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Like most things in life, there’s no cheat code to become a faster driver. It takes instruction from someone who knows what they’re doing, but beyond that, it takes repetition. Enough repetition, ideally, that you stop actively thinking about what to do in a specific situation, and the right behavior becomes your natural, automatic response.
The road to get quicker is a long one and truly never-ending if you’re committed enough. I appreciated just a piece of that journey out in Birmingham, Alabama, at Barber Motorsports Park, courtesy of the Porsche Track Experience (PTX) program.
I’ve been fortunate enough in this line of work to attend a few performance driving schools. I drove an S197 Ford Mustang at Virginia International Raceway through Skip Barber. I also attended Bridgestone’s Winter Driving School in Colorado, where I whipped (to the best of my ability) a GR Corolla around a frozen circuit built on piled hay. Both of these experiences were illuminating, but neither was as strenuous as Porsche’s two-day Performance class at Barber.
This is Porsche’s introductory program. It’s the first course on a menu that extends to the Masters and Masters RS classes, where participants can apply for an SCCA Full Competition license, as well as invitation-only, off-site events. There’s also an abbreviated, single-day option, called Precision. To be brutally honest, though, one day just isn’t enough to begin unlearning old habits and pushing yourself.
Also, to get the bill out of the way, two days of training at Barber costs $5,000. Breakfast, lunch, and the first night’s dinner are all included, and accommodation is up to you, though discounted room rates are offered at a specific hotel. For those of you situated on the West Coast, Porsche runs a similar program at Laguna Seca that goes for $6,700. That’s the price of being in Northern California, I suppose.
The Class
These are full days of work, more or less starting with breakfast and a classroom session at 7:30 a.m. If you’re familiar with the eternal performance driving precept of “string theory”—which essentially boils down to, you can’t ask the car for maximum steering and maximum acceleration or braking at the same time—you’ll cover it and other ideas there.
Next you’re placed in groups, where some of you head to the track to turn laps in individual vehicles behind an instructor, while others take on exercises in car control on the skidpad, practicing braking, and doing a little autocross. Then you switch. After lunch, you repeat the morning’s schedule, but the off-track activities are tweaked or stepped up, in one way or another. Do that all twice, pick up your diploma, and then you go home.
Porsche
Sounds simple, right? Rough math suggests that between both days, my peers and I each turned between 60 and 70 laps around Barber, which, as I’ll get into later, happens to be a phenomenal racetrack. Again, that’s not counting the exercises, which are laser-focused on particular aspects of fast driving that, if all goes according to plan, you’re applying the very next time you’re out there on the real stage. It’s repetitive, but seat time is the only way you learn in this business.
I’m extremely lucky to get to drive so many amazing cars as part of my job, but I’ve never quite felt as comfortable as I did midway through my stints at PTX Birmingham. When I track a car for the first time, I’m pretty sheepish. I wonder when I’ll approach a limit—mine, if not necessarily the car’s. I can get anxious about that process and what that’ll feel or look like. But you build speed in this program so methodically and progressively that eventually, you look back and realize the pace has seriously picked up since yesterday morning. And that’s a fantastic feeling.
All the while, you’ve got a radio in your car with an instructor on the other end, peppering you with feedback and advice—get over to that apex, hit the gas, turn the wheel more, loosen up those fingers. They don’t sugarcoat anything, and they don’t miss much. They’re the true strength of this program. The attention to detail and professionalism of the team at PTX Birmingham is simply next-level. They’re all racers, of all ages and all walks of life, and they all want to see you improve and safely enjoy yourself, no matter where you are in your journey as a driver.
The autocross course was set up within one of Barber’s parking lots. It reminded me that autocross is pretty much the safest and most accessible way to get faster and have a blast in the process. Porsche
It’s a supportive atmosphere but also a draining one. It kind of has to be. Reflecting on all of this days later, I tried to pinpoint the moment I felt like I grew as a driver. Honestly, it happened overnight—and I don’t mean that figuratively. By 4 p.m. or maybe earlier on my first day of instruction, I was spent. I found myself pushing too hard and making mistakes—not seriously costly ones, mind you, but barely missing braking points, choosing weird lines, and going on power at inopportune times. They’re little things in the grand scheme, but of course, they’re the things that separate us from those that get paid to do this.
I had to hit that mental and physical wall, get out of the car and say, “that’s it,” so I could get back in tomorrow, refreshed and ready to drive again, consciously and, to some degree, subconsciously embodying the lessons I was taught. That’s when I reckon real progress was made. For someone who’s never known how to take a breather and walk away when things aren’t clicking, this was a revelation.
The skidpad exercises were, unsurprisingly, a lot of fun. You’re asked to create an understeer situation, followed by an oversteer situation, and react accordingly. It’s the only time when traction control is switched off during your activities. Drifting is not the objective, of course, but human nature is what it is. Adam Ismail
It’s a matter of pacing yourself and, well, the obvious things. There’s a reason that one of the core things they teach you in driver’s ed—looking where you want to go, for starters—applies to the track, too. There are, of course, cones and posts on the track to denote braking points, shimmy you toward the optimal line, and focus your eyes on the apex. The job at hand is obviously more open-ended when you lack those guides. But, for our purposes, the combination of Barber and the 911 Carrera GTSes we spent most of the two days driving was a match made in heaven.
Car and Track
It’s funny to me that the “midrange” 911 today is capable of a nearly 200-mph top speed, and zero to 60 mph in under three seconds. That was exclusively the domain of supercars in my youth; today, it’s something that anyone could steer around a track and, so long as they’re actually listening to the instructors, do so with total confidence and relative comfort. The advent of systems like Porsche Stability Management has a ton to do with that, but so does the precision of the steering, the tightness of the chassis, and the immense grip, even in the rear-wheel-drive Carrera GTS. (By the way, if you’re found to have “accidentally” switched PSM off at PTX, you’ll be “accidentally” sent home.)
The cherry on top, come the end of our two days going fast, was the opportunity to get out of the GTS and into a 911 Turbo S. With that came all-wheel drive and a 30% increase in horsepower, from 532 to 701. Of course the Turbo is manic, with its lively front axle clawing at the tarmac, chunkier tires, and more aggressive rear steer.
That’s the climb to Turn 4 on the bottom there. It’s full throttle if you’re brave enough, and the car does get light. Porsche
The T-hybrid system, present in both cars, brute forces through the mere suggestion of turbo lag thanks to an electric motor that lives inside the PDK transmission, contributing power to the symphony while also spooling those turbines up more quickly than rushing exhaust ever could. The Turbo is, of course, a magnificent machine. But the greatest argument against it is that the GTS is already so perfectly poised.
And what about Barber? Before I traveled to Birmingham, I downloaded the track in iRacing, so I’d have something of an idea of what I’d be in for. Barber is not a long circuit, measuring just under 2.4 miles with 15 turns. Somehow, IndyCar races there. The grounds are well-manicured, peaceful, and open; there are life-size (and, in some cases, well beyond life-size) sculptures strewn all over the property. It’s a refreshing place, and that applies to the track as well. Barber also hosts a phenomenal motorsport museum that PTX attendees get free admission to as a reward for their hard work, and it’s a must-see.
The turns all vary in speed and shape, and there’s just enough elevation change thrown in to keep things interesting without anything that’s truly ass-clenching. Mostly, anyway; I will admit, going light over the rising kink at Turn 4 was a feeling I had to get used to. But I loved the plunges into Turns 1 and 13, and the esses in the second half presented a thrilling challenge to keep speed up and nail those apexes. It’s a great track, and one I expect to return to—virtually, if not physically—for years to come.
A track map of Barber Motorsports Park. Will Pittenger via Wikimedia Commons
Barber also offers excellent opportunities to practice techniques that, frankly, I’ve never once thought about, even in the safety of my sim rig. The hardest for me to work at was trail braking—carrying a smidge of brake pressure well into the corner to place weight on the front axle and help the tires point the car. I understand the concept and why it would work, but it’s at odds with how I’ve historically viewed braking. To me, it was always a defined, rigid action: lean on the wide pedal as much as possible without locking up to slow down as quickly as possible, and, if you’re not doing that, you should probably be on the throttle.
Dragging the brake, particularly up to the top of Turn 2, into the apex of Turn 5, and up the ascent to Turn 14, was a new idea for me. I can’t say that it made a significant difference at the speed I was going. But the idea is to pick up these best practices now, so they can help you when you do eventually need them.
Barber Motorsports Museum features the world’s largest collection of motorcycles and Lotus race cars. It might also feature the world’s largest collection of outboard motors, hanging in one long line on a wall, but I can’t verify this. Adam Ismail
Oh, the Places You’ll Go
The desire to sharpen those techniques is perhaps why so many of my fellow students were repeat attendees on this occasion. Once you pass the Performance class, you are free to move on to Masters. But a brush-up never hurts, particularly if you haven’t been on a track in a long time.
Some of the other students hadn’t. Many owned Porsches, as you’d imagine, and wanted to extract more out of their cars. Others owned rival products, or no cars at all. You’d think the range of skill levels across the class might hinder it, but again—the experts have so much to teach you. Such that, if you are someone who wants performance driving to mean more than recreation, and hope to take your craft to a professional level, Porsche’s hierarchy of programs can help.
Sheena Monk, who currently competes in the IMSA SportsCar Championship’s GTD class in a Mustang GT3 for Myers Riley Motorsport, climbed up the Porsche Track Experience ladder and earned her SCCA license. So did Curt Swearingin, who first went to PTX way back in 2011, and most recently won the Pirelli SRO GT4 America Pro-Am drivers’ title in 2024.
“It’s been a steady progression,” Curt told me inside his team’s trailer ahead of Petit Le Mans, “but it all stemmed off of the school and the people from the school that I met and the help that I got through the process.”
Curt Swearingin, at right. Porsche Motorsport North America
“The school lays a really good foundation in a safe way, right? They’re not teaching you wheel-to-wheel, but they’re teaching you to get to the process to go wheel-to-wheel,” Curt added. “And then you need somebody to take it from there, or you need to take it into the next series or whatever else.”
When I asked Curt if he could laser in on the key virtues that PTX taught him, his answer was car control. “Just getting the principles of how the car moves when you brake, and how it leans when you turn and how you unload the car and put weight on the car,” he said. “The balance of the car—braking, turning, accelerating—you know, all of that.”
Mastery of those fundamentals will make you quicker around Barber or Road Atlanta, and they’ll make you quicker everywhere else, too. That’s the real value of a program like PTX, because not everyone will rush back to the track, or follow in Sheena and Curt’s footsteps. But they will come away with a better understanding of what their vehicle’s actually capable of, and learn to trust it, so long as they’re careful to speak to it in a language it understands.
Adam Ismail
Porsche provided The Drive with travel, accommodations, and a two-day Performance driving school course for the purpose of writing this story.
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Backed by a decade of covering cars and consumer tech, Adam Ismail is a Senior Editor at The Drive, focused on curating and producing the site’s slate of daily stories.
