when not going racing on ice, there isn't much else to do but ice skating and snowmobiling
We met most of our time there having dinners after a long day of driving
The first morning, we had a short class on car dynamics:
how controlled sliding through an icy turn is the quickest way compared to the sticky track line which doesn't work
the most fun you can have, driving 90 degrees or more from the direction of travel
Every day, we then took a 40mn bus from Esterel to Circuit Mecaglisse, which is in the middle of nowhere:
we then got to meet our cars
we drove 992s and 991 Turbos
someone, drove our car at 262kph, I don't think it was us :)
we had 3mm studs for god like traction on ice
Kees, our instructor, introducing the cars to us, with our assistant, Emilie
The big whiteboard on the ground made it easy to write instructions
By luck, I got paired with the best student in the group, Mathieu, so he doubled as my instructor :)
Kees, showing us how to do a scandinavian flick around a corner with a set of cars showing a snapshot of the line
Our assistants worked hard for us :)
but more seriously, they kept us on track, and cleaned our cars of all the snow we shoved into them. Poor Emily got her wooden spoon broken by all our snow
Here are a few nice pictures from our professional photographer:
driving sideways with the wheels straight
this is why the cars had snow stuck everywhere :)
we often helpded make the track a bit wider :)
yes, this is fun :)
I did my part helping clean the loose snow at the edge of the track :)
I might have done this too :)
Here are a few videos, 3 way snow drifting:
And videos of my crashing in snow banks in different ways :)
Thanks to all the instructors, also to Porsche for letting us drive their cars and make mistakes, and the great codrivers in our group (blue group was still #1 !) :)
After the program was over, we had a celebration dinner and prices for the best drivers:
Mathieu, my co-driver, won the price for best driver in our group
This was so much fun, there are no higher levels, but I'm quite tempted to go back :)