The class was full, the students enthusiastic and the instructors at their best. The positive feed back from our first driver's school of the century was overwhelming. We know we're on the right track and the work to be done is fine tuning. Congratulations to Mike Boyle, Dave Lam, the M.E.T.A. workers and all the instructors who made the school such a great experience for the 48 students. Following is some of the feedback we received from the participants. To have received 45 questionnaires back was in itself a success. Here's what they had to say:

Instruction adequate?      91% yes
Class room time good     86% yes
Value for cost                  84% yes

Liked most:
29% said the instructors were great
16% said the course content
8% said learning driving skills
8%  likes learning to race
8% enjoyed the track time best

Liked least:
The Rain!!!!!
Waiting during Sat AM exercises.

The weather was in a word, brutal.
Cold, wet and wetter. At one point we had more standing water in turn 6 than we've had since the Bucket Brigade weekend several years ago. The students deserve a big pat on the back for keeping their cars on the track. We had one small altercation with the wall on the front straight and that was it for damage. This was one of the best bunch of students we've had at Mission.
Three cheers too for the M.E.T.A folks who persevered through the cold and wet to support both the SCCBC and the new drivers. We had 9 students indicate they would like to get involved in volunteering. Those names have been passed on to M.E.T.A
Areas that we need to brush up on include being more prepared for lunch and reducing line up time at the concession. Line ups were also a source of frustration Saturday morning as the students waited for their go at turns 1 & 5.  The longer track will help with that next year. We will be able to break the class down into several smaller groups. The other difficulty is having more than 2 students per instructor. Having the school at Spring Break meant that several RDC members

were away or unavailable.
We changed the program a bit this year to reduce the number of driver meetings, increase the track time and give drivers more immediate feed back. To do that we had instructors on each corner with radios communicating to the RDC. When a driver needed more instruction, was over his head, or passed under yellow flags we immediately had him black flagged and had an RDC member waiting for him in the hot pit. The weakness in this system is that we had so many black flags in the first part of Sunday that the starter couldn't keep up. (The fact that we didn't warn the starter didn't help either). Sorry George. We're working on a better system for next time using pit boards to call them in. It worked in theory!
So we all had a chance to wipe off the cobwebs and prepare for  the first race of the season. The transponders were tested and worked beautifully. The radios, freshly back from the shop, were fine. We kept Thomas on his toes by giving him an outdated schedule which started about 30 minutes later on Sunday than the final schedule. Thanks for your patience guys. Thanks to ProFormance for erecting a tent near pre-grid. It was well populated throughout the weekend. Thanks to the instructors and all the volunteers. And to the students, you were taught under the worst weather conditions. You did a great job. Now, keep the racing on the track.!