It had been 2 years since my last time with Porsche Ice Experience Driving Course at Circuit Mecaglisse since it got cancelled due to covid the previous year.
This year was a bit special because covid rules made the event unusual and much better:
only one driver per car, which at the higher levels meant more driving time, less time lost switching
one day was rained out, so we had a double long day on day #2 as day #3 was cancelled due to rain and high temps. That was definitely a fair amount of extra driving and learning :)
day #4, we didn't quite get to drive the tracks we were supposed to on the 4th day due to rain water damage from the previous day, but at the end of the day, we got to drive the longest track they had ever designed (7km) including going through the forest.
This event was definitely one of a kind, we're so thankful that Porsche made it happen despite covid related lower attendance.
Thankfully, the rules still allowed us to have dinner, which was not a given. They sure got us fed in the next 4 days :)
With the new covid rules, and given that we were all advanced level anyway, we skipped the classes and got directly to business, i.e. driving :)
welcome back!
Johnathan gave us a quick briefing, and off we went
Time to get to work, cars were waiting for us :)
green group #1 :)
glad to have our trusty Emily to gt us on track and help us with excess snow on the cars :)
I had to re-learn how to stup the cars: sport plus, and disable PSM and PDCC with 2 buttons (PSM sport allows some sliding, but it felt fairly aggressive, I definitely preferred when it was off):
Kees, our chief instructor, had one job, repeating: turn, induce drift with brakes and then gas:
I did so much better this year. Last times, I really felt this was over my head, but this year I really started getting it. I'm far from being an expert, but 3rd time was a charm. I still lost the car a few times, probably had the least amount of spins amongst people in my group, but still ended up needing one cayenne:
ooops, I came into the turn with too much speed and it wasn't salvageable, I drifted in full control into the snowbank and got beached :)
so thankful that I didn't damage any cars, I only scooped up some snow :)
thanks to Emilie for cleaning the snow I scooped up :)
When drifting, it's pretty easy to end up in the inside snowbank, it's actually counter intuitive, but if you add more gas to drift away from it. If you panic and brake, it's how you end up in that snow bank. Takes time to learn that, it's not intuitive. This wasn't me, but that's what it looks like:
thanks to the cayennes for getting us out
This year really so much fun, I was able to induce and control some pretty massive powerslides, while controlling them and doing them in places that were pretty tight. I wasn't perfect, I made mistakes, but being able to get it fairly right most of the time, was pretty joyous for sure.
This downhill drift was challenging because if you went too fast and drifted too far, you'd end up in the snow wall with nothing you could do to stop. I am happy to report that in the 4 day program, I didn't do that mistake once (as opposed to the previous year). Here is an example of pretty mega slide:
Generally, it was super rewarding to be able to go through a track like this one on day #2 and mostly do ok. Still, you have to stay on your toes and it takes very little until a small mistake sends you in a snowbank (12:05 in that video):
Now, I still had brain fades here in there, like this example where I almost took out poor Kees again:
And sure, I hit a couple snow banks, like this one I hit because I didn't put enough gas to drift away from it:
And our reward at the end was the super long 7km track they built for us. It wasn't super fast due to all the forest roads, but it was definitely interesting and challenging:
Beautiful pictures from our professional photographer, he got a few of me in action:
nice shot of a big drift
who needs snow plows when you can use drifting?
Again, thanks to all the instructors and to Porsche for letting us drive their cars and make mistakes, so that we could learn in ways hat would not be possible otherwise. This was fun, we should do this again :)