Hey everyone,

I am not sure if any of you guys know this or not, but Robbie Montinola has a team of instructors (most of the guys from skip barber) and they run a pro-coaching day and will travel to any track in the US. I am looking at bringing them up to either Seattle or Portland for a one day school. I wondered who here would be interested. Here is some of the info I have put together so far.

I am looking at doing this during a weekday (9-5 ish) somewhere around April to June 2010. The coaches would come in the night before and we could grab a beverage, at a local spot, show them the town. Then meet up from school in the morning.

We would have the track rented for the whole day, so it would just be us. Robbie does a 1-to-1 configuration so you always have an instructor with you and they are there to push you and get more speed out of you. These are guys that race professionally. This is their CAREER, how they put food on the table. Not a weekend hobby. This also allows for you to get exactly what YOU need rather than following a predetermined program.

I am not sure of the cost, but this year at Thunderhill they had 16 student teacher groups and the cost was $1400 per person. I don't think I'd want this to be any bigger than 16 people. They divided that into two groups of 8 cars. so there is never more than 8 cars on the track at a time. It is a rare day that you get time on the track with that few of cars.

This would be in your car unless you wanted to rent a car. I could look into that if you think that is a value add.

I think this post sums up the course pretty well http://www.lotustalk.com/forums/920737-post11.html

If there is some interest with this I'll carry it forward. I can turn the professionalism switch up a bit and coordinate to have name tags, a nice meal on-site, etc. If you think that would be something you like to see.

Best,

Trevor

 

Trevor, that looks like a blast!! something to think about for sure!!

 

Well, I have done a bunch of homework on the topic at hand and at this point, I think this is going to work quite well. This should be an incredible value.

I think that there are a bunch of people in the Seattle/Portland area that would love to make it down to a Skip barber event, but once they factor in all of the time involved (flights, hotels, etc) they are out of the office loop for 2 or 3 days which can be a far larger cost than the school itself. So, I am looking at bringing Robbie Montinola and his team of professional instructors to the Northwest in 2010. I doing a long lead-time for a few reasons. The least of which is that I'm not in the US right now!

The goal is to create a top notch event that by far exceeds what any of the local school environments can provide. This will be in our own backyard which means those of us that are very busy working much more than 9-5 type jobs, will be able to leave the office in the AM be at the track all day, and be back at work or home by dinner time. I want to help provide a level of professionalism and quality of coaching that is second to none and easily accessible.

I have put the numbers together and I think we can put together an absolutely top notch event for less than the Skip Barber 1 day program. Dollar for dollar. Once you add in the costs of time, flight, etc, this is far far less than the cost of going to the nearest Skip Barber.

I've given this an 18 month lead time so that we can do it right. So if you have done the Proformance 1-day, 2-day, or other events in the northwest, or if you have done the Skippy 1-day, you should consider this the next step. This is one on one instruction with the best instructors available. To that end, if you have some experience with the various schools from across the country and have ideas for how to improve the event, please send me a note. PM is fine. If email is more convenient let me know, and I'll PM you my info.

Some of the value adds that I see going forward:
Finding a sponsor (perhaps a local exotic cars dealer would like to put some fine automobiles in front of us?).
Professional photography.
On-board video recording.
Data-logging service and analysis. (doing research now on the insurance implications of that). I can probably also set it up so that the data logging (g-forces, speed, lap time, etc is displayed on the video).

I have not rolled these into the cost yet, so let me know if there is interest in any of them, or others you’d like to see.

Any help or advice as I move along on this project is welcome. In addition to the above, if there is a special group that you think I should make sure I get the word out to, please let me know. I'll be making the track reservation in September ’09 (for spring 2010), so I'll probably open the official client sign up then. Please post up here if this is something you would be interested in or if you have any questions.

I look forward to your feedback.

Best,

Trevor

Ps: I'll probably let this go without updates for a while, but please, as ideas pop up, post them so I can put together the absolute best program possible. Most of the work and research is done. The negotiating is just starting.

 

I would be interested but would need to know the date, location and final cost before I committed.

 

Of course. me too.

My survey is helping in this cause. see my sig.

3 possible locations. We'll make the call on location based on where we can get the most people.

It will be a weekday and we'll post that up in September. so post up here if there is a day wors better than others. But right now I am thinking a Monday. No one likes to work on monday anyway.

Final cost will about around $1500 but is heavily dependent upon #s.

 

survey completed

 

thanks.

Everyone, there is a survey link in my sig, if you track, tracked, or think you might want to track your cars, give the survey a whirl. 10 questions. Trying to make track days better for all involved.

 

I'll cover the event as a photographer.....

 

Sounds great James.

Please send me a PM with your info if you could. no rush, we have time.

I'd love to talk about your ideas for knocking this out of the park on the photography side.

Group photos, on-track photos, everything.

 

PM sent....

 

pm sent