Ask any veteran wheelman what the best way to improve your vehicle’s performance is and they will undoubtedly tell you that the “driver mod”, or your skill at the wheel, is by far the most important. That wisdom isn’t lost on the folks from Dodge/SRT. They’ve been running a program called the SRT Track Experience since 2005, which gives every new SRT owner a chance to get on the track and learn how to pilot their new high performance machine with expert instruction in order to get the most out of it, safely and effectively.

That’s always been a perk for new SRT owners, replete with professional instruction scheduled out through more than two dozen track days each year. But with the introduction of Dodge’s new SRT lineup in 2015, which includes the SRT-infused Scat Pack, the SRT 392, and the SRT Hellcat Challenger and Charger models – along with the incredibly capable fifth generation Viper – Dodge decided it was time to step up the program in order to truly exploit all the capability of these high performance vehicles.

Starting this year, Dodge has partnered up with the legendary Bob Bondurant Racing School to run the SRT Track Experience program on the purpose-built Bondurant facility in Chandler, Arizona.

The Bondurant school has been training everyone from teenagers and military personnel to professional race car drivers since 1968. Areas of study range from evasive maneuvering and car control techniques to high-speed race course driving, with racing icon Bob Bondurant and his roster of instructors – many of whom are also highly successful former racers – on hand to provide their expert tutelage.

So it probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that it didn’t take any convincing to get me on a plane to Phoenix to go see what’s in store for new SRT owners at the Bondurant school.

We began the day by hopping behind the wheel of one of the aforementioned rides in full street trim for the 45-minute drive from the hotel in Paradise Valley, AZ to the Bondurant facility. While it might seem like just an excuse to drive a supercharged muscle car for an extra few minutes, the drive really helps illustrate how easy it is to drive these vehicles in normal everyday context, despite their considerable track capabilities.

I made an early morning dash to claim that orange Viper whilst my colleagues filled up on danishes at breakfast. I’m glad I did – while it’s probably not the most comfortable street car in the bunch, it was the first time I’d gotten a chance to drive a current generation Viper that wasn’t a hardcore track model like the TA and ACR.

While the power train and the vast majority of the mechanicals are the same as those models, this GT model was equipped with the GTS suspension which is far more compliant around town than both the TA and ACR, and I’d wager it cuts damn near the same lap times for all but the most accomplished high performance drivers around the track. Along with the absence of the low, aggressive aero package from those models and the inclusion of a thumping audio system, this GT makes the notion of using a Viper as a daily driver seem far less outlandish.

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After SRT engineers held a brief discussion about the SRT vehicles, the school's chief instructor, Justin Bell, took the stage. Justin is a hugely accomplished racer in his own right, and has a lot of experience competing in the Viper in a professional capacity.

Once we got to Bondurant it was time to get down to business. After a brief overview of the cars, the school and the program itself, we headed out to the track for the first exercise in our all-day program.

Skid Car

The objective here is to learn how to properly control a car that loses traction and goes into a skid. In order to help induce controllable low-speed drifts, the skid car (a Charger R/T Scat Pack, in this case) is equipped with a hydraulic rigging which allows weight to be reduced on the front or back of the car by lifting either end up on a set of external wheels. Adjustments are made with a control box inside the car.

The effect is something like drifting in a rain-soaked parking lot, but here the car’s behavior can be finely calibrated to best match the instructor’s lesson. Along with understanding car communication, this lesson also helps drivers practice getting out of bad habits like target fixation.

In a high performance setting your vision is your most valuable asset, and target fixation is a common problem newer drivers encounter where instead of looking at where they want the car to go they instead reflexively get locked on objects they want to avoid, which often causes them to steer right into them.

Here at low speeds without anything around to hit, learning how to focus your vision on where you want the car to go helps not only control these drift and figure eight exercises, but gets drivers acclimated to the idea of looking far ahead on the track at high speeds so they can place the car where they need to for an upcoming corner and keep their eyes trained to focus on braking zones and apexes.

Autocross

For many enthusiasts, autocross is their first foray into organized high performance driving and competition. Autocross is set up like a miniature road course with cones outlining the configuration of the track. The goal here is to get through the course as quickly as possible without hitting any cones.

While the speeds on an autocross course rarely exceed 70 miles per hour, the technical nature of these tight courses illustrates to drivers how to better understand the car’s dynamics, grip, and how to fine-tune the inputs they give to the car in order to go fast. Diving into a corner too fast will cause understeer and getting on the power early will send the back end of the car out, both of which will equate to slower lap times, so autocross really does force a driver to become disciplined and understand the car’s dynamics to get the most out of it.

Our cars were all identically equipped 8-speed Challenger SRT 392s which differed from factory stock only in their use of race-style brake pads, which are very noisy but more resistant to brake fade, and Goodyear F1 tires, which are provided to the Bondurant school as part of Goodyear’s sponsorship.

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Enthusiasts often tend to think that a stiffer suspension will equate to faster lap times. After bouncing over rough pavement mid-corner on a few laps and losing time, I decided to switch the dampers to from Sport to Street, or the softest setting available, and proceeded to run my fastest laps of the day.

Despite its size, the Challenger is a lot of fun on the autocross course, and I ended up coming back to do more laps after the main program ended in the afternoon, racking up an additional 30 laps around the course and reducing my best time from 26.25 seconds to 23.18. Believe me when I say that the autocross course is where you will learn the most about your car, at least initially.

Accident Avoidance

As the name implies, here drivers learn how to react in emergency situations. To simulate the need for a sudden avoidance maneuver, drivers are sent down a single lane at about 50 mph.

Just before the lane splits into three lanes – one on either side – a set of lights above the lanes changes from three green lights to two red lights and one green, with the latter indicating the lane to change into. This discipline helps with car control and understanding how to avoid upsetting the car while avoiding an object suddenly introduced into your path – like a child running into the street.

Along with vehicle dynamics, it also reinforces just how important it is to keep your vision elevated in order to maintain safe and effective driving habits.

Lead-Follow Laps

While the Challenger and Charger SRT Hellcats are entertaining to drive on the street, what’s equally remarkable is just how capable they are on the road course. To illustrate this, drivers got strapped into one of these models or a Viper TA 2.0 and were led on a set of lead-follow laps around the Bondurant road course. Each lap the pace picked up a little bit as the instructors saw that the drivers following them were getting acclimated to the track, but they were also wary not to allow any participants to fall behind.

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Throughout the day I revisited the course to get more laps in with each vehicle, and the pace continued to ramp up. Eventually I got a chance to follow an instructor car during a session without any other participants involved, allowing the pace to be increased considerably.

The instructor had a colleague of mine riding shotgun with him so he could show him the proper driving line and braking techniques to really hustle the car around the track, and I was following along so that I could get in some laps that really tested my capability, as my colleague indicated to the instructor that I was “pretty fast” and could probably keep up to some degree.

I couldn’t really, but I sure as hell tried. More importantly, it’s nice to see that drivers with some experience can find a pace that suits them here amongst the varying skill levels of a particular class, too.

Here on the road course, all of the skills learned in the other exercises are put to use on a constant basis – eyes up and pointed where you want to go, measured and smooth inputs, listening to the car, managing grip, and hauling some ass. And yes, it’s as much fun as you’re imagining it is.

Hot Laps

The program concluded with hot lap ride-alongs with the instructors in a Viper ACR to see what these cars are really capable of. It’s a humbling moment – professional racers are truly cut from a different cloth and the pace that the ACR can handle is absolutely mind blowing. I suppose that’s not too surprising considering it holds more track lap records than any production car that money can buy right now.

But that’s part of the point of the Bondurant Racing School – everyone has to start somewhere, but with proper training and practice, you might be surprised at what you and your car are actually capable of. I certainly was.