First gear, second gear, then off the gas to get the weight onto the front wheels.
Hard to the right to load up the left-side tires before a quick, tight turn to the left.
Now to let the car slide.
As the GR Corolla’s nose swings back toward where it came from, downshift to first and back to full throttle, …
This looked like a ton of fun. Brings back memories of when I lived in Rochester, New York.
I think I'll add this one to the bucket list, if for no other reason than to drive on some snow for a few days.
(A novelty for someone like me who's spent most of their life in Florida.)
J.A. Ackley said:This looked like a ton of fun. Brings back memories of when I lived in Rochester, New York.
As someone who currently lives in Rochester, this pretty much sums up how I drive in the winter. Lately my car control challenge to myself has been to get good at pushing the E38 into a subtle, power-on 4 wheel drift such that DSC doesn't intervene because there's no significant under or oversteer and not enough wheelspin for it to consider it a problem.
In addition to being educational, totally fun, too.
The ABS/stability control can be disabled on some of the cars, too. Also very useful as a teaching tool.
The biggest lesson/reminder for me: Look at where you want to go!
I spent the two days paired with Brad from Jalopnik. We talked nonstop.
I got us totally sideways during the lane-change exercise–like, we might have been going backwards at one point.
Yet we never stopped talking.
“Hold on,” I said, while eyeing the exit of the maneuver, “I got this.”
Didn’t hit a cone and made it through. :)
I grew up (to the extent that I grew up) in Upstate NY. I'm sure that I learned most of my car control skills hooning around in the snow. Sure stuff happens faster on the racetrack but the concepts involved in controling the car when it's not pointing in either the direction it's currently traveling or where you want to go are the same regardless of the speed and the surface.
On a slightly related note. I had an HPDE student with a GR Corolla last weekend. What a fun car!
In reply to APEowner :
Very fun car and even felt great at altitude.
Supras needed a light touch in the snow. The GR86 felt at home there.
That sounds like fun and a great opportunity to learn.
I learned so much about driving, handling, general vehicle dynamics, weight transfer, and my limitations, by learning to drive in the snow with 1960's-70's front engine/rear drive cars that produced gobs of torque compared to horsepower, running on bias ply tires, drum brakes (and later, wildly unbalanced front disc/rear drum combos), open differentials, and the generally rudimentary suspensions of the day. Just driving from the farm into town on unplowed roads could be an adventure.
In reply to Coniglio Rampante :
You know, sometimes I feel like I take for granted just how easy-to-drive modern cars have become.
I used to live in eastern Canada and instruct at the winter driving schools hosted by the Audi Club of North America (ACNA) and the Motorsports Club of Ottawa (MCO) up there. We often used the Team O'Neil facility in Franconia NH. Also did some ice racing events with the BMW CCA: like auto-x on frozen lakes.
That experience has definitely made me faster on track. You get used to the car sliding around and doing unpredictable stuff on the limit. Makes driving at the limit in the rain and (eventually) in the dry a lot more comfortable.
To this day, I still tend to dominate wet races even though I'm mid-pack at best (often a back marker) in the dry.
I remember a race at Pittsburgh years ago where it was a total washout. You literally couldn't see where the track ended and the grass began: just a big old lake of water. When the race started it was overcast but dry. We were all on slicks ... and halfway through the race it turned into a Noah's Ark situation.
I was at the back of the pack (maybe 27th out of 28 cars) in my old Mercedes 190E. Ended up vying for first overall after passing just about all the heavy hitters in their megabuck cars. Slicks on standing water was a first for me, but I was able to pull it off without much drama.
There's GoPro footage of the race but all you can see is a wall of water. This is before the BMW CCA mandated headlights and FIA rain lights, so it's just a screen full of gray nothingness.
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