derBayerische November/December 2024 - 27

J O I N T H P D E : N C C A N D N E W J E R S E Y C H A P T E R A T S U M M I T P O I N T
Peaks and Valleys at the Track
Within the community of HPDE students, enthusiasm for the activity tends to
fluctuate with the national zeitgeist. Student fees run several hundred dollars
for a weekend. In the years following the Great Recession, student interest
waned quite a bit. It was fairly robust by the mid-teens, but then Covid set it
back again. Through each cycle, many chapters have been able to manage,
offering the same number of events each season, whereas others needed to cut
back an event or two, temporarily or even permanently. By 2023, racetracks
had been struggling with inflation just as much as everybody else, and they
were forced to significantly raise prices. A lot of students justifiably had real
sticker shock. It was time for HPDE programs to start thinking about getting
creative if they wanted to stay strong.
Beginning around the Covid period, the HPDE folks at NCC began
internally kicking around the idea of combining with other chapters to run
events. In our chapter, the HPDE program is administered by the
DSSC (Drivers' School Steering Committee). Pretty quickly it became
clear there were three
categories of obstacles to
address. Logistics, finance,
and culture.
For logistics, the issue
is risk management. BMW
CCA has worked hard to
establish and maintain a
set of protocols designed
to ensure that HPDE
events provide a safe
learning environment. It
works well, but it requires a
strong, well-trained team of
people. Responsibilities need
to be clearly defined, and
decision-making authority
about the conduct of an event
needs to be clear and
respected. The CCA's current solution to these concerns, as codified in the
CCA Operating Manual, is for a single chapter to take responsibility for
performing these functions at an HPDE.
That leads to the issues in finance. The current budget for a three-day
HPDE weekend is in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. The club contracts for
a set of weekends on an annual basis, and the vast majority of the expenses
become non-refundable 90 days before each event. In NCC's case, about
60 to 65 percent of the revenue for an event comes from student fees, and the
other 40 percent is covered by instructor fees and sponsors. If the DSSC was
going to ask another chapter to co-sponsor an event for which NCC held the
logistical responsibilities, we knew the other chapter would be
nervous about sharing costs with us. After all, if we didn't do a perfect job of
marketing it and managing the expenses, they would be stuck with
half the losses.
The cultural issue goes back to the old hometown pride angle. Within a
chapter, instructors get to know each other over the years. There is definitely a
camaraderie to it. This isn't surprising considering the amount of physical
energy and mental concentration it takes to in-car instruction for two students
over a weekend. It takes a lot of teamwork, and instructors go home from the
weekend pretty much wiped out. In addition, students attending a chapter's
HPDEs take some comfort in familiarity, seeing their past instructors again at
November I December 2024
events, and making social connections with other students in their run groups.
Each student has a busy schedule over the course of the day, but there are
several idle periods between events, and there's something like a big tailgating
vibe that gets going. If we were going to make this work, we would need to find
a way to bring two cultures together in one paddock.
The Rubber Meets the Road
The DSSC had come up with angles for all three problems, and we had
worked them hard for the previous 24 months. Now we've persuaded
another chapter to go in with us, it's the morning of the first day of the first joint
HPDE, and I'm feeling like this one's for all the marbles. Put me in, Coach.
Success or failure. Stand and deliver.
On Friday the 13th.
Fridays always start out with a bang at the 8:00 a.m drivers' meeting.
I look around and see we only have three students to instruct today, those
in the most advanced " A group. " They have been with us for a while
on Saturdays and Sundays,
and they still need in-car
instruction, but are in the
finishing stages of their
learning journey. Twenty
more of them will arrive
tomorrow. I also see seven
" A-Plus " drivers, who have
finished this process and
are qualified to drive solo
in the A group, without an
instructor. We use Fridays as
part of our instructor training
program, which we call the
Instructor Academy, or the
■ New Jersey instructors at the Friday morning meeting, getting to know the NCC instructors.
Photo by Patrick Torbik/ptorbikphotography@gmail.com
" IA Group. " I see ten are with
us today. These are people
who have completed their
HPDE driver training, and
they have volunteered to go through a mix of classroom sessions on safety,
vehicle dynamics, and instruction theory before they become instructors.
They also need to participate in " role play " sessions on track. An instructor
takes the wheel pretending to be a student, and the IA candidate in the
passenger seat tries to respond appropriately as an instructor would. This
exposes them to dealing with the various kinds of people they will have as
students, for better or for worse. Instructor training isn't over until they can
correctly identify what each student needs in order to develop as a highperformance
driver, safely and effectively, and still have a good time doing it.
The established instructors who show up on Friday assist with this
process, and they also receive some " continuing education " of their own, since
we are continuously refining our curriculum in response to more
powerful cars, more complicated automated safety systems that aren't
necessarily designed for the track, and evolutions in education theory.
There is also a fair amount of time for instructors to go out on track
individually and refresh their recollection of the many nuances of that
particular circuit, so they will be in a position to provide the most help to their
students on Saturday and Sunday. They represent the majority of folks at
the meeting, and I'm seeing about 50 NCC instructors and 10 New Jersey
instructors. More will come tomorrow.
Mike Meyer starts the meeting off. Over the course of the summer, Mike
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