VW ice driving

We met at the supermarket and got to drive the latest 2 litre diesel 160 hp 4WD golf. First it is a short drive down the public road to Yllasjavi, the onto the lake. Our driver is a young Finnish rally driver who competed for two years in the British Rally Championships in 2011/2, while doing this he lived in Carlisle.  On the lake there is course marked out with cones to negotiate. First a slalom, followed by up to 60kph, slam on the brakes and do a simulated lane change (avoiding the cones) and emergency stop. Then U turn and a 100kph emergency stop when you are encouraged to try steering with the brakes on hard - it works surprisingly well. The off to the roundabout a circle of ice to drive round and round. The car understeers like crazy until you give it a bit of power then a lot of steering lock and then miraculously the rear swings round - as the car has pulled the inside rear brake on for you, effectively doing a handbrake turn (being a moddern car the handbrake is a button so you couldn’t do it yourself if you wanted to.  On the second run we try it with traction control off which is much more fun but requires about 3 times as much steering input on the slalom.  The car being too clever by half on my second emergency stop put the hazzards on automatically to warn people there was an idot who had activated the ABS at high speed. 

The real treat was when our rally driver took over to show us how to do it properly. Fantastic first 40kph in reverse, then flicking the car round to be going forward. Then insane ammouts of ice flying up and going sideways. Though what made me laugh was when we went round the roundabout and it didn’t quite work out how he liked. He said “its very slippy here”. If it is slippy for a Finnish rally driver that must be bloody slippy. It was in fact so slippy when you got out the car to change driver you could barely stay on your feet. Luckily the cars studded tyres had more grip than my boots.  A great afternoon and completely free from VW thanks to kindly George arranging it for me. He and Buthers are shredding the ice on Friday.