Feeling the thrill of the race at Lime Rock

LIME ROCK — Lime Rock Park held an open house on Thursday, April 21, and enthusiasts of fast cars braved the chilly winds and overcast skies for the chance to take a ride with a driving instructor, learn how to come out of a skid, and take a couple of laps around the track.Nuno Peres of Woodbridge, N.J., was making his first trip to Lime Rock. He had just finished his three laps with an instructor at the wheel and was grinning from ear to ear.Peres said the instructor “was talking to me the whole time. Watch the guy in front, watch how to take corners.”Terry Earwood, a veteran instructor who designed driving courses for the Florida and Georgia state police, brought his driving and teaching skills to Skip Barber 28 years ago.He said that driver education in the U.S. has declined, and just a few minutes of instruction would result in better drivers overall.He said his teaching method emphasizes vision as much as anything else. “It’s about how to use your vision properly, where to go next.“Three of five students go to power in a pucker situation. I don’t know how you’re gonna describe that in a newspaper. “We started as a police pursuit school, and the troopers kept saying ‘I wish my wife or my brotther-in-law could learn this.’“So we took the blue light and the siren off.”The bottom line is teaching drivers “how to control the car if something goes wrong.”“If the world was round, we’d have go-karts in the eighth grade, skid pads in the ninth, and autocross in the 10th grade.”Asked if learning on automatic transmission cars makes for poorer drivers, he considered, and said, “Kids aren’t as hooked up with the car with an automatic.”But the real problem is what he called “seat time.”“Dads don’t take the kid out to a big empty parking lot on Sunday anymore. You can’t start early enough.”On the skid pad (a smallish circular track with water on it), the customers drove with the instructors coaching them — sometimes with considerable fervor, resulting in long, satisfying skids with water spraying up, and sometimes tentatively.Visitors could also have themselves strapped into race cars for a quick spin on the racetrack proper — one full lap and most of a second. Ed Olson of Simsbury said he and his wife took the driving course five years ago, and he returns regularly as a fan, not a driver.He said the top speed on his one trip around the track was 110 miles per hour.Was it scary?“Not at all,” said Olson. “The driver clearly knows what he’s doing. He can control the car at that speed, which is a lot more than I could do.”