PUT THIS ON YOUR 'BUCKET' LIST

Sam Payne, Henry Payne Sr. and Henry Payne Jr.

NOTE: I think we all have a 'bucket' list of some sort. Henry Payne Jr., his dad and his brother decided to attend a driving school. I am sure this is on my list somewhere. Somewhere long before my backside got too wide. Bottomline, do this before you get too wide. Have fun.

**************************

 

If the Honda Civic is America’s best-selling entry level sedan, then the Formula Skip Barber is our most popular entry-level race car.

Every year, some 10,000 drivers with the need for speed sign up for Barber driving school programs to experience high-performance cars on major U.S. race tracks. Over 500 of them will belt themselves into Barber’s open-wheel, so-called formula cars for a 3-day, $4000 racing school that will teach them how to race a purpose-built race car. The school attracts a menagerie of motor heads from enthusiasts checking their bucket list to boy racers climbing the racing career ladder. All receive a race license qualifying them for entry in Barber’s own racing series. In last year’s Indy 500 field, 66 percent of the car jockeys got their start in one of Barber’s race mules.

This Christmas holiday, the Payne family got behind the wheel for a test on Mazda Raceway in picturesque Laguna Seca, California.

The Barber car was originally manufactured in 1986 by Mondiale for the racing school but has since been made in-house. The current car – there are 90 in Barber’s stables nationwide – was last modified in 2000 and is powered by the old, 2.0 liter Dodge Neon engine. The four-banger produces 132 horsepower and is the only thing the car shares with your average grocery-hauler.

The cockpit is all business. The single-seater has no navigation screen, no radio, no cup-holders. All you get are the essentials: a tachometer and dials for monitoring oil and water temperature. Cloth seats? Fuhgetaboutit. A hard plastic bucket is standard. Back problems? Shove in as many foam inserts as you like. If there is a convenience to formula cars it’s that the steering wheel is removable – in order to help giants like your 6’5” author to get his knees under the dash. The inconvenience is no eight-way adjustable seats. Zero-adjustable, in fact. Pedals too close? The mechanics will have to find you another car with deeper pedals.

Where the 2.0-liter egg-beater originally resided in a 2,600 pound Neon with steel unibody and panels, the Barber car’s bullet-shaped, fiberglass body is mated to an aluminum tube frame weighing just 1,400 pounds. That makes for a nice 1:10.6 power-to-weight ratio - significantly better than the best compact pocket rocket today (the 247-horse Ford Focus ST’s ratio is 1:13) but well shy of an Indy racer at 1:2.5 (1,600 pound rocket ships lit with 650 hp).

Barber drivers can acclimate to a racing environment with enough power to thrill, but not enough to get them in serious trouble around Laguna’s legendary 2.2 mile, 11-turn roller coaster.

Our 16-man Barber school was a typically diverse lot ranging from a 15-year old karting ace to a 50-something who had never turned a wheel in anger to your racing-addicted scribe and his two sons. Track sessions over the three-day school are preceded by classroom instruction explaining everything from vehicle dynamics to course layout.

Suited up and safely secured in a five-point safety harness, you find a car surprisingly amenable for even those with little experience depressing a clutch pedal. The gearbox is a sturdy, 5-speed sequential that requires a pull for up-shifts and a push for downshifts. No mis-shift prone H-pattern to labor through, no double-clutching required for downshifts (though instructors urge a simultaneous blip of the accelerator with clutch depression to smooth downshifts under braking).

Press the starter button and the engine roars to life (burbles to life is more accurate - a can muffler swallows the end of the tailpipe, choking sound to preempt NIMBY nabobs from shutting down the track for disturbing the peace, destroying the planet, etc.). Row the gears on Laguna’s humped main straightaway and you’ll hit 120 mph before plunging into Turn 2, a daunting, 190-degree, second-gear, double-apex left hander. It is here that the race chassis really shines. The track demands driver precision and the car’s stiff frame and multi-link suspension takes you where you want to go with none of the drama of a sedan chassis (Barber offers a parallel school with race-prepared Mazda MX-5s and the formula cars run rings around the sports cars despite the Mazda’s 45 HP advantage). 

This predictability builds trust between driver and car — essential for the track’s signature, blind, downhill, corkscrew Turn 8 that would make a hardened Cedar Point roller coaster rider scream.

Armed with walkie talkies and strategically placed around the track, the school's Barber-graduate instructors supplement the track experience with immediate input. Early track sessions bring each car to a “stop box” after each lap to review a driver’s mistakes and improvements. The advice is offered with a mix of instruction and fun. “If you’re going somewhere you don’t want to go, don't go there faster,” quips one.

By Day Three, you and car are one. The final checker falls and the spell is broken. Back to real life. Back to work. Back to the Civic. Hmmm, how many Barber schools could I sell it for?

 photo credit: © 2014 Henry Payne Jr./The Detroit News

text credit: © 2014 Henry Payne Jr./The Detroit News