pedals, two feet — but my parents quickly dissuaded me of that notion. Resuming the practice after more than a decade took some serious getting used to, but eventually I mastered smooth, even braking.
Cone down on the slalom course! Was I the culprit? Probably.
I was told to avoid the sharply cambered right side in one portion of the slalom. One student wasn’t so lucky, and slid his car right into the ditch, bending a front wheel. Once it was clear everyone was OK, I was relieved. Relieved that I wasn’t the one wearing the pink helmet, that is.
Next we tried the slalom, a series of cones through which we wove our colorful fleet. The course was a sloppy mess, a dark gray mud/clay hybrid that spit into the air with each spin of the tires. The school preaches left-foot braking, which instructors said cuts braking time in half. As a 15-year-old first learning to drive, the concept seemed obvious — two
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. I was repeatedly chastised for using what instructor and rally champ Chris Duplessis called “The Soccer Mom,” an underhanded method of turn- ing the wheel that was so ingrained I didn’t even notice I was doing it. “Do you drive a minivan stuffed with screaming kids?” he asked. “Then stop that! Hand over hand!”
On day two, we were introduced to pendulum turns, the steering and braking technique used to fling a rally car sideways through a turn. It was the lesson I’d been most eagerly anticipating after hours watching videos on YouTube. I was paired with Verena Mei, a rally driver with the TrueCar Racing Women Empowered Initiative, who’d be racing the TrueCar Fiesta with Team O’Neil and Star Girl Racing for the 2012 Rally America circuit. She was attending classes as a refresher for the upcoming season.
The pendulum turns were intimidat- ing. In previous exercises, I’d pushed the car to what felt like an extremely irresponsible speed (ahem, 30 mph), but the pendulum course had the in- structors ever-so-gently coaxing me outside of my comfort zone (“Go! Go! GO!”).
I didn’t nail it on the first try. Or the second, or the third. But the
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