Video: A Perfect Example Of How Not To Behave During A Track Day

One of the first things that most HPDE organizers try to instill in participants is the fact that a track day event is not a competition. There are no trophies, there are no awards ceremonies. There’s no qualifying. Hell, your lap times likely aren’t even being recorded. Which means that “racing’ against other cars is completely pointless and more importantly, makes you look like an utter moron who’s willing to put himself and others at risk for the sake of their ego.

Case and point is this recent participant at a Bimmerfest event at Fontana Speedway in a 2015 Corvette Z06. From the onset it’s painfully obvious that both our driver and our “instructor” have limited experience in their respective duties, as once our hot shoe is passed by a Porsche 911 GT3, he goes into full-asshole mode and begins ignoring virtually every safety measure expected of drivers on course, like passing on straights, waiting for point bys and so on.

Our instructor isn’t doing much better, as his “instruction” comes off as more like ineffective Jedi mind control attempts, all of which are dutifully ignored as our Corvette driver ham-fistedly stomps his way around the sports car course. Judging by the telemetry data, the only thing keeping this pair from the Grim Reaper is the C7 Z06’s various traction and stability control programs, which are clearly working overtime (Pro tip: when you’ve got the steering wheel at nearly full lock at 35 mph, that’s not the time to go full throttle in a 650 horsepower car).

The Porsche driver doesn’t fare much better – he’s clearly new to this gig as well, almost stuffing the car on more than one occasion and taking a fairly abstract approach to the racing line that doesn’t look a whole lot better than Cap’n Corvette’s work. But really, this entire debacle could have been totally avoided if the guy in the 911 had simply given this shmuck a point-by MUCH earlier than he (eventually) does.

Ultimately, the worst culprit here though has got to be the event organizers. These jackasses put literally everyone on course at risk with their stupidity, and somehow neither are brought in for a chat with track officials. We have little doubt that if this was an SCCA event both of these guys would’ve been black flagged within the first lap of this nonsense.