Learn to race like Europeans do

by James C. Allen

Go to most stock car and road racing schools and no doubt you will learn the fine line between speed and keeping your car from sliding. Get sideways too often and not only will your times suffer, but also you might have an unpleasant encounter with a gravel pit or worse.
At Virginia International Raceway’s new EuroRally school, however, the point is to teach the opposite. Driving students learn how to pitch their Subaru Imprezas and Mitsubishi Lancers into lurid slides as a way of getting around the dirt and gravel corners faster. Here students learn not only how to use their hand brakes to make turns, but also how to perform the “Scandinavian Flick” — a braking technique that involves weaving the car right and left while approaching corners at around 85 miles per hour, with the final weave away from the corner. You let the car rotate in the direction of the corner as you lift your foot off the brake.

It sure isn’t your typical driving school, Ivor Wigham says. He’s a former World Rally Championship driver and now serves as managing general partner at VIR EuroRally, which opened Aug. 8. “EuroRally helps you get comfortable about doing things that you don’t normally do on the road,” says Wigham, a native of Yorkshire, England, who drove professional rally for 14 years. After a day in the seat, he says, students “have a lot more confidence. They will have their cars sideways and on the gas even before they get to the corner.”

That kind of aggressiveness makes rally racing not only the fastest growing form of motor sports, but also the most popular. More than 4.2 million fans in Britain, Spain and Portugal turned out in just three of the 16 rounds in the World Rally Championship. Mindful of such fanfare, VIR co-owner Connie Nyholm got the idea for building eight miles of rally courses early this year to create the VIR EuroRally. “VIR EuroRally is really the key to our corporate play day,” says Nyholm, who has spent much of the past two-and-a-half years building new facilities, or refurbishing existing ones, on the 1,200-acre VIR site, located 12 miles east of Danville on the North Carolina border. “Anyone who’s been there once is already considering their second visit.”

There is plenty at the EuroRally facility to keep each visit fresh and unique. Besides the rally school, the facility also boasts a 0.6-mile paved go-cart course, a one-mile motocross course, two all terrain vehicle (ATV) courses, including one with a 120-foot elevation drop. They’re even putting together an ATV for military special forces. Like to watch the world’s wildest police videos? Wigham says the school can even stage an appropriate event with real police cars. “How many people have wanted to drive a real cop car with sirens blaring while chasing one of their buddies from work?”

On the other end of the spectrum, the ATV courses are a good way for corporate customers to develop teamwork. Wigham said the facility arranges for teams of three to compete against each other with results based on the slowest teammate’s time. The goal is to get the team members to work together to ensure that the entire group finishes as quickly as possible. “We’ve created dips, gullies and bomb holes ourselves” into the ATV courses, says Wigham. “We made it difficult because sometimes you have to help each other.”

While most of the facility is geared toward racing against a clock, the go-cart track is the one place at the EuroRally facility where customers actually get to race against each other. The track’s technical challenges, including two straight-aways and a 30-foot elevation change, have won the praises of such well-known Virginians as John Burton, father of NASCAR driver Ward Burton. Paul Giblon, EuroRally’s general manager, says the junior Burton is trying to schedule a session for his 10-year-old son, Jeb, to get his racing career off on the right foot.

With all its various fun and team-building activities, VIR sees the EuroRally facility as a way for corporations to develop strong bonds with their employees, all for around $600 per person, including instruction, safety equipment, meals — “It’s not track food here,” says Nyholm. “Our chef is a graduate of the Culinary Institute” — and, of course, fun. In other words, it’s not your usual corporate outing.

Return to Virginia Business - October 2002