Learning to tame Hellcats and Vipers
On-road lessons on performance driving are both exhilarating and a little bit scary
CHANDLER, ARIZ. Bob Bondurant, 83, has a storied racing history that dates to 1952, when he took to dirt tracks aboard an Indian motorcycle.
By 1956 Bondurant figured there was more money to be had racing on four wheels, and he began racing cars and winning almost instantly, taking victories in almost every competition he entered. This led to a longtime relationship with Carroll Shelby, sharing seats on Shelby’s team with Dan Gurney and Jo Schlesser in Europe, and winning the GT class in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1965, as well as taking the FIA GT championship that year. Multiple successes in Europe and the U.S. led to a seat on Ferrari’s F1 team in 1966.
He switched to Can Am in 1967, but at Watkins Glen he crashed at high speed after his McLaren suffered a mechanical failure, with the subsequent injuries ending his racing career. A year later he founded the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. Entering its 48th year of operation, the performance driving school has partnered this year with Dodge/ SRT, the latter providing a clowder of Hellcats (both Challengers and Chargers) and a pit of Vipers for a total of 120 vehicles.
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles extended an invitation to sample the teachings of Bondurant for a day. Normally during the one-day program students get a 45-minute classroom session, where the four major aspects of performance driving, or what the school calls the “Bondurant method,” are discussed before moving on to the various training stations to practise what has been preached. These include vision, line technique, trail braking and weight transfer, while more advanced courses focus on things such as heel/toe downshifting, advanced skid control and open track driving.
On the assumption that members of the media are already astute drivers, our morning’s 45-minute classroom session consisted mostly of marketing information and a history of the school and its founder.
Although the day promised track stints in the two Hellcat models and a Viper, the first exercise was probably the most informative. Recovering from understeer and oversteer can be a daunting experience for someone lacking the right skills to do so successfully. Ideally, practising these manoeuvres is easier at low speeds, which can be achieved readily in a snowy parking lot, though for obvious reasons this limits when you can get out and slide around. On the other hand, inducing a push or a rear-wheel skid on dry pavement is usually done at higher speeds, with subsequently higher risks involved.
At Bondurant’s skid park, a Charger SRT 392 is equipped with a special rig, which is mounted to the car’s undercarriage and has a wheel mounted at each corner. The wheels are on casters, free to spin 360 degrees, and they can be lowered hydraulically via controls operated by the instructor, who is seated in the front passenger seat.
The outboard wheels are used to raise the car either at the rear, which induces oversteer, or at the front, which induces understeer. Both conditions can be replicated repeatedly at much lower speeds than what one would experience on the road, making the training sessions much safer. Despite these facilitated slides, the driver at the wheel before me, who boasted repeatedly about racing cars, neglected to apply the most important defensive-driving technique, and the one at the top of the Bondurant Method: vision.
When a car gets out of shape, among the most important things to remember is to keep your eyes on where it is you want to go, and not where the car might be drifting to, like toward a guardrail or roadside ditch. Despite expert guidance from the Bondurant instructor riding shotgun, Ricky Racer kept looking to the outside of the circuit, while neglecting to correct for an initial countersteering input, which resulted in repeated, nausea-inducing spins.
Fortunately, my motorcycling background has taught me to use proper visual techniques (it’s a matter of survival on two wheels), and recovering from oversteer was both quick and smooth.
Following the skid park exercises we hit the track, where several Hellcats and Viper GTs awaited a proper thrashing. This was an exercise designed more to entertain than to inform, and we followed as an instructor led us around the short road course. A session in a manual Challenger Hellcat, tail-a-wagging through the course’s tight turns, provided an invigorating, 707-horsepower warm-up before a stint in a Viper GT.
It was my first time behind the wheel of a Viper, and its V-10 rumble, which filtered into the cabin with enough vigour to blur the rear-view mirror at idle, immediately got my blood pressure up. Its visceral, responsive feedback combined with 645 horsepower to deliver a lively, if all-too-brief, driving experience.
There are several programs available at the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, from the one-day performance driving course (US$1,225), to the four-day road racing course (US$4,999), and you don’t have to own a Dodge to sign up. However, if you do buy any 2015 or 2016 Dodge SRT model this year, you will receive a complementary one-day highperformance driving course, though you’ll have to get to Chandler, Ariz., and book your hotel on your own dime.