DE - A SHORT COURSE By Mark Johnson, DE Administrative Chairman
How many of us have seen a three-legged stool? Imagine you have such a stool, but then remove one of the legs and watching how long the stool stands on just two legs. It falls over, right? A person may be able to sit for a while, but long-term comfort and ability to sit becomes untenable. PCA Drivers Education is similar in the need for three legs to stand and be viable. We must have a track to run our cars, we need drivers, and we must have qualified and skilled instructors. Without each of these three key groups, our DE program can (and has) suffered. Track availability is a serious concern with the demise of PBIR and the heavy booking of both Sebring and Homestead by various groups. Driving instructors are hugely important, and if you don’t have enough, the load becomes heavy, especially with many drivers new to the DE environment. Without DE drivers and their cars (the newbies, solo and advanced solo, i.e., the folks who pay for the privilege) a financially viable event becomes a serious losing proposition.
Here is a link for their event at Club Registration: https://clubregistration.net/ events/event-details.cfm?event_id=12477 Suncoast has additional DE’s scheduled as follows:. Sept. 10-11; Oct. 1-2; and Nov. 18, 19 & 20 – Instructor and solo Fri-Sat, Students on Sunday (special guest Ross Bentley, Speed Secrets author). All Suncoast DE events are listed “ClubReg”. Also, we look to find new drivers who are interested in a GCR DE program. While we won’t have a track event soon, there
is much to be learned in a classroom or meeting scenario. We expect to offer DE training on car prep, general DE knowledge, and track day knowledge. Generally, these classes (two or three) will help a person new to DE prepare both themselves and their Porsche for driving on a racetrack, under control, safely. We are looking to crawl before we walk, run, and drive quickly at Sebring, Homestead, Road Atlanta, or any of several quality tracks in the southeast.
GCR DE program is being examined. We are looking top to bottom, left and right, even inside out. We are benchmarking other PCA Regions, our friends at Suncoast Region in the Tampa Bay area for example. Suncoast runs a quality DE. They hold 7-8 events at Sebring each year to much success. Our simple goal is to bring a fun, safe and financially viable program to the members. As we have no track time scheduled for the balance of 2022, we highly recommend that Gold Coast members who like to drive quickly in their respective Porsche automobiles sign up with the Suncoast Region DE for August 6th & 7th. Aug 2022
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