For beginners, your best bet is the Porsche Driving Experience in Birmingham, Ala., a two-day school that divides participants into groups based on driving expertise ($2,495 plus accommodations; porschedriving.com). Attilio Brillembourg, from Geneva, Switzerland, recently enrolled with his son. “We both like to drive fast,” he says. “But we’ve got no place to do it without getting a ticket.” Students learn the nuances of braking and steering, and spend a full afternoon lapping on a twisty racetrack at the immensely challenging Barber Motorsports Park. After a couple of days with a Porsche driving instructor–all of whom have professional race-car-driving experience–chances are you’ll never spin out again.
More-advanced drivers will feel right at home at BMW’s M School, where instructors assume all students can grasp lingo like “apex” and “trailing throttle” ($3,650, all inclusive; bmwusa.com). At its state-of-the-art Spartanburg, S.C., facility, students literally “burn rubber” as they slide around turns in the M3 and M5. (Power sliding is much more fun in someone else’s expensive car.) Just as at the Porsche school, you’ll go through a timed auto-cross challenge and master the tricky heel-toe downshift technique used by professional racers. You won’t get any track time, but the autocross is twice as long as Porsche’s. And you’ll go to Michelin’s Proving Grounds, where you can hone your wet-weather driving skills on a professional-grade skid pad.
If you’re looking for open-wheel excitement, check out the Monaco in Sonoma package at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School (jimrussellusa.com). You’ll get three days of track time in a Formula race car, excellent instruction in small groups and three nights’ accommodation at Fairmont’s Sonoma Mission Inn (including two spa treatments or a couple of rounds of golf, plus dinner for two; $3,595). And since drinking and driving don’t mix, you should plan on staying a few extra nights to explore the surrounding California wine country.
Need a shorter program? Mercedes-Benz offers a one-day class at racetracks around the country. This $900 school puts you in every AMG Mercedes and teaches you the basics about vehicle dynamics. If you’ve never gone fast around a racetrack, it’s something everyone should try at least once. But beware, the adrenaline rush is addictive. Says Russell Racing’s Kjell Kallman, “Racing is the only legalized drug in America. And we are licensed to sell it.”
