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Re: How to get novices to "stick".

To: autox mailing list <autox@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: How to get novices to "stick".
From: "Mark J. Andy" <marka@telerama.com>
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 10:36:44 -0400 (EDT)
Howdy,

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002, Dick Rasmussen wrote:
> Speaking as an "former novice" (we just won't say how many decades ago), 
> what got me to "stick" was when I started to "get a clue" how to drive. 
> Once I started to make progress I was HOOKED big time.

When I started (probably a bit more recently than Dick :-), I think what
hooked me was a combination of things.

First, I got lots of encouragement from experienced drivers.  I found out
later on that when they said "Boy, you're really gonna be good at this!"
that they were lying their ass off, but it worked at the time.  :-)  I was
one of the faster folks at my driver's school, and that was encouraging as
well.

Second, autox was the right level of time/money/risk commitment for me.
I'd just retired from motorcycle roadracing, and the idea of not having to
fix crash damage was pretty appealing, as was the idea that I wouldn't
have to put in the time commitment mc roadracing took (of course, later on
I got more serious, but that's a different story).

Third, autox was more "pure" than mc roadracing.  It's all about being
absolutely perfect on every manuver.  In mc roadracing, you had more of a
chance to recover from small mistakes, you often took weird lines to pass
people, etc.  I've never had a perfect run at autox, and trying to get
there (hopefully consistently) is a pretty big motivating factor.

I guess that's more of a "why does Mark autox" vs. "how do we get
newbies", but there it is.  :-)

Mark

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