What is a Skid Pan Driving Experience?
Learning skid control is an incredibly important driving skill to have. And it’s not just over the winter months with the dangers of snow and ice prevalent that mastering this technique can pay dividends out on the open road, as wet weather driving also presents its own hazard at any time throughout the year.
To help give you skid control confidence, TrackDays.co.uk is proud to offer you the opportunity to experience skid control behind the wheel of a specially modified car with an expert instructor by your side. Just as importantly, it’s also great fun.
However, skid control is not a natural skill to possess, and more often than not the situation is made worse by our actions. Nevertheless, on our skid control experiences, the instructors will give you expert advice on how to recover a car from a skid in a safe controlled environment, whilst at the same time making it an enjoyable lesson.
What Will I Learn from Skid Pan Training?
The key is learning how to overcome an instinctive reaction, which can sometimes be the wrong one. Drivers are also coached on how to use the steering wheel and pedals to counter the skid slide, and also shown how to control front-wheel, rear-wheel and four-wheel skids.
The package also includes training in emergency braking, understeer and oversteer, plus 180 degree recovery, which will enable drivers to have an understanding of how to react if the car is out of control.
When the driving has finished, then the session ends with a debriefing by the instructor focusing on how to improve skid control should the worst happen.
Where Can I Take a Skid Pan Training Experience?
Our Skid Pan packages are available at our Bovingdon Airfield venue in Hertfordshire and at North Weald Airfield in Essex. At Bovingdon, we have our Stunt Pro and Stunt Thrill packages, which will give you either 25 or 50 minutes’ driving time as you master the skill of skid control in a custom prepared Mazda MX5.
Meanwhile at North Weald, the saloon cars on the Skid Control package have been specially adapted on a mounted hydraulic rig, designed to closely emulate challenging road conditions as best as possible under a safe, controlled environment. Whichever package you opt for, what you will gain from the experience in terms of enhancing your drivers’ toolkit is invaluable.
Booking a Skid Pan Experience Day
Booking a skid control experience is simple to do with TrackDays. You can either book directly onto an available date on our regularly updated Events Calendars for all our experiences, or you can buy an open gift voucher for complete flexibility. But don’t forget, the sooner you undertake the skid control experience, the sooner your confidence will grow when driving in adverse weather conditions.
Other courses available with TrackDays.co.uk designed to improve driving techniques include our Stunt Driving packages, where drivers learn to perform evasive manoeuvres with one-to-one tuition from an experienced instructor. For more information about these, you can head to our dedicated Stunt Drive page on our website.
Essential Booking Information for Skid Pan Training
If you buy an open gift voucher for a Skid Pan package, the standard validity period to use the voucher is 10 months. However, please make sure you check this first, as some Skid Pan vouchers and special offers may have a shorter or longer validity.
If you are booking directly onto a date for a driving experience, please note that you are making a booking request, and the date and time that you choose will still be subject to availability.
We usually confirm bookings within 48 hours, but we ask that you do not make any arrangements in conjunction with your booking request until you have received your final confirmation email. The receipt we send you after making a booking request is not your confirmation.
Other important things to consider when purchasing Skid Pan driving experiences are that the driver meets all requirements in terms of age, weight, height and driving licence. These requirements are unique to each driving experience, so please ensure you have read through and checked the important information thoroughly.
If an experience is for junior drivers only, we will usually mention this in the name of the package, but not in all cases. If you place a booking for a driving experience, and the driver doesn’t meet the requirements on the day, then it is unlikely they will be able to drive the vehicle, in which case they will be offered a passenger ride where available.
