Spent two days in Mid May out at VIR with California Superbike School.
If you have never attended, it is definatley worth the price of admission, it was $950 for the two days for me at VIR. I brought my own bike (saves $200/day) since I knew if I was traveling that far and that close to great roads I wanted to do some riding, so having my bike with was a must.
http://www.youtube.com/user/superbikeschool^the schools youtube page^
http://www.superbikeschool.com/^ school website
There was about a 50/50 split of non sportbikes and sportbikes with a few people riding their streetbikes right from the street to the track with no prep whatsoever... I am sure tech guys loved that? Of course they do have their fleet of S1000RR and all of them were used as well
I found the staff very knowledgable and friendly even when they were rushed for time, I never felt I was and they would/could talk for hours if the wranglers didn't keep things moving along.
The drills while some of them I knew all too well, it was good to have a highly trained coach watching and demonstrating and to bounce things off of...And when I say highly trained-----these guys/girls go through rigorous training and testing and a constant evaluation process... These guys know riding better than anyone...
It (CSS)was quite a huge difference in how it was in the 80's when I attended, although a couple faces were the same and even the lean bike drill was similar---although it should be more correctly named the body position bike, since that is what one works on - leaning is simply a side affect...........It is a cornering school afterall, so it stands to reason the emphasis is on cornering
It is for "everyone" not just go fast racer wannabe's....but I highly suggest reading twist of the wrist I & II before attending-it'll make understanding and grasping the concepts and drills so much easier. Besides you don't want to be that 1 person that doesn't have a clue out of your class of about 20 and take up most of the instructors time....yeah, nobody wants to be that guy. Even the dvds and soft science would good to read as well.
Classroom had me in a group of about 20 or so both days but my on track instruction had me with only 2 other students (3:1 ratio student to coach)-the off track bikes are 1:1 with the coach between sessions.
It paid dividends to be first in line as soon as they called my group to the track, I typically got 9=11 laps in in our ~20 minute~ sessions...some of the lollygaggers and "slow" people only would get 5 or maybe 6 laps.
I was told after the first session to pass more assertively....lol--didn't need to ask me twice, keeping the prescribed 6' "safe area" away from everyone sometimes proved problematic, especially if you weren't assertive.......I had no passing issues on day 2......The final session on day 2 had numerous crashes, some school bikes, some self owned bikes. I felt too mnay people went out there that session trying to knock off some super fast lap times and forget they were there to learn...I found myself easily running sub 2:00 minute lap times running at a very easy pace. Only in that final session did I push any harder and then knocked off sub 1:50's...not too bad for an old guy...
Also spent the day prior to school riding in Virginia & West Virginia and then the day following riding in North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.
Everything sure seemed slow after being on the racetrack for two days.
The school was definately the highlight of the trip and well worth the 3630 miles I put on the Mustang towing the trailer.
So 3630 miles on the car towing an enclosed trailer (avg 20.55 mpg)
279 miles on the track between the 2 days (avg 33.40 mpg)
620 in 2 partial days of riding the area (avg 43.93 mpg)