Thinking about a graduation gift to my son. Are there any racing schools, especially open wheel, located at COTA? Or anywhere in Texas?

I've been googling, and not having much luck.

Xtreme Xperience goes through COTA pretty regularly. You can put your son in a Porsche, Lambo, Ferrari, etc. for a handful of laps around COTA. I have a good buddy that instructs for them, and he makes it sound pretty awesome.

Edit: If you're looking for a Bondurant type weekend, I think you'll have to travel. Road Atlanta is a great course and I believe still has training weekends (maybe Panoz) and I've been to Laguna Seca when they were lapping open wheels and Miatas (wish I would have planned the trip better and spent a day with them on track).

Yeah the real thought is I hope to get him a school where he leaves with a racing license of some kind. Whether thats FIA or SCCA I don't think matters much.

He has been kart racing since he was 5. He is now going into A&M Mechanical Engineering and joining the SAE. The idea was to get him as much racing "clout" as possible so that he can actually drive the SAE car while he's there.

Of course having a racing license wouldn't hurt even if he doesn't drive the SAE car. Maybe we could beg, borrow, or buy a seat in someone else's race car. I don't have the kind of money it takes to run a race car myself.

I'm pretty proud of the kid if you couldn't tell.

I never went to college. He got into the Engineering school as a freshman!

There are some great racing schools out there with 2-day and 3-day programs, but you'll have to travel. Look at the various schools (Lucas Oil, Skip Barber, Allen Berg, etc.) and see when they're at a track that works for your schedule.

Oh, and then ship him over to do the Winfield F1 experience where you can drive the 2012 Alpine F1 car at Paul Ricard.

An Ag in CO said:

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There are some great racing schools out there with 2-day and 3-day programs, but you'll have to travel. Look at the various schools (Lucas Oil, Skip Barber, Allen Berg, etc.) and see when they're at a track that works for your schedule.

Oh, and then ship him over to do the Winfield F1 experience where you can drive the 2012 Alpine F1 car at Paul Ricard.

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Dude that's awesome! I didn't know about the Lucas Oil school! That looks about perfect I think. The 2 day courses are about the price of Barber's 1 day courses.

To be honest, from the websites I got the feeling that the Skip Barber "school" was more of a "driving experience" and wouldn't be as useful. The Lucas school looks like what I'm after, and what he would enjoy more.





Oh, and yeah I'm a lolpoor so the Winfield experience will only happen when my gamestop stonks cash in! lol.

It's been a decade since I graduated, but I did drive an sae car. At the time they had try outs by threading crown vic through a tiny auto-x. Best times got you spot.

I only had auto-x experience and a couple track days. I would look at getting him more driving experience than specifically open-wheel time. Learning vehicle dynamics over several weekends will help more than one weekend.

Has anyone been to the Winfield F1 experience at Paul Ricard? If so, I'd be interested to hear about if it's truly a once in a lifetime driving experience.

Circling back a year later. He did not drive the car in '21. There were two spots available and two guys who had a lot of experience driving real race cars.

This year though...... He made the cut! And he is an apprentice on the Formula E car (electric) and is designing parts already. Both the gas and the electric cars will share the driver team, so he'll have time in both cars.

Not only that, but did you know that A&M has a Lemons team? Yep. He drives for them too!

This is pretty much how their first race went! lol

That's awesome!

TAMSCC is supposed to be bringing back autocross this spring out at the Brazos Expo center. Make sure to get some time in there as well.

TSJ said:

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That's awesome!

TAMSCC is supposed to be bringing back autocross this spring out at the Brazos Expo center. Make sure to get some time in there as well.

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We definitely plan to.

In fact he is going to build a track oriented 944 with a VW 07k motor in it. The 07k is half the Lambo/Audi V10. It makes glorious 5 cylinder noises.

We'll keep it NA at first. Until we either find a cheap turbo transmission or blow our NA trans up. After we get a better transmission it will get a turbo and maybe 300-350 hp. The stock 944 NA trans will only hold about 200-250 hp depending on how you drive it. We fully expect to shred that after a bit.

We bought this kit:

That will sound glorious.

An rs3 would be a nice pipe dream commuter for me and the kids. Those 5 cylinders are something else.