Talkin’ ‘Bout Practice: Don’t Be Afraid to Drive Your Corvette Hard

Fear can be a terrible thing for humans. Although it can occasionally prevent us from putting ourselves in precarious situations and maybe keep us away from certain dangers, a life without risk is, for the most part, not a life worth living. Most of the time, fear just keeps us from living out our desires and experiencing what life really has to offer.

This post is brought on because of a recent thread from driver9. He owns a base 2016 Corvette and expressed being nervous about turning off traction control. He even mentioned that his car gets out of hand with it on.

“My base 2016 M7 already gets pretty wild if I put my foot in it with traction control on, though it stays pretty controllable,” he wrote. “I’m really worried about turning traction control off on the streets.”

He then went ahead and posted the video below for examples of what could happen.

My only response to these worries is this: practice. I guess I should first say that there’s no shame in this type of worry or fear. In fact, it’s 1,000 times better to be overly worried than to be overly confident and plow into a tree 10 minutes after driving off the lot. So don’t take my words as a slight, take ’em as encouragement.

The first thing anybody should do with any new ride, sports car or not, is to go to some empty roads, an empty parking lot, or an open track, and practice. Every car is different. Each one has different brakes, a different throttle, different steering, different traction, different everything. The more you practice, the better you understand your car, and the better control you have over it.

There’s nothing wrong with having traction control on or off, as long as you know your car well enough to drive it properly. If you’re that worried about it, then you probably shouldn’t be driving the car around hundreds of other people. Find a controlled environment and work with it until you’re confident enough to handle a problem, should one arise.

Oh, and once you have mastered being able to push your car to its limits, don’t do it in stupid places with variables you can’t predict.

Chime in with your thoughts on the forum. >>

Via [driver9]