Most Americans are convinced they’re proficient at three things; fighting, fucking, and driving cars. In reality, they don’t know how to do any of them properly without instruction. I would say I’m an OK driver. I don’t have any points on my license, I passed a motorcycle safety course, I’ve done some track days, rallies, and autocrosses, and I’ve done hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel. But the key to good driving is to never stop learning. That’s why, when the opportunity presented itself, I hauled my ass to Mid Ohio to take some lessons from guys who drive better than me.
Full Disclosure: I store one of my cars at the Minerva Motor Club, and their relationship with Mid Ohio School sponsor detailing products company Malco Automotive, I was afforded free passes for the one-day driving school. I paid for my own transportation to the track.
Before we got started learning in earnest, everyone was run through a quick gauntlet to test our skills. The Mid Ohio School has a semi-permanent autocross course set up in the track’s middle paddock with some pretty serious elevation change and a good flowing layout. Before we learned anything the instructors wanted to get a judgement on our baseline skills. Using a decade-old bone stock automatic transmission Honda Civic HF (that’s the fuel-sipping one), we all went hammer-down on the 30-ish second course. I was third-fastest in this round, behind a couple competent autocrossers in a car I’d never seen before on a course I didn’t know the layout of. Not too bad.
The morning started with a couple hours of classroom learning. For almost anyone who follows motorsport, much of this will be reiteration of things you probably already know. There are lessons on weight transfer, what to do when your tires lose grip, and how to quickly get through a given corner, and link it to other corners. The school makes it all sound very simple, breaking it down to easily digestible chunks.
The school is helmed by former CART driver and long-time motorsport commentator Brian Till. The smooth-talking Texan had a lot to say, but he made it manageable for people who don’t normally drive in a performance environment. The class was packed with all kinds of drivers, from those who have never driven a manual transmission before to Porsche owners, and everywhere in between. Some drove over three hours and got hotel rooms near the track to experience this. Everyone took it quite seriously and learned a lot. Some people improved quite a lot from the early morning to the late afternoon.
Now that we knew the fundamentals, we were split into groups and again sent out to the paddock to run some drills. I spent most of the day in a pre-facelift Acura ILX built just down the road at Honda’s Marysville, Ohio plant. I’d asked for a manual transmission car, and got a six-speed car with a K24 engine. It’s rated at 201 horsepower, making it essentially a fancy Civic Si. Not a bad ride for the day, either, especially when shod in sticky 200 treadwear tires from school sponsor Cooper.
While on the autocross course the instructors walk around and provide corner-by-corner lessons on going faster. The use walkie talkies tuned to stations on the car’s radio, which I thought was particularly fun. I could listen to their instructions as though they were sitting in the right seat, but they could give simultaneous instruction to everyone going through that corner.
The next “module” involved these specially equipped skid cars. With a set of training wheel outriggers, the instructors can shift weight and traction around from the front to the rear. The Civic with the outriggers on just the rear of the car felt quite fun, as I was basically driving a front-wheel drive Ikea shopping cart. It was ready to drift at any moment, and you could control the whole thing with plenty of front grip and acceleration to bring the back end into line. The four-wheel skid car, however, was a messy nightmare of icy slide and drift. Having grown up in rural Michigan, I was familiar with the sensation of losing steering grip mid-corner, but it was a particularly interesting sensation on dry pavement in 95 degree weather.
The final lesson of the day involved trail braking and apexing. In this one Mr. Till stood at a point on a long coned-off straight and told a class of newbies to accelerate directly at him, and essentially use his left shoe as our brake marker for a second-gear right hand corner. Every round of braking events he would move a few feet closer to the turn-in point, getting us to learn threshold braking, corner turn-in, and off-corner acceleration in three separate lessons, before linking them all together.
Then came the point where we all got to see what we learned with another attempt at the autocross. This time we ran the course in reverse to prevent anyone from using their memory of the course as a crutch. Once again I piled into the Civic HF and set off with a blur of automatic transmission and 143 horsepower 1.8-liter fury. I gathered up all of the lessons of the day and put in the fastest time of the session. Hurray, I learned something!
The top three drivers in the afternoon autocross got to run a heads-up single lap shootout in the school’s aging Honda S2000s. I decided to lay it all on the line for this one, and put on an impressive show. I was way faster than the other two drivers, for about 26 seconds. Then I crested the final hill, locked up the fronts, and instead of trying to gather it up and hit the timing equipment, I chose to go straight off, netting a DNF time. Oh well, what could have been.
The fruits of our laborious day were a couple dozen laps in our school cars out on the big track. The one-day school ends with a couple hours of lead-follow driving out on track with instructors teaching the racing line and providing individualized critiques. Some students were obviously more skilled and less fearful than others at the beginning, but we were all much more advanced in our driving by the time we got on track in the afternoon. I have been on other tracks before, but these were my first laps at speed on the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. After the recent repave, this track is just so good. It’s flowing and grippy and just a ton of fun.
At the end of the day I got a certificate for having completed the course, and a fun day out with some friends at the track. This is a good class to take if you want to learn a little more about chassis dynamics and handling. It’s definitely geared more toward the people who are just getting started in their track journey, rather than a way to improve your lap times, but it all starts with the fundamentals.
If you go for a single day it’ll run you $890 to use the school’s vehicle, or $715 if you use your own car. The school also offers a three-day course which includes a lot more time on the race track, and the third day is just open lapping for as much time as you want. All three days will run you $2,575, or $2050 if you bring your own car. Honestly, if the school provides you the skills you need to avoid a crash, it’s definitely worth it just in body damage and insurance costs alone. Take the course, you might learn a little something about driving. I don’t know where you take courses to learn fucking or fighting, but the driving part can be handled by the Mid Ohio School.
Through the day I was most impressed by these ancient Acura ILX class cars. My car, beloved 22, had 16,461 miles of hard driving on the odometer and it was still running strong. Obviously a Honda is a good and reliable car, but holy crap can they take some abuse. These cars were fitted with a roll bar in place of the back seat, and a set of four-point harnesses, but were otherwise stock as stock can be. They sit outside all year, they get totally hassled by class participants, and spend most of their lives running high rev around a race track. The ILX died in 2022, but if you can get your hands on a manual transmission car, I can’t recommend it highly enough. Good machine, that one.