Consider it extreme driver's ed-it's like nothing you learned in high school, but should have. About 1,000 drivers of all experience levels and walks of life travel to the Dalton-based school annually to learn how to better control their cars in a skid. We specialize in taking people from no skills to high skill, says Tim O'Neil, a five-time U.S. and North American rally racing champion, founder and lead instructor at Team O'Neil Rally School and Car Control Center.
After learning the essentials in a classroom, drivers speed down the school's two courses over mud, dirt roads and gravel, going into skids under expert guidance. Students come from across the Northeast and range from those just wanting to learn to drive better in snow to organized street-or rally-racers, stunt men, security guards and rich and powerful adventure seekers.
Team O'Neil, which generates about $2.5 million in annual revenue, has 22 full- and part-time employees, and is usually booked two to three months in advance.
The Drive to Succeed
O'Neil has spent his life around cars as a mechanic, champion racer and private instructor. Then 15 years ago, he pursued his dream and opened the rally school. The school sits amid 585 acres and includes a 6.5-mile forest road course, a second road course just opened last year, a separate skid pad and braking zone, an obstacle-avoidance area, a slalom course, a classroom and administrative building, a general maintenance shop and a fabrication shop for building rally cars.
The least intense course is the Winter Safety School, offered between December and April. People bring their own car and learn all the different ways people get into skids and how to prevent getting into those situations. We teach skid prevention. Then we take them out to experience those situations, O'Neil says, both to show them what their natural instincts would be and the proper way to respond. People go away with an incredible amount of confidence. The day-long program costs $395 and attracts 200 to 300 people annually.
The school also offers rally programs that last from two to five days, teaching a variety of techniques for rally racing, including left-foot braking. For those programs, students drive one of the school's 80 cars. They include 43 front-wheel drive Fiestas, 20 all-wheel drive Audis and Subarus, and five rear-wheel drive BMWs, as well as 10 jeeps and 10 rally cars. There are 12 maneuvers to make it around a corner. Every day they are here, students learn two or more types of maneuvers, O'Neil says. We make everyone drive in front-wheel drive first, then all-wheel, then rear wheel and then we mix it up. The cost for the five-day course is $5,750.
In summer 2010, the school began a partnership with Ford Racing to create the Ford Racing Fiesta Rally Experience. The one- or two-day program is the only rally experience offered by a manufacturer in North America. Team O'Neil modifies each of its Fiestas for that class with a roll bar, rally suspension and off-road tires. Some people want to rally race. Most people want to have a bit of adventure and learn maneuvers, O'Neil says. We're trying to grow that business-adventure people. That's about a third of our customers.
The school recently caught the attention of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, winning a federal contract to work with the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) in Hanover to help develop software for driving simulators. Using a car with sensors on it, CRREL is working with Team O'Neil to test how tires perform on different surfaces, how it feels when a car goes into a skid and the proper techniques for coming out of a skid. I want to get [this skills training] to the kid out on the street, O'Neil says. If we get this software simulator set up, it could train millions.
Most of the school's business comes from training government, military and security drivers. These drivers never know what kind of vehicle they will be in, O'Neil says. We add other elements to that training, such as driving with a high center of gravity and more on fixing broken vehicles. It's the MacGyver training. That training includes high-speed rough-road driving techniques, technical off-road driving and winching and recovery of a vehicle.
While the school has built a strong reputation, like any business, it faces challenges. Team O'Neil was hit hard by the recession. It also faces stringent and costly environmental permitting when building roads and culverts, and a short construction season, making it difficult to turn a profit, O'Neil says. It's very expensive to run a rally school, he says. During the recession, O'Neil had to make tough choices to cut costs, including laying off staff, which had grown to more than 30 employees. We'll never be at that staffing level again. I don't see a different economy. I see a difference in how I manage the business. I'm sharper, O'Neil says.
The school hosts around five corporate events annually, and O'Neil wants to grow its corporate business. My objective is not to be a millionaire. It's to do what I love and give the best training out there, O'Neil says. I was told by a lot of people my ideas wouldn't work. I believed in myself.
Current Issue - May 2024