12th May 2025
Having always wanted to do a track day, but not having the confidence to drive my car at high speed around corners, I wanted to better understand how my car reacts when cornering at speed as well as learning the limits of my car.
I started searching around the internet looking for track day training, however this search didn’t return the results I was hoping for. After mainly seeing results for Motorcycle training, or novice track days with add on 20 minute tuition. I did consider booking a novice track day with the added on tuition, but I wanted to be taught the theory behind how cars handle, and how to handle situations that I could encounter on a track, like spinning out at high speed. I decided to look on YouTube to see if I could find any track day tips, and whilst there were some videos out there, mainly beginners guides to track days, I stumbled across a comment on a video that recommend AW Driver Training
AW Driver Training is run by Andrew Walsh at North Weald airfield. Providing a safe environment the get the most out of you and your car. The big advantage of doing a driver training day with Andrew is you are pushed past your and the cars limits without having to worry about hitting anything. There is a marker that is used as the invisible wall, but the good thing with an invisible wall, there aren’t any serious consequences if you hit it.
I attended one of Andrews 4 person training days. The day started off with Andrew taking each participant out one at a time. When it was my turn, Andrew got into the passenger seat and said he was going to get me to do an emergency stop. I got up to speed and he taps the dashboard to stop, at which point I slam on the brakes and come to an abrupt stop. Andrew then asks, do I think if that is the quickest the car can be stopped. It turns out it wasn’t! After some tips on how to apply the brake, release brake pressure and what point to press the clutch down the car was stopping much more suddenly to the point where the seatbelts really were being used to keep us in the seats.
After each participant has completed that section we then go out on track together, taking it in turns to go down a straight piece of track and making a sharp left hand turn when we get to the cones. My first attempt went really well. I got up to 50MPH, hard turned left at the cones, didn’t hit the invisible wall and didn’t spin the car. I thought well it was only 50MPH, lets try going a bit faster, around 65MPH.
I take my place in the queue to have a second attempt at the high speed corner, speed up to 65MPH, hard turn left at the cones. Again I don’t hit the invisible wall and don’t spin out. At this point i’m starting to think either my car is really good at going round corners, or I have more skill than I realised. It’s at this point Andrew asks the question of if I have traction control turned off. I didn’t, traction control was fully operational.
Andrew tells me to turn off traction control and go again. I hold down the traction control button and a little light pops up saying “off” with a car and wiggly lines underneath. After lining up to go again I approach the high speed bend again at around the 65MPH mark and get around it without any problems. Andrew then questioned as to weather traction control was really off as he felt it kick in when we went round the corner, and gets me to hold the traction control button down for 10 seconds.
After holding down the traction control button for 10 seconds, I get a beep with large text in the middle of dash that says “Vehicle Stability Assist OFF”, now we know the traction control has been fully disengaged from the car. With the traction control now fully disabled, I line up again to do the high speed corner. Andrew tells me to take the corner slightly slower at around 60MPH, I speed up to 60MPH reach the cones and take a hard left. This time the car spins.
At the beginning of the day the thought of spinning out was a scary prospect, especially at high speed. However as the car is spinning, i’m safe in the knowledge that there isn’t anything to hit and the only thing that is taking any kind of damage is my squealing tyres. After spinning the car Andrew goes through various techniques to help you get around the corner with traction control disabled, and without spinning the car. The great thing here is you have plenty of goes to practice and perfect a few different techniques out.
After spending the morning practicing the high speed bend, we broke for lunch and had some food. There is a food van on site that sells hot food an drinks to help keep you going through the day.
After lunch is where my day took an unexpected turn. We got back in the cars with Andrew moving between each participant to explain what the next step is. Whilst Andrew was in the other participants cars, I was repeating the exercise from the morning. When Andrew got into my car, I moved over to the passenger seat so that he could show me what we would be doing.
The next step was to introduce braking when going around the high speed bend to control the amount of oversteer and understeer so that the corners could be approached much faster. In my demo run Andrew hit 80MPH and made it perfectly round the bend with traction control fully disengaged.
Unfortunately on one of Andrews runs, the car went into limp mode with a load of electrical system failure warnings. We took the car back up to the top of the track so that we could investigate. Andrew was really good and quickly pinpointed that the battery had moved under heavy braking and shorted out on the bonnet. Not Andrews fault at all, I had checked the battery was secure before attending the day, but it wasn’t as secure as I thought.
Andrew secured the battery properly to ensure there was no further movement, but we both agreed it’s best not to risk the car with all of the warning lights. We disconnected the battery for a few seconds to see if that would clear the warnings, which didn’t quite work. It did reinitialise all the systems, but I still had an engine light on with the warning message “Check Systems”. Deciding to do a run to the petrol station to check all systems out, and to see if a little run out on a normal drive would help the car detect everything was alright, I set off. The car was no longer in limp mode and all the electrical systems we’re fully operational. Cruise control, lane keep assist, stability control, and every other electrical system was working fine, but the engine light remained on with the warning “Check Systems”.
I decided at that point my day in the car was over as I didn’t want to run the risk of doing any further damage. The other participants were great sports and let me be passengers in their cars whilst they done the track after learning some more techniques I had missed out on due to attending to my car.
At the end of the day I got in my car to drive home, turned the engine on, and somehow the car had solved all of it’s issues. The persistent message of “Check Systems” had disappeared along with the check engine light. It was like the battery short had never happened. Andrew let me have a quick blast around the track, before showing me the full capabilities of him and my car whilst going around the track. If anything it has made me want to go back and do another day, as I feel like I missed out on some key aspects of the driver training.
Apart from those techniques learned when going around the high speed corner, one of the main things I learned is to make sure your battery is properly secured before doing any sort of track driving, you don’t want any sort of wiggle from the battery.
If you would like to book onto a driver training day, I would highly recommend it. Check out Andrews upcoming events.
