Flogging America's Sports Car--Including The Z06

Maybe you’ve noticed that we don’t write a lot about new cars in Car Craft. And since the auto manufacturers have noticed that too, they don’t invite us out to play with their new toys very often. But when the invitation came from Chevy to attend a real driving school, we weren’t about to pass up the chance to flog a fleet of brand-new Camaros and Corvettes, including the awesome new Z06 Vette, on a 2.2-mile closed road course.

The Bragg-Smith Advanced Driving School in Pahrump, Nevada, is Chevrolet’s “official” driving school for Corvettes and Camaros. Chevy stocks the school with about a dozen current-model Corvettes and Camaros so that current or potential owners can come out and learn firsthand just how capable these cars are in the hands of a skilled driver. The idea is that they’ll then be able to jump into their own cars and not kill themselves or someone else. The school’s cars are completely stock, down to the tires and brake pads, which are changed up to several times a week when classes are in session. As the instructors at the school, headed by former Can-Am racer Rupert Bragg-Smith, reminded us incessantly during the abbreviated two-day course we attended, the only mods to the cars are the addition of two-way radios to ease communication with students during the course. The cars are so capable as delivered that all driving sessions in the sweltering desert conditions are conducted with the A/C on! We came away from the school with two strong impressions—first, making left and right turns around a road course is both a lot of fun and a lot harder than it looks; and second, new Camaros and Corvettes are phenomenal performers. We probably would have died if they’d let us drive any of our own beaters around that track!

Heel-and-Toe Downshifting

Drag racers like to power shift when upshifting through the gears to keep the engine revs up, but when you’re trying to keep a car’s weight in balance, downshifting at high speed, especially in a corner, can cause the car’s rearend to do funny things, like go sideways. We probably would have learned this first hand at the Bragg-Smith school if the instructors hadn’t first made us run through a series of downshifting exercises.

When the clutch is depressed, the engine and trans are disconnected, and if you take your foot off the gas to hit the brakes, the revs fall rapidly. However, the rear wheels and driveshaft are still being turned mechanically by the car’s forward momentum, which doesn’t fall off as quickly. When you downshift in a corner, say from Third to Second, the slower-turning engine drags the rest of the drivetrain down to its slower speed if you simply pop the clutch after shifting. If the car is moving forward fast enough, this can cause the rear tires to break loose as they slow down to match engine speed, and the driver can lose control in a sharp turn.

To avoid this, road racers employ a technique known as the heel-and-toe downshift, which doesn’t actually involve the use of either the heel or the toe. Ideally, depending on the car’s pedal placement, the ball of the right foot depresses the brake while the driver rolls the side of his foot over to blip the throttle as the shifter is brought into the Neutral gate during the downshift. This throttle blip brings the engine’s revs up to match the driveshaft speed, resulting in a smooth power transfer that maintains the car’s balance. The greater the differential between engine revs and road speed, the larger the blip needs to be to match the engine speed to the trans.

Active Handling and Traction Control

In addition to state-of-the-art suspension and steering design combined with very good tires, both the Corvette and Camaro share another feature that allows even the worst driver to feel like Michael Schumacher in the cockpit: built-in traction control. In most forms of racing, traction control systems that limit wheelspin or transfer power between the car’s drive wheels to maintain stability are outlawed, but to new car manufacturers, they’re the latest safety feature being offered to the public. Tied into the car’s ABS system, active handling (optional on the Corvette) and traction control (standard on both the Corvette and the Camaro SS) compensate for poor road conditions or overly aggressive driving by automatically modulating either the rear brakes and throttle position in the case of TC or all four brakes with the Active Handling system to pull the car back from the brink of disaster when the onboard computer senses that the driver may be about to lose control of the car.

Shunned by some performance driving aficionados, traction control nonetheless extends the abilities of novice drivers on the road or track, and it can make the difference between power sliding through a 30-mph curve at twice the posted limit or doing a hairy Tilt-A-Whirl impression.