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Hurley Haywood makes it look easy. He’s roaring around Barber Motorsports Park in a Porsche Panamera Turbo, left elbow resting on the door panel and left hand gently jostling the steering wheel, while he uses his other hand to point out to us various nuances of the undulating 2.38-mile racetrack near Birmingham, Alabama. Haywood, the endurance-racing legend is the chief driving instructor at the Porsche Sport Driving School (PSDS), which operates about 150 program days a year at Barber. In addition to his five 24 Hours of Daytona triumphs, he’s also won Le Mans three times and twice stood atop the podium after the 12 Hours of Sebring. Every one of those victories came from behind the wheel of a Porsche, so the Chicago native is pretty much an honorary member of the Porsche family.
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It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that Haywood hopped into a 911 Turbo S and thoroughly evaluated our driving from half a dozen car lengths ahead, all while keeping the perfect line and casually holding a walkie-talkie in one hand. He wasn’t puttering around the world-class track, either. Well, he probably thought he was, but we were flogging a stick-shift 911 Carrera S as quickly as we were comfortable on a track we’d never seen before.
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Haywood wanted to make sure we were okay to be on the the track with the rest of the students attending the G-Force: One-Day Advanced Car Control Clinic and Lapping Day—particularly since we hadn’t completed the multiday Barber-based prerequisites that normally qualify someone to take part in the $3000 G-Force course. Indeed, many of the other 17 participants who were there with us had just finished a three-day Masters Plus session the day before. In total, PSDS offers five different courses, all at Barber’s country-club-like setting, ranging from one to three days and $1800 to $6000. Haywood, who lives in Florida, typically attends all advanced sessions—Masters, Masters Plus, and G-Force—so he’s there roughly 40 days each year. (The waitstaff at the swanky nearby resort hotel that hosts most guests has a glass of his favorite chardonnay poured before he sits down for dinner. He’ll recommend the flatbread.) His team of instructors are friendly, funny, and knowledgeable. The cars, most of which are replaced every year with new models, are fully stock, aside from graphics, radios, and in-car cameras.
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G-Force is largely a day of open hot laps, with about 10 instructors observing from stations around the track instead of from inside the cars. And oh, those cars. The 911 Carrera S is easily the mildest Porsche we drove on the big track. After about a dozen laps in the Carrera, we switched to the new Cayman GT4, still trailing Haywood but now better aware of the racing line and able to enjoy this spectacular track car. Tailing Haywood in this situation is like having LeBron James set you up for picture-perfect alley-oops on an eight-foot hoop.
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After an excellent (included) lunch in the pit-lane tower, we jumped into a PDK-equipped Boxster GTS to imbibe in the G-Force part of the course, practicing our “victory donuts” on a damp skidpad and then exploring the dynamics of quickly releasing the brake pedal to induce vehicle rotation in corners. Earlier, in the first session of the morning, our half of the class had enjoyed sliding the hell out of a Carrera S while doing figure-eights on a wet skidpad, as well as drifting practice in a Boxster GTS on a different, dampened skidpad. (Michelin and Pirelli are critical PSDS sponsors, for obvious reasons.) These disparate activities not only reduce traffic on the primary track, but also allow students to concentrate on honing special skills that can help them become better drivers on-track and off.
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But clearly the highlight of the day is the hot laps, and for our second run on the big track, we were let loose in two of the hottest 911s extant: the Turbo S and the GT3. In both of these rear-engine brawlers we cracked 120 mph twice per lap before braking heavily and guiding the car toward the next curve. The Turbo S accelerates incredibly quickly and its ventilated seats are a fantastic feature on a hot Alabama afternoon, but it’s relatively heavy and lacks the sporting spirit of the GT3, which revs to 9000 rpm and made us feel almost as euphoric as did the mid-engine Cayman GT4. Whichever your preference, steering either of those GT cars at speed around Barber is a memorable experience.
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After the final checkered flag waves, students are encouraged to take advantage of complimentary admission to the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum, the self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Motorcycle Museum.” It’s enormous and will appeal to anyone who likes bikes even a little, with 600-plus on display from around the world, covering more than a century of motorcycling history. Many of them are presented in a quartet of four-story-high motorcycle pillars surrounding the open elevator shaft at the center of the building. A spate of Lotus cars fill out the collection, a small portion of which can be seen in our photo gallery.
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If you lack the time, money, and/or talent to tackle one of the courses at Barber, Porsche has a smaller-scale automotive playground at the Porsche Experience Center at its new Atlanta headquarters. There, folks can sample the full range of Zuffenhausen’s products on a tight handling track, a low-friction handling track (for tail-out fun), a skid pad, a kick plate (for practicing countersteering and managing skids), a straightaway (for launch-control starts and heavy braking), and even an off-road area for Cayennes. A fancy restaurant overlooks the whole thing, and vintage-car fanatics can check out the cars on loan from the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, and also get their old Porsche serviced. Prices range from $300 to $750 for a dozen different 90-minute experiences. We did the $600 Master the Manual course, which is fabulous if only because you’re driving various stick-shift Caymans—including the GT4—on a closed course. Some customers use this as an opportunity to test-drive a vehicle in extremis prior to purchase—or to decide between, say, a $152,000 911 Turbo and a $131,000 911 GT3. The PEC also offers driving simulators and a personal-training center that focuses on prepping humans for racetrack duty. A similar facility will open near Los Angeles in autumn 2016.
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Porsche isn’t new to the driving-school game, by the way: Haywood says the company has offered driving schools ever since the diabolical 911 Turbo debuted in the mid-1970s. (Speaking of evil turbocharged 1970s Porsches, Haywood also recalls that racer Mark Donohue told him how to handle the wicked 917/30. Haywood told our readers some tricks about driving that old 911 Turbo: “Anticipate the lag and manage the on-off power delivery so that it’s delivered in the right place.”)
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- Three Days of Dirtfish: We Attend Rally-Racing School at the Base of the Cascades
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- Formula C/D: We Drive Formula Cars at Skip Barber’s 3-Day Racing School
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- Full Coverage on the Entire Porsche Lineup: Reviews, Photos, Comparison Tests, and More
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Even after a couple of wonderful, productive days, we’re still quite sure that Haywood could annihilate our GT3 lap times at Barber while behind the wheel of a base Boxster. But hey, Hurley: Next year you should bring your personal 918 Spyder to VIR for Lightning Lap and see if you can beat our LL record time in a 918. You have to hold a walkie-talkie at all times, though.
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