John Lyon - I did a couple of parts of the High Performance Course with John that focused on Road Craft. I think John has retired now but it was a real experience and John can certainly peddle cross-country![/quote]
I’ve had the misfortune to sit in a car with John, a few times as when I was at Rover he was the designated High performance instructor.
The bloke could drive, but couldn’t teach. I think I got to the HPC silver level.
I learnt a LOT more sitting in a car with my old BMW manager at the Ring and on various test tracks, now he really could pedel a car.
The interesting thing I’ve found over the years from various courses I’ve done (IAM, HPC, and internal company ones) is the perception of what is good and bad. Obviously for work it’s all about getting the most information out of what a car can do and when it doesn’t do as expected to understand why, and to do all this safely. Interestingly, the country the people come from has a huge effect. The BMW guys were generally top notch drivers, for whom 230km/h on the Autobahn was a ‘normal’ speed, they will also test stuff beyond the limit on tracks etc. While the Japanese guys really struggle to get their head round me driving them along the German autobahn at 230km/h without really thinking about it. They really freak when I tell them I’ve driven a car at 300km/h on a test track. I also got a severe talking to from my UK manager about driving sensibly on the test track in Japan, apparantly my test driving, based on the European method was scaring them senseless, and this was despite me being out of practice so taking it easy.
IMHO, driver training takes 3 forms.
Roadcraft, this I think, should be step one for anyone with a decent quick car, it teaches so much about hazard perception and how to read the road ahead and how to safely make progress. This can be done via the IAM or ROSPA, or have a look at the High Performance Club website as they will point you at their recommended instructors, as even they stopped using John Lyon years ago.
Car control. probably a few who teach this who are good, Walshy at North Weald, Cadence at Millbrook, Don Palmer, they are the main 3 I would recommend.
3.Track Driving. This is where training on trackdays comes in, in reality a training session at a trackday is all about helping improve your lines and about carrying speed through the corners, yes it ultimately improves your laptime but there is no way of measuring that so it’s all about improving your enjoyment on the day, obviously if your looking to improve laptimes you should be doing this on a test day. A few of the LoT racers are booking instructors for full days (between 2 or 3 of them makes it cheaper), people like Eugene O’Brian, Sean Edwards, this also includes Malcolm & jamie who instruct on our trackdays do this and have had some good results with people.
John Lyon - I did a couple of parts of the High Performance Course with John that focused on Road Craft. I think John has retired now but it was a real experience and John can certainly peddle cross-country![/quote]
I’ve had the misfortune to sit in a car with John, a few times as when I was at Rover he was the designated High performance instructor.
The bloke could drive, but couldn’t teach. [/quote]
My time with John was about 7-8 years ago when I had my M-Coupe and after nearly binning it on day2 of ownership thought I needed some tuition. I took some things away from it especially around positioning for visibility, hazard perception etc but John was very Old School and from a different age (he may even be older than Pesky ). He was an interesting guy though and I’m still glad I did it.
I’m considering doing some more intensive tuition maybe sharing someone with a couple of guys for a day somewhere as you suggest Mark.
No.
John was ex-BSM. He was part of the HPC part of BSM when it was set-up in the 60’s. He did pass the Hendon course and then ran some training at Hendon but was never a copper.
Ben,
I spent 3 days and one night (that sounds bad ) on training courses with John and each time we ended up in an argument. We were covering road and track training. His attitude was always that everything he said was gospel and you had to comply, even if he was contradicting something he said 20mins previously. His poor judgement pitched us off the track at Millbrook when one of my collegues was driving as John thought he was going too fast for the corner so hit the brake pedal for the extra rear brakes on the car.
What he was teaching was generally correct although his fascination for use of the horn and double-de-clutching was a bit antiquated and we just refused to do it. Overall there were quite a few guys at Rover (and one from BMW) who did his course and very few actually got on with him. (The BMW guy (who was a top BMW driver) was told by John that he didn’t understand what the 540 he was driving could really do, Frank was the Ride & handling engineer for the car and took over all BMW’s driver training 2 years later ).
Perhaps if I hadn’t already passed my IAM course I wouldn’t have fallen out with John so much on the roadcraft section when he said something that didn’t agree with what I’d been taught on that course.
I’m with you Mark, it was the first performance driving instruction I had taken so I had no reference point. He did take being patronising to a new level and I had forgotten about the using the horn fixation thing…the countryside would be a very noisy place if John had his way. If he’s still going somewhere I think the guidance would be spend you money elsewhere…he must have retired by now though.
). He was an interesting guy though and I’m still glad I did it.