Speed Bondurant School - Site Tour |
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The Bondurant School offers a number of classes, each from one to four days long, in beginning and advanced road racing, advanced street and highway driving, defensive driving for teenagers, law enforcement skills, and executive protection/anti-kidnapping techniques. You can find details at their excellent web site. Because I was a beginner who had never driven a racecar, and because my older brother Ed (who used to race Formula Fords in the SCCA) encouraged me to, I enrolled in the four-day Grand Prix Road Racing course, which offers instruction in both the Ford Mustang GT prepared by Roush Racing (whose Winston Cup cars won 9 out of 33 races this season), and the lighter and quicker open-wheeled Formula Fords. My class in November turned out to be a good choice, since the daytime temperatures were typically in the high 60's and low 70's (compared to the intense heat of summer in the desert). Like other enrollees, when I arrived I checked out the gift shop, then ambled slowly up and down the main hallway gawking at pictures of famous race drivers and celebrities who had each attended classes here at one time. From Winston Cup were Darrell Waltrip, Davey Allison, Ricky Rudd, Kyle Petty, Ted Musgrave, Cale Yarborough, and others I can't remember. (Dale Earnhardt, Jr., came here just before this year's Busch race at Watkins Glen, and if you recall he was doing quite well before he ran off the track and lost a number of positions late in the race.) Monday morning, Day 1, all the students from all the classes gathered in one room to meet Bob Bondurant, an extremely pleasant fellow who obviously stills loves what he does. Bob gave us a pep talk, urging us not to feel overloaded with all the information we'd be receiving, because it would all come together in the end, trust him. I did. We introduced ourselves one at a time. Most of the students worked in the auto industry, with several from an auto magazine. Only four out of the thirty students worked outside the auto industry. I introduced myself as a web designer from San Jose hoping to improve his commute time. Bob introduced his chief instructor, Mike McGovern, who gave us a walking tour of the building compound. We crossed a large parking lot filled with about a hundred bright orange Mustangs, each covered with decals from the various sponsors of the school, and stepped into the shop where each day each car was closely inspected and corrected. Our final stop was a museum room where Bob displays a few of his favorite toys. From there, Mike pointed out a door to where two large white airport-style vans waited to take us on the rest of the tour. |
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My van driver was a young, good-looking kid named Chris Neville, who had a great tan and wore shorts, a light jacket and aviator glasses. He looked like he just stepped off the slopes of Vail. Chris seemed pretty tame to me, so I hopped into the middle of one of the van's bench seats and relaxed for the next part of the tour. Naturally, none of the fifteen or so of us in the van bothered with our seat belts, since this was a van and since we were just going for a short tour, right? Chris explained that he was going to show us the training facility, but added something that struck me as a bit odd. He warned us that the van tends to lean quite a bit, and that if anyone gets nauseous, just let him know and he'll pull over and stop. Now, I'm thinking, "What in the blazes is he talking about? This is a van and it's completely full of passengers. He's not going to do anything crazy, is he? Why would any of us experience nausea?" The two vans headed for the school's 1.6 mile racetrack. Just as Chris pulled our van onto the track, he stomped on the gas so hard that the van shot forward like it had been punted. The big V8 engine roared to life as it sucked the air from the surrounding desert. We accelerated down the front stretch, went over a rise and headed straight for the sand. Just as we were about to go off into the desert, Chris hit the brakes and whipped the wheel to the right, and just as quickly got back on the throttle, while the students were tossed around inside like a bunch of rag dolls. We quickly found things to hold onto. I grabbed the top of the seat in front of me with one hand and put the other straight up to the roof. Then we flew into a tight 180-degree left-hand turn at the end of the track, and I was sure there was no way we could make it at our current speed. Neither did Chris, because he got hard on the brakes before throwing that hulking van sideways into the turn. As we reached the apex of the turn, the left wheels went up onto one of those concrete bumpers like you see at Sears Point, and the van bolted up onto its right wheels, both of them screeching. Chris accelerated out of the turn and we went flying into and through the esses on the backstretch. As the van leaned into each turn, the students would be thrown to one side of the van, and when the inside wheels hit a concrete bumper, the van would lean even more, and the students would get to know each other even better. At one point a voice from the back shouted, "HEY BUDDY--THIS IS A VAN!!!" (We all laughed.) We did one lap, then two, three, four, maybe five. Slowly, I began to realize that this mild-mannered ski instructor was more skilled than anyone I'd ever ridden with. Each lap, each turn, the van did exactly what he wanted it to, with each lap identical to the previous one. Each time that it looked as if the van were headed off the track, Chris would somehow save it and whip the van in another direction. (I learned later that Chris is a race driver in the Formula Atlantic series.) After being tossed around for a while inside the van, I became curious where the other van was, but I couldn't spot it no matter how far left or right I twisted. Finally, on a straight section I turned all the way around and suddenly realized why I was having trouble spotting it: it was right behind us. I mean, it was right behind us. The whole four or five laps the second van had been right on our bumper doing the exact same thing we had been doing. When we pulled off the track onto the paddock area to stop, several guys jumped out of the second van and started shouting, "YOU GUYS WERE UP ON TWO WHEELS! YOU GUYS WERE UP ON TWO WHEELS!" Tell me about it. We took a break after the van ride, and I went back to the classroom to jot down some notes in my journal, and discovered somewhat to my amusement that I had to wait about ten minutes before my hands stopped shaking enough to write. After my return to San Jose, I gave my brother a trip report, and the first thing I told him about was this van ride. He chuckled and said, "Oh, yeah, I forgot about the van." Yeah, sure you did, older brother.
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