New Driver Car Control Course
Price: Full Day £355 (inc. lunch), Half Day £185
Course location: Prodrive Proving Ground, Warwickshire, Central England
Thousands of cars leave the road each year in incidents that don't involve another car or obstacle. The reason is incorrect driving technique, leading to instability in the car's handling: result - car leaves the road in an unfortunate and totally avoidable accident.
The truth is that very few young drivers get any training in understanding of car handling dynamics during their normal driver training, to pass their driving test. This course will give the young driver the knowledge to be more able to adopt intelligent driving technique and attitude towards everyday driving.
Better car control skills and technique leads to truly safe driving
The course is for drivers in their own car. The customer has their own instructor shared with one other driver. This enables a large amount of time with the instructor one on one. The instructors are selected for their ability to communicate with the customer and are highly skilled in all aspects of driving, whether on-road training or car control dynamic handling.
Course Content
Consists of 3 driving sessions, in any order on the day, as detailed below:
1. Car Control and Handling Dynamics Area
Here we lay out coned exercises to help you understand ABS (anti-lock braking system) and how the system assists when in an emergency avoid situation. Practise lane change manoeuvres and high speed braking to add to your knowledge and confidence in the handling abilities of your car.
Learn about typical accident scenarios, in the real world, what causes them and how to avoid, through sensitive driving technique, any such situation occurring.
2. Adverse Handling Circuit.
The adverse handling circuit is a tight and twisty tarmac track. In many ways it simulates urban driving, with low speed corners and constant changes of direction. Here you will develop further your use of vision and matching road speed with the correct gear, so the car is constantly responsive. Also the necessity to keep the car balanced at all times. This is a fun, focusing activity to help you refine your techniques to achieve smooth, balanced cornering and change of direction and speed.
3. Multi Surface Wet Grip Skid Control and Skid Circle.
Through practise understand what understeer and oversteer is, and how to deal with it and know how to avoid it in the first place!
Practise, on these areas, with your stability control systems on and switched off so you understand and feel exactly how much help stability control gives to keep your car in a stable state. With the systems off improve your sense of feel on the controls to be able to act on the clear feedback given.
The surfaces consist of:
Surface a): A long 180 metres of wetted basalt tiles. Used by vehicle manufacturers to test braking, traction and stability systems, its ability to simulate ice and snow in all weather conditions makes it the perfect area to teach skid control (guaranteed to make you laugh!) and the benefits of ABS (anti-lock braking system) and DSC (dynamic stability/traction control) if your vehicle has these systems!
Surface b): The Skid Circle is perfect to simulate driving on a slippery roundabout, giving the driver a real feel of understeer and oversteer. The low grip surface enables real time driving simulation on black ice, demonstrating, in a safe environment, the potential hazards of road driving in such slippery conditions. This will really highlight the difference between traction control on (if you have this system) and traction control off, giving increased confidence when driving on wet and greasy roads.
The areas are constantly wetted, creating very low traction surfaces; therefore there is no wear on tyres or car systems.
Course Itinerary (Full Day)
| 9.00 | Arrival, sign in and breakfast. |
| 9.30 | Welcome presentation/briefing |
| 10.00-10.45 | Driving session 1 |
| 10.45-11.30 | Driving session 2 |
| 11.30-11.50 | Short break |
| 11.50-12.40 | Driving session 3 |
| 12.35-13.45 | Re-fuel and Lunch |
| 13.45-16.00 | Afternoon covers the same activities as the morning tailored to the individual, based on their progress before lunch. |
| 16.00 | Debrief, recap of the day’s activities. |
Course Itinerary (Half Day)
| 9.00 | Arrival, sign in and breakfast. |
| 9.30 | Welcome presentation/briefing |
| 10.00-10.45 | Driving session 1 |
| 10.45-11.30 | Driving session 2 |
| 11.45-12.00 | Short break |
| 12.00-12.45 | Driving session 3 |
| 12.45 | Debrief, recap of the day’s activities. |
Book Course
To book the New Driver Car Control Course please see the Course Dates and Bookings page.
If you have any queries regarding the course, please contact us for more details.