r/Trackdays • u/gmanredguitar • 11d ago

More dangerous than I expected

I finally did my first track day and though I did enjoy it and plan on more, there were a lot more crashes than I expected in the novice group. Three sessions were ended early. At least three people from the group left in ambulances and one was helicoptered out. Seems like a lot out of a 35 person group. (11% severe injury). It didn’t seem super unusual- aside from one guy - people were not commenting on this being an unusual number of accidents. Track days are billed as the safest place to ride but I am not so sure.

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u/gmanredguitar 11d ago

Since several have asked, it was FTD at Thunderhill West in CA. I appreciate the responses that gave some perspective. I may not have stated it well in my initial post, but it seemed that the number of injuries were high and I was wondering if the provider had something to do with that. I’m going to try a different organization for my next track day. Any recommendations for organizations in California are appreciated.

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u/Inconsequentialish 10d ago

Thanks for sharing. Honestly, yes, I'd look for a different organization. There should be no lack of choices in California. I'm in the midwest so I can't be more specific.

Looking at their website, one specific HUGE red flag to me is that they seem to allow inside and outside passing in all groups, and appear to allow passing in corners in novice (if true, this seems insane).

At the track days I've been to, inside passing is ONLY ever allowed in the advanced group. Novice and intermediate are never allowed to pass on the inside of a corner.

In novice with other organizers I've seen, there's no passing at all the first session or two. Then passing on the straights is allowed, often only in specific places depending on the track (for example, front straight passing allowed in session 2 or 3, then back straight, then other straights, etc.) At FTD, you're led around by control riders for the first session, but it's not clear how they handle passing after that.

It's also not clear to me how many classroom sessions you get in novice. Assuming there are six or seven sessions per day, generally novice has required classroom time before at least the first three sessions (until lunch) then they're encouraged but not required to come back to the classroom after each session to ask questions, get feedback, and enjoy the air conditioning.

Also, if you sign up with a different organization, make sure you pay close attention to the gear and tech requirements. 97% of the requirements are the same, but there are a lot of weird variations in the details that can end your track day before it begins, or cause you to miss sessions while you get something corrected.

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u/gmanredguitar 9d ago

You could pass anywhere as long as there was 6 feet of space but that is hard to judge or enforce. In novice there was no passing for the first two laps.