by John Ruther and Sid Smith

Dear Lyle [Wells] and Sid [Smith]:

Last night at the PCA Board meeting I mentioned that in connection with the Club’s recent RADE event, we had an applicant (you, Sid) who was largely deaf but who had track time at other venues, was passionate about motorsports, and believed that he could participate without undue risk to himself or the other participants. After some discussion with our RADE event organizers―including Cheryl Lehman-Collier, the Event chairperson; Todd Conforti, the Club’s Track Safety chairperson; Glen DeWeirdt, our Chief of Event Volunteers; and me, as Chief Driving Instructor―we agreed, accepted your application, assigned you an in-car instructor (Lyle), and went forward with the event as planned.

At the Board meeting referenced above, I commented about how well you and Lyle had worked together at the event, and what a pleasure it was to have you as a participant. I also explained that you drove this event with little to no in-car verbal communications whatsoever. Everyone was very impressed, and I was asked if you guys might be willing to write a short article about your experience at Road America for The Scene. In this day of using intercom systems to enhance communications between instructor and student, I thought this would be an interesting article in contrast. So, if you would be willing to do this, I think it would make for very interesting reading. Give it some thought and let me know what you think. I’ve copied Cheryl [Lehman-Collier] on this since she was the Chairperson for this event.
Best always,
John Ruther
PCA-Chicago Chief Driving Instructor

Dear John and Cheryl;

I’d be happy to contribute. From my perspective, any success I enjoyed is much more a measure of the efforts of Lyle, and yourselves. All of you were open to trying something different, something you did not typically do.

With Lyle, the more sessions we did, the more expressive the communication became. At first it was basically “brake/turn/accelerate” with a “yay” (infrequent) or “nay” (frequent) following the corner. This graduated to Lyle giving me feedback on how much I was missing apexes (lots). By Saturday he was fine tuning my line by grasping an imaginary steering wheel next to mine like a plane.

It was after the Patrick Long video that I understood I was to be literally HITTING the apexes (especially Corners 7 and 13 (a.k.a. the “Billy Mitchell Bend”). At this point the communication was more in the vein of immediate feedback on the corner and cleaning up the lines.

Before each session we would discuss the objectives for the session:  SMART, i.e., Specific, Measureable, Actionable, Relevant, Time based. After each session there would be a debrief, what we were trying to do with vehicle dynamics, what was working, what did not, what we would work on the next session.

During the weekend, John gave guidance and commentary on the Patrick Long video. In class, I opened it on my phone to get the captioning, not wanting to distract the class. I thought, there’s a lot of discussion in there and using the captions might be useful. Since then, I’ve also watched it quite a few times, single framing through the approaches.

I’d also like to give a shout out to Glenn. I was a volunteer for the touring event and Glenn added Joel Kaphengst from the Tech Team with a radio as a passenger in my car. Joel was in contact with Glenn during the drive and I concentrated on the group following me. It was seamless.

One last thing. Lyle asked that I drive the corners at 60% Saturday afternoon. And I had the chance through Glenn to drive the course at 50 mph or less. Those two sessions gave me the opportunity to identify very specific physical features which became my guide points. Which, of course, is when it really began to come together. Thanks to all of you for making me feel so welcome here, and for helping me become a better driver.

Sid