On Friday, May 16, the NASA Northeast Region added 16 new instructors at its spring instructor clinic, which was held on New Jersey Motorsports Park’s Lightning course. The region’s mid-May event is playfully titled May Mania and thanks to mother nature the 2025 edition of May Mania lived up to its name.
Instructor candidates, mentors and everyone else who came to play were forced to wait out a two-hour delay in the middle of the day because of actual lightning and the threat of a tornado. Members in NASA MidAmerica might be used to the occasional tornado, but up in the northeast the only tornado we are likely to see is a full field of Spec Miatas at Lime Rock Park.
Challenges at the track are expected. Instructing adds at least a couple of layers of complexity. Instructors provide the foundation for our HPDE program. They represent NASA Northeast at its best. Most of the instructor candidates came through our HPDE program, but racers and Time Trial competitors were part of the class and help fill the region’s instructor corps. Whatever brought them to NASA, when they decide to take on the responsibility of instructing it’s because they want to share their passion for our sport and help others become part of the NASA family.
The NASA Northeast clinic leans on the CCR. Candidates dive into how and what it means to provide a structured and managed environment for participants to develop their driving skills with respect to awareness, responsibility, teamwork, sportsmanship and discovery. This year the instructor candidates got homework to do before they arrived at the track. We had the candidates do rolep-lay using AI to interview timid novices, aggressive novices, and slightly experienced novices as well as do interviews with their mentors.
After the rain, wind, and lightning moved on and the clinic was over, we put our newly minted instructors to work. They hopped into cars with the Toyota GR program drivers and showed them how to navigate the soaked Lightning course’s multiple blind crests and turns while dealing with slick surfaces and a mini-stream running across the track before Lightning’s banked carousel turn. The learning and mentoring continued throughout the weekend. New instructors filled hyperdrive participants’ cars, hopped into DE2 cars, and got their first HPDE1 assignments.
NASA Northeast’s newest instructors are, Filip Bursac, Aaron Cantu, Giancarlo Goeckel, Alex Herman, Hector Hernandez, Brian Hildebrandt, Jae Han Kim, JD (Jung) Lee, Derek Levine, Kenneth Martinez, Timothy Noakes, Jose Quintana, Brooke Shaffer, Jeff Thompson, Sean Williams and Paul Zhivago.
