BMW Driver Development Day 12th June 2006 #PICS ADDED 56k unfriendly#

Folks

As some of you know I am attending the BMW Driver training at the Nurburgring in August and in preparation I had decided to take any opportunity to get some proper training in advance of that trip.  So when I read about the Driver Development Day in the Car Club Magazine a couple of months ago, it seemed like exactly what I was looking for.

The event was held at the Pro-Drive facilities in Warwick near Birmingham.  This is where Prodrive do all their chassis development and testing for Subaru etc and the P2 Prototype that many of you will have seen on Top Gear recently.  The facility is huge and consists of three different areas designed to test different aspects of car control;

-         A tight handling track which is a small circuit consisting of lots of different turns of different degrees of severity, double apexes, hairpins with different camber changes and stuff like bumps in turns deliberately designed to throw a chassis off balance in mid turn

-         A high speed circuit, incorporating an old RAF airfield for high speed handling.  Again, the surface is deliberately rough in places for chassis testing, and by the end of the day SMOOTHNESS OF INPUTS is definitely the motto.  This circuit contains one long sweeping right hander that’s basically a question of balls (particularly in the rain as I will get on to later)

-         A skid pan area which consists of a strip of low friction black basalt tiles that are constantly sprinkled with water for low friction (do I need to spell out what this is for? J )

Anyway, I arrived at Prodrive at 8.15 am and from the cars assembled in the vistors car park I could tell it was going to be an interesting day.  Already there was an E60 M5, a CSL, a Z4M Cab, a Z3M coupe, some M3’s, some E46 Coupes, and also a Cliosport and TT Quattro among others.  As we were lead into the facility in a convoy, the number of tuned Sti’s about the place gave away the heritage.

We then went in for some breakfast and a briefing where the days agenda was outlined.  Essentially, we were all split up with instructors, 2 guests to 1 instructor, and all the instructors had racing cv’s as long as your arm, from BTCC to Nascar, and guys that are chassis testers for the likes of Aston Martin, Ferrari etc.  I was fortunate enough to get paired off with the E60 M5, and my instructor was Jamie Wall, who introduced the whole thing.  I couldn’t believe my luck; Jamie is a top bloke and has been racing cars since he was able to walk and has competed in BTCC and nascar etc, but to be honest all of the instructors seemed equally qualified and there were no complaints from anyone I spoke to during the day.

We started off on the tight handling area which is a tricky little track, and even my M3 felt like a big car on it.  This really gave Jamie a feel for what our driving was like, and he gave constant feedback on driving lines, how to approach the apex, hand position during steering, and on this course in particular braking and more importantly smoothness of braking (both on and off).  He went through car physics and weight transfer and tbh this little track gets quite stressful after a number of laps because there are so many turns.  I was wishing I had an SMG car here because its all 2^nd and 3^rd gear.

Next we moved on to the Skid Pan area, which was great fun.  We went down it a couple of times with DSC on first and it really is amazing what the system does.  You can really feel it working on low friction surfaces like this.  Next we went down with DSC off which gave us the opportunity to feel like drift gods for a while.  This was really brilliant fun, and because its low friction its so easy to induce slides, but more importantly, you can really work on your steering here and try to feel the balance shift in the car.  We would drive on to the surface in 2^nd and plant the throttle inducing the slide.  Then corrective lock and back off the throttle until the wheels started engaging again, and trying to immediately go into a slide in the opposite direction (i.e. deliberately induced but controlled fishtailing).  Needless to say, there was much spinning off here, as the low friction nature of the surface meant that it was easy to overdo the throttle.  The four wheel drive cars didn’t seem to be having too much fun here, and the clio was basically uncontrollable due to the pendulum effect of the engine in the back.  One of the instructors actually tried to do it in reverse to see if it helped, but to no avail!!!!

Funnily enough, I had my best effort here on my 3^rd or 4^th go, managing to string together 4 or 5 successive, seamless drifts with big drift angles (that I thought were nearly gone but managed to recover) all in one pass.  For whatever reason, I never managed to repeat it.  I don’t know if that was because you get more confident and start pushing harder, approaching at faster speeds or just thinking too much about it.  I still had lots of fun though.

To close out the morning session we moved on to the High Speed track.  This has a wide variety of stuff involved and again Jamie was a huge help with lines and little tips and tricks.  The back straight is fantastic.  In my car I am flat out in 4^th here for quite some time before the “cohones required” part (to give you a comparison of length at mondello on the main straight I change from 3^rd to 4^th just at the bridge before hauling anchors).   You come off this straight flat out in 4^th, which ends in a huge sweeping right hander.  It was interesting that the different instructors took different lines here.  Jamies preferred one (and therefore the one I used) was to run really wide off the back straight, brake, heel and toe down to third before turning in sharply and committing to the throttle in third and taking the corner at 60-80 mph.  This corner was at times fearsome for me, because I went with my tires barely road legal and the corner has an extremely rough surface with some camber changes.   I totally nailed this a couple of times and it was a great feeling to get the braking/heel-toe and downchange right.

We went for a fuel stop and then on to a local pub for lunch for some nice food and a few laughs.  All the instructors were great people, and it was fascinating hearing the stories and most of them are total petrolheads having raced carts or cars since their teens.  Jamie is currently in the process of building a widebody E46 M3 GTR with an E39 M5 engine tuned to 600bph shoehorned into it (don’t get any ideas Kin).  Amazing stuff.

After lunch we were free to choose whatever activity we wanted, although we were still supervised at all times.  Based on my tire condition which by now was looking dodgy, we figured it would be best to start on the high speed circuit until the tires would take it no more so off we went for a number of additional laps.  I think this was my best discipline of the day and I improved in smoothness and lines throughout. 

During the afternoon there was a sudden torrential downpour and thunderstorm while I was out on the track.  Massive pools of water were forming and I asked Jamie whether we should retire and he said the wet grip here wasn’t too bad so we plowed on for a couple of laps.  I can tell you its some feeling bombing down a straight at 120mph and feeling the car acquaplaning through the puddles!!!.  I had one heart stopping moment in the 3^rd gear right hander when I thought the car was going to go but managed to correct it in time without fatally backing off, until eventually the downpour was so severe there was no visibility so we stopped.

It was over as soon as it started so out we went again, this time using the wet track as an opportunity to try some drifting.  Two of the turns are particularly suitable for it.  I had varying degrees of success here, but couldn’t find the balance point on the throttle to really maintain a long drift although my commitment to getting it started was undiminished, especially with Jamie screaming in my ear, “Now!!!  POWER POWER POWER”.  I don’t know whether the transition from the ultra low friction surface or the fast drying track was catching me out, but it’s probably mostly mental.  My best efforts were almost unintentional (in that I had one great effort coming out of a corner when Jamie had turned DSC off without me realising it) so I think I need to relax a bit more when the car starts to slide, instead of backing off the throttle too much causing the car to find traction again and ending the drift abruptly.

By this point the shoulders of the passenger side tires were totally gone and the first layer of thread had disappeared.  The tires starting chunking and canvas was starting to show through.  Mindful that I had to drive 200 miles or so back to Holyhead that evening, we decided to retire from the high speed circuit cos I was risking a blowout on the 3^rd gear fast right hander which could be very serious.  So we played around on the skid pan for the rest of the day.  By the time we were finished here around 4pm, my tire pressure warning light was on and I had developed a slow puncture in the passenger side front tire, so we went in for a debriefing.

The objectives of the course were to show us the limits of the cars in a safe environment and to improve our car control and I think this was achieved.  As with all these things, theres too much to take in but if 10% of it stays with me I will have become a better driver.  The thing that stuck with me most was the need for smooth inputs in all areas; throttle, steering and brakes.  It was amazing when Jamie took us for a drive in our own cars; nothing seemed hurried, even when drifting the car at high speeds.  It was great to see a good driver in action from the passenger seat.

So then I put my trusty sat nav on for the drive back to Holyhead, fairly exhausted because I had just got back from New York on the Sunday morning.  Its actually a super drive back across north wales and it was a beautiful evening.  Some of the roads are just too tempting though!!!.  The other thing was I had to stop every 50 miles to pump 10 psi back into my wheels!!!!

All in all, a great day and well worth the £299 it cost.  They were talking about a doing a dedicated drifting day in the future which I would definitely be on for.

Pics to follow!

Mick

Great report Mick. Sounds like a mental time was had!

sounds like a great day,could be a n idea for a club event.

Brian

I think you would have ESPECIALLY enjoyed the day :)

Mick