Junior First Drive experience

“Junior First Drive experience”

Written on: 25/02/2012 by Moduski (8 reviews written)

I booked this for my 15 year old son at Rockingham race circuit through www.racing-school.co.uk. Other locations were available on different dates.

He drove a mini accompanied by a qualified driving instuctor. It was absolutely a 'first drive' experience with the instructors assuming no prior knowledge (and my son having none), but within minutes they were off and driving around the area set aside for young drivers. Apart from the basics of getting going, turning left and right and stopping, they did some driving through chicanes and a little bit of reversing.

The registration process was very quick on arrival, despite the place being quite busy with people on other experience days. Staff were helpful. When we were called up we were taken to a breifing room where the very friendly instructor explained what would happen and then down to the cars. Photographs were taken by the photographer (£20 a copy apparently) and then they got into the cars. There were on this occasion two kids per car, although there can be up to three. So some time was spent sitting in the back of the car while the other child drives. They changed places every 10 minutes or so. In total about 40 minutes of actual driving each, which seemed enough.

The downside is that they don't take the children out individually. Swapping between the two of them was a bit tiresome. If there had been three rotating in the car it would have been downright tedious. They supposedly get 45 mins each either way so there's potentially 90 minutes of sitting in the back of a mini for the child and 2hrs 15mins of waiting around for the parents. One child having a 45 minute slot would make more sense.

That aside, my son had a fantastic day and feels a lot more confident and excited about driving. The whole thing ran very, very smoothly and I cannot say one thing against the staff, The instructers were great