2024 Dates: June 21-23
Potomac Porsche Club of America
2024 Dates: June 21-23
PCA Potomac is also a social club, and new participants are welcomed and appreciated by the entire DE community. Although we love our Porsches, we encourage other passenger car marques to participate. (SUVs and Trucks are not permitted by track rules.
Welcome to PCA Potomac's Drivers' Education Program (DE). This program is not your High School Driver ED! The Potomac DE program provides you with an opportunity to improve your driving skills and learn to drive your car safely at speeds above highway limits with high accuracy on closed-circuit professional road courses.
As a novice DE participant, you will drive with an instructor who will teach you the safest, smoothest, and most consistent way to drive.
Prerequisites for DE events include prior track time from another DE Program, Potomac's spring or fall High-Performance Driving Clinic (HPDC), or Autocross School and Autocross participation. HPDE is not racing, but Potomac is the birthplace of the PCA Club Racing program and sponsors PCA’s oldest continuously held Club Race, having hosted the first PCA race west of the Mississippi in 1992, and holding one at Summit Point every year since. You can read more about Club Race here.
The focus of DE is and always will be safety for all participants and for their vehicles. DE differs from racing in several important ways. DE provides drivers with a learning environment where the goal is to improve their individual driving skills in a safe and fun way. The order in which drivers start or finish a DE session is irrelevant. Racing, by contrast, provides drivers with a competitive environment where the goal is to be the first across the finish line. DE stresses learning and consistent improvement of skills in a safe environment. Cars are permitted to pass, but only in specific areas of the track (passing zones) and with permission from the car being passed (passing signal). This permits cars to pass other cars only in straight sections of the track that are specifically designated as passing zones. To further increase the safety of the learning environment in a DE, course workers (flaggers) are positioned around the track to help communicate to the driver conditions or obstacles on and off the road surface. These can include slippery course conditions, potential mechanical issues with your car, another car approaching from the rear, and any actions that appear to be inconsistent with the safe learning environment that DE emphasizes.
The goals in DE are 1) to be safe, 2) to have fun, and 3) to learn about driving your car smoothly and consistently. Threshold braking, cornering techniques, "the line", "heel and toe" and vehicle dynamics are among the topics reviewed on the track and in mandatory classroom sessions, taught by our experienced and certified driving instructors.
A Potomac DE-specific Tech Form is required for Potomac DEs, and can be found here: Tech Inspection Form
Who: Potomac PCA
What: High-Performance Driver Education
When: 2024: June 21-23
Where: Full Track
For more information or to register click here.