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I am interested in doing some defensive driving / advanced driving / performance driving courses. Basically to learn how to drive on the road better/safer and how to stay in control of the car when things go wrong, and to find out the limits of the car.

I've found these guys in Canberra: http://www.fifthgear.com.au/advanced.php but no idea if they are any good.

Does anyone have recommendations for places thatn run training? Somewhere around Canberra or Sydney?

When I was starting at Honda I didn't have any idea about manual so my company sent me to HART, took me 1 lesson to learn manual and while there i did see they offer other course and they also do lots of motorbike training as well. I'm sure there are other ones out there but this is the one i had experience with and they were really good. They are located near St Ives here's a link
http://www.honda.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/internet/Honda.com.au/Home/About+Honda/Driver+Training

There are these guys on the corner of Pialligo Ave & Sutton Rd, just between CBR & QBN, but they only seem to list one defensive car cse. I know some of the staff from years ago, & can vouch for their skills at the time, but I'm not sure if they currently have the focus you're looking for: http://www.suttonroad.com.au/index.html

Aaron McGill run some terrific courses, and he has som every good instructors too.

His courses are more laid back than others, and he allows you to do things others won't (like handbrake turns etc).

He wants you to get the car out of shape, so you can learn to get it back and his courses are a lot of fun as well as being educational.

You can contact him at [url]aaron@auto-motion.com.au[/url]

xen wrote:I've found these guys in Canberra: http://www.fifthgear.com.au/advanced.php but no idea if they are any good.

I have done a skidpan day, a training day at wakefield (broke my car :<) and a track day at marulan with them, and they are very good, Dereck (who does a lot of the training) is a top bloke

Would be interested in doing a similar training day.

"Group Buy"?

Keep us posted on your findings.

Cheers,
Alan

Me too. Maybe we could get a group together!

Wakefield training day was very good (well, until my car broke), we could just all organize to book into the same one

I'll contact Fifth Gear and Aaron McGill next week and see if I can work out any sort of deals. And go from there.

Once we've got details of possible deals, I'll start a new thread with dates etc. See if we can get the group thing going.

Keen.

Keen too but a bit worried re the 'broke my car' bit

Don't worry Millroy, Daffy breaks his car just about everywhere he goes

Yeah, dont worry, my last engine had a habit of doing that

But do, PLEASE make sure you have enough oil

I highly recommend Driving Solutions who operate out of Eastern Creek. They do driver training on behalf of NRMA too. The courses are run on the large concrete skidpan which is thoroughly watered. This minimises your tyre wear and keeps the corner speeds down. In the advanced course, they will typically take you through emergency braking, swerve-brake-swere manouvres, controlling oversteer (induced by handbrake), throttle steering (via a large radius circle test), slalom manouvres, and sometimes include a motorkhana regularity. It's great fun and you'll learn a lot from the day. Cost for the advanced course is $300 and includes lunch.

Another option is Safe Drive Training who operate out of Marulan Driver Training Centre. I've not tried them so cannot say how they compare with Driving Solutions. However, I don't think the skidpan at Marulan is as versatile as the one at Eastern Creek.