Education At Speed—Driving the Ford Raptor and Focus RS at Speed
To car or truck enthusiasts, the biggest thrill comes from getting behind the wheel and seeing what your vehicle is capable of doing. Be it drag racing, drifting, road course or off-road, it’s awesome to drop the hammer—and it’s even better to do it in a safe environment with skills to get the job done. Of course, not everyone has access to a race track or wild off-road trails, but that’s not a problem for those who purchase the latest Ford Performance vehicles. That’s because included in the price of your new Ford specialty vehicle is a complimentary day at the Ford Performance Racing School located outside of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Ford began the on-track program with the 2012 Boss 302 Mustang Track Attack, and it now offers the one-day driving course to anyone who buys a Fiesta ST, Focus ST, Focus RS, Shelby GT350 or Raptor truck. Each class combines a serious education and a fun day of driving. You’ll learn what your vehicle can do on track, you'll learn how to operate the many systems, and you’re guaranteed to walk away with improved driving skills and a complete understanding of your new Ford.
Best of all, you get to drive the school vehicles, so all you have to do is incur the travel and lodging expenses. There’s a reception dinner, and the school also provides driving suits when required, helmets, and you’ll get top-notch driver coaching from real racing instructors.
Recently, we spent a day at the school which is located at Utah Motorsports Campus in Tooele, Utah. We got a taste of the RS Adrenaline Academy and the Raptor Assault during a full day of driving at FPRS. We started in the Ford Focus RS, and ran on the road course, wet skid pad to learn drifting, and then we moved to the figure 8 and the Urban Street Course.
Our media day was designed to give us a taste of what the real students get, but students get so much more. They learn in the classroom and then get tons of on-track experience. In the classroom you’ll learn the ins and outs of vehicle dynamics, such as how to manage the contact patches, how to smoothly transfer weight and how to string corners together on a road course. Then you’ll move to the RS and put it to practice.
After refueling with a nice lunch, we hit the trails in Raptor trucks. The Raptor Assault program takes students through a well-designed course that lets them experience many aspects of off-road driving. We did hill climbing, rock crawling and learned to drive with the vehicle on a side tilt up to 30 degrees. With that under our belt, we headed to real-world trails where we climbed steep upgrades, descended and ran hard through a Baja section of fast, flat, dirt roads.
Both the RS and the Raptor are amazingly capable and the school gives you the knowledge and confidence to experience them as the engineers designed. I was impressed by how much performance is packed in the Ford Performance vehicles, and how far they can be pushed. Of course, if you’re looking for more performance from your Ford product, be sure to search out your model right here at brothersperformance.com.
