| My First DE - A
Photo Journal Written by Kevin Hansel
On Feb 21 and 22, 2004 I
attended a Porsche Club of America (PCA) Driver's Education track event
at the Texas World Speedway located outside of College Station, TX. The
2.9 mile road course at TWS runs inside and outside the track's 2.0 mile oval -
one of the seven largest race ovals in the country. Well over 80 drivers attended this two-day event. |
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An aerial view of the track |
The road course is shown in green |
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The goal of these driver's education (or "DE") events is to teach high performance driving skills on a track and make everyone who participates a better and safer driver overall. A DE is NOT a race. At a DE, drivers are organized into five different "run groups", classified by driver skill level. Each run group gets four 20-minute sessions on the track each day. The two lower groups are required to have licensed instructors in the car with them at all times (the upper groups do not require in-car instructors). Some of the groups also attend two classroom sessions per day. The PCA takes safety very seriously. Each car registered for a DE event must pass a comprehensive race inspection no more than 2 weeks prior to the event and all drivers must wear Snell M/SA1995 certified (or better) helmets. Passing is only allowed in designated passing areas (the longer straight-aways) and the driver being passed must give a visual signal to the passing car before the pass can be made. There are corner/flag workers at least every 2-3 corners and many rules of driving safety must be observed or drivers can be black-flagged and forced to end their session.
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