Instructing at VIR: March 2026
The importance of safety gear, Korean GTIs, and a peek into instructing
This Trip Report is going to be a bit different than typical - that’s because I wasn’t there to drive (my own car) at all. In fact I didn’t even drive there myself… I rode along with a buddy.
I’ve been busy with other stuff over the winter and really just didn’t have the time/motivation to prep the car. I didn’t want to rush everything right before the event so was literally just there to instruct, hang out with buddies, and have a good time.
A heavy start to the weekend
Just to be clear - I have the owner’s permission to post this as a lesson for others. Generally it is frowned upon to be posting others’ wrecks online. If you ever find yourself at the track and someone wrecks, don’t take photos to post everywhere - especially while they’re still trying to figure everything out. Rumor circulated about his wreck and his condition and his wife heard every one of them before actually speaking to him directly. Very uncool.
Saturday morning started out looking like it was going to be good - it was 70F out and sunny. The mood of the day immediately changed with getting news over the radio that a silver Corvette had a high speed impact on the back straight. It was a close friend of mine. He was going about 140 to 145mph on the out-lap approaching Rollercoaster on the back straight, hit the brakes at the 4 marker (way early/conservative for what the car is capable of), and it immediately veered hard left across and off the track, hitting the wall at around 100mph.
Myself and a few other friends waited anxiously to hear further news of his condition.
Fortunately, he was taken to the VIR medical building for the mandatory 30 minute evaluation and was up walking around with no issues immediately after. He already has a lead on a new chassis to transfer the (few) salvageable components.
We believe that there was something with his ABS system (MK60 retrofitted) that didn’t work as expected, but unfortunately there’s no great way to know with the amount of damage done. The pedal was firm but the car didn’t slow much at first (ABS?), and when reapplied it veered hard left across the entire track and into the wall. Our best guess is that some combination of the newly-added Zebulon front splitter and his suspension settings was at play. While he’d been up to 120mph or so before, it’s possible that it was creating notably more downforce as speed increased to the 140mph+ where things went awry.
Lessons to learn
My biggest takeaway was that the safety gear did it’s job - I’ve been debating whether to do a proper cage/seats/harnesses in the GTI or retiring it from track use to get a (different) dedicated track car… and this really brought those thoughts to the forefront of my mind again. I’m doing about the same speed as he was on the back straight (140-145mph). Piper Motorsports builds a great cage in case you’re wondering.
Remember that the cage, seats, harnesses, and HANS device are a SYSTEM and must be done properly to be truly effective.
Why I love instructing with TSCC
His wreck took a while for the VIR staff to clear up. They had to rebuild the IMSA barrier/wall that was taken out, so some sessions were lost in the morning. The staff held a mandatory drivers’ meeting to let everyone know the driver was ok but it’d be a bit before the track could go hot again. During the meeting, all the instructors unanimously decided to give up their dedicated track sessions for the day so that the students could have 30 min sessions instead of the normal 20 to make up for lost time. This was really cool to see and is a big reason why I tend to err towards TSCC events before most others.
For reference, TSCC instructors are allowed to run in any group throughout the day - as long as they abide by the run group’s passing rules. So they weren’t getting “zero” track time, they just gave up the dedicated instructor-only sessions.
If you’re on the east coast and ever consider running at VIR - I strongly recommend you check out the Tidewater Sports Car Club.
Quick links for the remaining 2026 events (both which I plan on attending) here:
Saturday instructing in a Veloster N
My novice (green group) student/track chauffeur for the day was driving a Korean GTI. The car has 200TW tires, an intake, exhaust, tune, rear sway bar, and some chassis stiffening stuff done to it. He had been on track a couple times before, and we spoke a bit about what he had wanted out of the weekend prior to even getting there. He wanted to work on braking zones and tidying up his line. His first session went really well, though taking it a bit easy to get back to feeling comfortable on track. He had a Racebox Mini with some phone app running, so I angled it for me to watch lap times from the passenger seat for a frame of reference. His prior personal best was a 2:30, and a bunch of work throughout the day Saturday had him matching that time consistently.
For his final session Saturday we did not set up the lap timer, but from seat of the pants it felt like 2:25-2:26ish. His primary hindrance was really just traffic.
He was concerned about moving to the lower intermediate group too early, but I was able to convince him that he was ready. His awareness was great, his general control skills were solid, it was just learning to push the car a bit harder that he needed to work on - which is exactly what the intermediate groups are about (along with getting more comfortable giving point-bys).
We had our post-session download, and I gave him a few specific things other than think about over night and to review on video so we could hit the ground running the following day. He struggled with getting in his own head about the car’s abilities and overall speed so I was trying to mentally prepare him to be ready the next morning when we’d start running in the lower intermediate/yellow run group.
Evening shenanigans
As usual - the evenings are a lot of fun with good friends and good food. This particular weekend there were also several dogs at the track… so naturally had to pet them all…
Dropping big time on Sunday
Sunday’s weather was a bit overcast with threats of rain, but fortunately not much of anything actually came down. Just a light drizzle that would not even be enough to accumulate puddles, which came and went and the track was effectively good as dry majority of the day.
Josh started out his first session strong, and I was able to get him to start pushing a bit harder in braking zones which ultimately resulted in a 2:26 from him which was awesome. He gained a ton of confidence realizing that he was on pace (or faster) vs almost the entire rest of the intermediate group. He was also able to relax a lot more with a few additional passing zones opened up, and the other students were better about giving point-bys in general, which allowed him to maintain pace and stay in the zone.
But wait, there’s more!
Normally when instructing - I have my own car with me. Josh was doing great, but needed some fine-tuning in a few key places - so he let me take him out for a few laps in his own car so I could better show him:
The line through the esses and T4-5b
Compressing brake zones safely
Getting on throttle earlier
This probably worked out for the best because it left no doubt that it was not the car that was holding him back - it was really just his lack of trust in it. This was his main barrier in the braking zones. I got his permission to record the session and figured I’d share here.
Warning: We’re buddies so there is a lot of joking around in the car with each other:
Some things to note:
I didn’t show him anything that I didn’t think he was capable of
I was not pushing the car to it’s fullest extent
I was leaving TONS of room for error
One of the worst things an instructor can do is go out and show their student what a 10/10 lap looks like. The biggest takeaway I wanted for him was that when pushing harder, being smooth is what allows you to ride the limits (and safely exceed them in SMALL increments).
Rest of the afternoon and a glimpse at what an instructed session looks like
After taking him out in his own car, it was like a light switch had flipped. He smoothed out his inputs significantly and was able to just push the car in general a lot harder (and safely). He started getting the hang of trail-braking, was using a lot more curb in T4-5b, and pushing the hard braking zone on the back straight much better. I decided since I had no content of my own car (and he was ok with it), I went ahead and recorded a session of me instructing/pushing him as well:
His awareness of cars around him + consistency and ability to self-assess with no egregiously bad habits ultimately led to me recommending him for a check-ride to continue in the lower intermediate group solo w/o instructor. He was a bit nervous about doing it but I insisted he was ready and wouldn’t be recommending if I hadn’t thought so. Plus if he passed (which I was 100% confident he would), it would allow him to run the final session solo which was the whole point.
IMO it’s important to get that first true solo session in while everything is fresh in their mind to help build confidence/minimize self-doubt for their next track day when they are good to go solo.
Surprise instructing session in a Mustang Mach 1
About the time that we got Josh was doing his solo check-ride, another student in a 2022 Mach 1 was supposed to be going on track but his instructor wasn’t able to make it. Since I was free I hopped in. He was a novice student, so I asked about what he and his instructor were working on - turns out it was mostly the same stuff I had been working on with Josh… minor line adjustments and hard braking zones.
My initial impressions were he was VERY smooth with his inputs for being relatively new (I think this was his 2nd, maybe 3rd day on track?).
His instructor had him doing something different in the hard braking zones which didn’t make sense to him, so I pushed him by compressing the braking zones early - By braking as HARD as you can (with a smooth initial application of course) earlier, you end up slowing down WAY early which helps to demonstrate to yourself that there is PLENTY of room to brake deeper.
Unfortunately I made an error in the way I articulated myself the 2nd time around (the 2:12 mark in the video above)… He braked hard just as he should have the first time, but I used the words “a nice transition to the brake… a squeeze not a stab”, without the emphasis that this DOES still need to turn into hard threshold braking. This was completely an error on my part, and likely wouldn’t have been an issue if we’d been working together the entire day. This is generally something I try to go over in depth prior to even heading on track… and I think with it being the last session on day 2 of the event, this was not at the forefront of my mind.
Regardless, he got the car slowed down, we still had plenty of room to spare and aside from a minor scare all was fine. I discussed the above in depth and he continued to keep whittling away at the braking zone building confidence in the car.
The session overall was a lot of fun, and it was nice being tossed into a correct-wheel-drive thing with power and lots of tire. The Mach1 is really impressive.
Final thoughts
I went into the weekend feeling a bit weird not having my own car there. I actually had a REALLY good time despite some of the bad stuff.
Turns out that it was a good thing I didn’t drive because I ended up driving my Corvette [wreckage] owner friend’s truck and trailer home due to his possible concussion. He told me about all the bad ideas he has for the next one on the way back.
I’m still not 100% sure of what the GTI plans are long term… but the safety stuff is definitely high on the priority list.
