A View From The Track
7/03/2007
Tips, Advice From Racecar-Driving Mom
For our first interview, we mom-reviewers decided there was no better subject than a mom who not only anchors the evening news at KUSA in Denver, but also races Porsches in her spare time. Adele Arakawa’s racecar isn’t even street legal; it has a roll cage and everything, so she has plenty of expertise to offer. Not only that, but Arakawa is also a driving instructor with the Rocky Mountain Region Porsche Club. Here are her thoughts on everything from teaching your kids to drive to how women should shop for cars. (Editor’s note: Responses have been trimmed for length.)
MP: What was your first mom-mobile?
AA: When my son was born, I was still in my sports-car mode. I had a 280Z and realized that it wasn’t going to work too well with a little one. I realized I was going to have to get a domestic four-door sedan, which was like, “Nooooo!” So I did some research and bought a Volvo, drove it for less than a year and got rid of it. It was a fine little car. It was a little underpowered, which is all right. But after that I thought, “OK, you know what? We can have something else for a little family car,” and I went back and got a 300Z.
MP: How did you teach your son to drive? Did you do it yourself?
AA: Yes and no. He has always been around cars, and he’s always been around sports cars. He comes by it honestly; he has a passion for cars. At 15-and-a-half, I put him in my racecar, behind the wheel. There were two reasons: One reason was, if he wanted to drive fast I wanted him to drive fast in a controlled condition on a racetrack in a car that was set up for safety. And the second was that I was never out of the car; I was always in the car with him.
MP: We talked a little bit about skills from the track that translate to street driving. What are maybe one or two of those things that are the most important?
AA: The basic rule is that the car is going to go where your eyes are looking. On a racetrack, you never look at where you are, you always look at where you’re going to be next. I’m always upset and disturbed by the amount of accidents teenagers — and adults, though, not just kids — [are in when] cars are overcorrected. Say you’re driving down the road and you drive off the shoulder and your two right wheels go off the pavement. The common reaction is to jerk the wheel back onto the pavement. That’s the worst thing in the world you can do; that’s when you lose control of the car. You can hook a wheel and flip the car when you go out of control and go across the highway. The basic thing that’s hard to teach, [because] it goes against every bit of self-preservation and instinct, is to drive a car off the road and hold it in a straight line. You may have to take down a marker or you may have to hit something like a rock, but the idea is to slow down — not slam on your brakes, but slow down, come off the gas and drive the car off [the road] if you have to.
MP: Tell us about the driving course for teenagers you’re involved with, Street Survival.
AA: What we teach the kids in Street Survival is the dynamics of the car. We put them on a skid pad, put them on a slick surface and have them drive in a circle so they can kind of feel the car skidding out of control so they know what it feels like. If you’ve never felt that, you might be inclined to panic and not know what to do so you might slam on the brake or steer a little harder. We teach emergency avoidance. We have them go breakneck speed into a Y, and then at the last second they’re signaled to go left or right and they kind of feel how the car’s going to react, the shifting of weight on the car. I think the big thing is that nothing replaces time spent behind the wheel. I don’t care how inexperienced you are, you’re going to get better if you do it more and more, just like with anything. Practice, practice, practice. You can’t stress it enough.
MP: Do you have any advice for women when it comes to buying a car?
AA: You don’t have to be a gearhead and you don’t have to be a car nut to be able to get a good buy, it’s just common sense. There’s the internet; there are so many websites out there that you need to do your homework, and if you do your homework you can save yourself hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars. Know that there are different pricing levels. There’s wholesale value, trade value, there’s private party value, all these different values. You need to know what those numbers are. You need to do your homework to find out what that car is worth before you go waltzing in the door of the dealership. If safety ratings are important to you, research safety ratings. If gas mileage is important, do your homework on gas mileage. Do a Google search on the make and model of the car to find out if there have been any recalls on that car. It can take some time, but it’s a huge investment. If you’re going to spend that much money on an item, you want to make sure it’s a good value, that it’s going to last a long time, and that it’s reliable. Be an informed consumer, be a smart consumer. You know, you don’t have to be a manly woman to go in and get a good deal on a car.
MP: Do you have any words of advice for a newbie, fledgling automotive journalist?
AA: There are so few women in that aspect of writing that I can imagine there are some opportunities. Most women do not get into the specifications of a car — for them it’s basic transportation, and that’s fine. But I think as far as that goes, women still need to be more informed, they need to take more of an interest. It’s your transportation; it gets you from point A to point B safely, so it’s an important part of your everyday life. You don’t need to be a racecar driver by any stretch of the imagination, but I think you should be informed.
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