LIVIGNO, ITALY-Last week, it was driving Porsches sideways in the snow.
This week, it’s driving Lamborghinis sideways in the snow.
Yes, I do get paid for this job. Not much, it is true, but still …
This was one of the ‘Extraordinary Driving Experiences’ that Lamborghini offers to owners, prospects and — well, anyone who wants to and can pony up the cash (roughly $7,500, not including the price of getting there).
This particular iteration of this event, which has been offered at various venues around the world, took place in Livigno, which is as far north as you can get in Italy and not be in Switzerland.
To get here from Zurich, the ‘drive’ includes a 20-kilometre train ride! You drive straight into a boxcar and the train hauls you up the steepest part of the route.
The Accademia events are just that, ‘academies’ (schools) where you can learn how to put your very powerful, very expensive car through its paces, not only to more fully enjoy all it has to offer, but also to minimize the damage you might do to yourself, the car, and everyone else.
The winter event should be of particular interest to Canadians, should you actually be willing to take your quarter- to half-million dollar Lambo out in the snow.
Actually, much better to come here and drive someone else’s Lambo in the snow.
The circuit in Livigno is not a frozen lake, but a huge field which is specially flooded and groomed to provide just the right conditions to show off the cars’ capabilities.
And hopefully, hone your own.
Following a brief chat session from chief instructor Filippo Zadotti, the students are split up into groups of a half dozen, and sent out to go through various exercises to illustrate certain aspects of the cars’ performance, and teach certain driving techniques.
As with the Porsche event described last week, you are always accompanied by an instructor, typically young people who are part of Lamborghini’s race team.
As always, I am stunned that these people willingly strap themselves into powerful cars with people they have just met, and encourage them to fling the cars sideways.
All of the instructors do an excellent job, but I must point out two who really seemed to work for me.
Jeroen Mul from Amsterdam will be running a Huracan in the GT3 series this summer which will include his first-ever visit to Canadian Tire Motorsport Park. I told him he has a real treat in store.
Patric Niederhauser from Basel, Switzerland, wasn’t sure at the time of our event exactly what he’ll be racing this summer, but he is confident something will pop up.
The groups rotate through the exercises in sequence so you are driving as much as possible and just hanging around as little as possible.
A couple of full-motion racing simulators are on hand to give you something to keep your mind occupied between stints behind a real wheel.
Hostesses keep track of everybody and make sure you are ready when your next turn comes up.
The exercises include a smallish diameter circle so you get a feel for how much throttle to apply to cause the back end to step out, and to practice your drifting technique.
In a quarter-mill Huracan or half-mill Aventador S, no less.
A figure-eight course is the trickiest one to master. You want to be able to drift the car one way, cross the middle of the eight, then set up a drift going the other way.
As with most things in life, timing is everything. By the time you reach that cross-over point, you already want to have the car starting to slide the opposite way. Get it right, and it’s a thing of beauty. Get it wrong, and another pair of grille inserts bites the, um, snow.
At least one of our colleagues shooting a video got some serious air in a Huracan Spider. It flew through the air off a snowbank with the greatest of ease, and fortunately, because snowbanks are generally softer than tarmac or Armco, wasn’t seriously damaged.
Hope he got some nice shots.
One of the more expensive mishaps might have been when one of those damned drones the video crew was using crashed into the red Aventador S, leaving a nice big dent in the left front fender.
The simulated road course was the most fun, providing several opportunities to set up and hold nice, long drifts, with a ‘Scandinavian flick’ hairpin at the far end of the circuit.
For those of you who missed last week’s story, this is a rallying technique that involves ‘flick’-ing the steering wheel the ‘wrong’ way — i.e., to the right, if you are approaching a left-hand bend — waiting for the car’s weight to be transferred to the car’s left-side tires, then steering hard left. This transfers that weight back onto the right-side tires, which presumably overloads them and causes the car to start to rotate in (in this case) a counter-clockwise direction.
Applying generous amounts of throttle at this point helps the car pivot, and if you get it right, the car is now pointing directly toward the exit of that left-hand corner. Unwind the steering, and off you go.
Patric developed a shorthand call for me. When he said “HUP!!!” it meant, “Nail the throttle!” so those rear wheels would break loose and allow me to control the drift.
Nailing the throttle of a 740 horsepower car on ice? Yeah, it was kinda fun …
After lunch, we took a break. The weather was warmer than usual, and from experience, the instructors knew that if we ran the cars hard when the sun was at its highest, the studded Pirelli Sottozero3 winter tires would tear the surface up completely.
So, they laid on a fleet of snowmobiles for us to take about a 40-minute romp along a trail through some neighbouring fields.
I managed to stall my SkiDoo — yes, Canadian sleds! — so, I started off at the very back of the 40-odd machine crocodile.
As the token Canadian on this event, I couldn’t let that pass.
Yes, I did end up first, right behind the tour guide. Not a good idea to pass him …
When things cooled down, it was back to the track for more driving.
After sundown, we had another break as the local fire department set up a series of lights around the course. Not quite sure why they needed fire fighters to do this, but when in Italy …
The idea was to show us how much more difficult driving at night is. Driving is to a very large degree all about vision. If the light is limited, so is your ‘window’ for proper and safe driving.
It forced us to pay greater attention to what we could see, watch for the openings, plan our moves.
The Lamborghini headlights are very effective, but nothing beats daylight!
This was an entirely new experience for me at a driver training event, and one that should be part of every such program. A lot of our driving is done in less-than-ideal visibility, and that’s also where we are most likely to run into danger.
Finally, we were taken for rides around the handling circuit with one of the instructors driving.
Hah — just when we thought we had learned something …
Actually, we all had — and got certificates to prove it! But when riding shotgun with one of the pros, you soon discover there is a reason why they do what they do.
And another bit of proof that no matter how much you know (or think you know) about driving, there’s always more to learn.
Contact your friendly local Lamborghini dealership and sign up for next year.
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