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For the intermediate driver's school, I did a little chalk talk on course walking. What follows are my notes from that talk:

Walk with your head up. If you find yourself looking at your shoe tops, lift your head and make a mental note to look ahead. Do not beat yourself up about it. Use it as a learning experience that will translate to your actual driving.

Do not stare straight ahead or at any particular cone. Scan the course. Use this as practice for looking very far ahead.

You have dedicated your entire Sunday and part of Saturday to the event. Get up 30-60 minutes early and get to the site 30-60 minutes early. That will buy you 3-4 additional course walks. Save your car prep for afterwards.

Walk the course as early as possible. There are less people on the course, making it easier to look ahead. This allows you to get away from the "butts and elbow" issue.

Always, always walk the "right" line. Never walk a line where you think your car will be. If you walk the "right" line, during your run, if your car deviates from that line you can work to get it back to the "right" line. If you walk the "car will be here" line, you end up in a worse situation during your run.

Spend your first or second course walk figuring out where the course goes. These can be social walks.

Spend your next walks figuring out where you car goes, braking points, key cones and acceleration points. These are not the social walks. It is best to walk alone for these. You will notice that you bump and stumble into your walk companions during these type of walks.

Break the course into sections. A five cone slamon is a 5 cone slamon, not five seperate cones. In reality, that 5 cone slamon is really just the first cone and the cone you plan to accerate at. Likewise, a lane change is a lane change. This means 50 cones become a 5 cone slamon into a lane change, two items.

Always pace off the slamon and any other offsets. Yes, to see if they decrease or increase. More importantly to figure out what to do entering and during the obstacles. For example, for a 15 - 18 pace slamon, you need to brake well before the slamon and simply maintain speed. Now if the slamon is 23 paces, based upon the knowledge of your car you can determine if you have to brake and how fast you should be through the slamon. For example, if I count off a 23 pace slamon, the slamon is not that important to me. I should be full or nearly-full throttle through it.

Find your key cones or key markers (trees, trash cans, bill boards, signs). This is done on your alone walks.

Trust your instincts. Your instincts become better and better with more seat time. You exercise those instincts by figuring out on your own.

Course walking is far more than memorizing where the course goes. Far more. Actually, finding the course is only about a third of the challenge. The other 1/3 is finding the key cones and breaking the course down. The most important aspect is feeling you and your car through the course.

1) Find the course early.
2) Break the course into sections and elements
3) Visualize you and your car on course. That is bob and weave you see people off doing by themselves.

One point I did not cover. After your walks and your bob and weave practice, estimate the time of the course. See how close you come to your estimate.

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Jim Pastorius
2008 Silverado VortecMax
1992 Camaro CMC#92
2002 BMW R1150R

2009 3rd Place CMC Mid-Atlantic Championship
2009 CMC Hyperfest Winner

Something we've been doing this year that has helped us a lot with remembering the long many featured nationals courses, the line we want to run, and eliminating unimportant cones is to break the course into elements as Jim suggests, then coming up with names for those elements that relate to the line. For example the beginning of the North course at nationals: (1) a sharp left, (2)broad right 90* sweeper, (3)hard left, (4)small offsets into (5)a tight right 180* (6)then through a very wide spaced full throttle 2 cone slallom... became (1)"left the gate", (2,3,4) "tight around Budda's belly and wiggle down his arm" (5) "right around the horseshoe" (6)"waahoo!"... etc.
For the south course we used a Sunday drive theme: "right from home", "left onto the expressway" (long fast accelleration lane), "north carolina exit" (decreasing radius left sweeper), "downtown 5:00 traffic, the hard way" ( 5 cone slallom entered from the hard side), "midtown turn off", "thru the neighborhood", "schoolzone" (turn into tightest gate on course), "down the country lane", "head for the hills" (turn into offsets), "lookout mountains" (decreasing distance slallom) "head for home" (accellerate for the finish). This system also makes it easier to discuss our runs with each other: "try setting up wider when you turn into the neighborhood" makes immediate sense and easy to remember compared to "you're pinching the first cone in the third right offset after the second slallom."

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SPIN or WIN!
there's no glory for going slow.

Additional Hints based on a few years experience and maybe a little bit of the management technique once called "management by exception":

Look for the "gotchas" that will be hard to read as you drive compared to the obvious stuff. I use a few tricks including:

There is one straight. This isn't it so don't accelerate towards that gate 200 feet straight ahead, instead set up for the gate(s) off to the left.

There are three slaloms. The first and last enter to the left of the cone, the other enters to the right. (your left, your right, your left for anyone who has marched in Scouts, Military, etc.) Or for different situations "right, right, left" . If they enter the same, just remember that fact (and which side, of course).

Enter (or exit as applicable) this corner the "hard way" to set up for the next part of the course.

Since my style treats almost all corners as "late apex", I carefully identify any exceptions because otherwise I'll late apex them by mistake.

I also pay a lot of attention to the pavement conditions including dirt, bumps, texture change, likelihood of marble buildup, camber change, uphill vs. downhill braking. If I walk a course during an event break it is mostly to look for where the marbles are . . . my idea of the ideal line will be for sure wrong if that area is full of marbles. Bumps, etc. must be considered after a run where the car did something unexpected. Was it the car, the driver, or the course conditions?

For Pro Solos with mirror image courses using "left or right" can get confusing as you switch courses. I try to use "inside or outside" of the course or site as the direction "name". Also for Pro Solos it is very important to identify any lack of symmetry or other differences between courses. For example the severe bumps and oil/grease at the paddock end of the Petersburg site.

In regard to pacing slaloms or other parts of courses: When I was a Boy Scout I learned that a person's normal "pace" (two steps) is reasonably consistent. (As a short guy mine is 5 feet). This means that I pace to actual distances in feet. As an engineer, I also happen to have cornering and acceleration data for my car for various slalom/corner/straight measurements and even carry a cheat sheet to help me decide on what gear I'm likely to need or how fast I'll be for the borderline situations.

Dick
CM 85

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Dick Rasmussen

FS 50 2018 Mustang GT