute necessities, but nice nonetheless);
  
  
• The aforementioned dry skidpad -- I was the third car in my group on the skidpad and it was already halfway dry. In fact the 'wet' section was still dry enough that I flat-spotted my rear tires. (I know this is more due to BSR's policies and the nice sunny, cloudless day, so I'm not sure what can be done to prevent similar situations in the future.)

Like I said, that handful of gripes are the only complaints about an otherwise extremely well-done drivers' school, and I only raise them because I failed to put all of them on the eval form. If anyone disagrees with my opinion -- and that's really what this is -- feel free to speak up; I'm not looking to start an argument or ruffle feathers, just to keep the consistently high-quality drivers' schools on-track, so to speak.