Yahoo Autos Mad Max: Yet Another Driving Instructor Who Hates Me
From the May 2018 issue
We can add Max to the list of driving instructors who hate me. Max is an Italian hotshoe who was assigned to shepherd a group of punk Americans around an icy road course cut into the side of a mountain somewhere near Mont Blanc in the Alps. This was at a Maserati ice-driving school, which I enrolled in because I’m a big believer in education. Never stop learning, I say, especially when the lessons involve Maserati Levantes and Scandinavian flicks. I figured I’d be out there in the shadow of a craggy peak, powersliding through fresh powder while some European rally champion commented on the finer points of load transfer and slip angle. But Max didn’t want to turn off the stability control.
Hey, I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to strap in with some jet-lagged nobody and go tearing off down the mountain half sideways in a 424-hp SUV. But then again, I didn’t come all the way to Italy to drive carefully. In fact, I harbored a lot of pent-up ice-driving aggression since these events never work out for me. Years ago, Lamborghini tried to run a winter-driving course at the Team O’Neil Rally School, which is nestled in a corner of New Hampshire that’s usually the temperature of liquid nitrogen, and that’s in the summer. But of course, the day the Lambos showed up, it was balmy and muddy. Last year, Volkswagen attempted an ice-driving school at a lake in Quebec, and I arrived in the midst of steady February rain, the lake covered in slush. Instead of ice driving, I ended up terrorizing the local back roads, where I was accosted by a man wearing snowshoes. (I tried to pretend I didn’t speak English, but I soon realized that only works if you can speak another language.) At least with this Maserati thing, I figured, even if all the snow melts, I’m still in Italy. So I can mourn my plight over a plate of thinly sliced ham.
Back to Max. I don’t know what happened earlier that day, or earlier in his life, but he’d about had it. He was brooking no nonsense. Thus, when I climbed in and cheerfully pressed the button to disable the stability control, we arrived at an immediate impasse. “No,” he said, pressing the button again. “Stability control on.” I understand his misgivings, since the guys who are quick to disable the stability-control system are usually the ones most in need of the stability-control system. And when I’m on a road course, I usually run with stability on until I learn the track and the car. That’s prudent. But here the schedule allowed for perhaps four laps. There was no time to screw around. Or rather, no time to not screw around. So I got out. Good day, sir.
This was a first in my experience. Normally it takes a few laps for a driving instructor to hate me, but Max knew right away. I respect that. But I bailed because he wasn’t the only option. There were two Levantes, and the other one was under the command of a jovial Italian rally driver named Filippo. Plan B: Wait for Filippo. Because I don’t want to say Max was no fun, but if he’d invented the Slip ’N Slide, it would’ve been called the Fall ’N Stop.
When I climbed in with Filippo, stability control was already off. “You want to leave it off? Okay!” he said, without waiting for an answer. We slithered off down the track and I was immediately glad I’d held out. The Levante gets nice and tail-happy when you stab the throttle. Filippo prudently moderated my enthusiasm here and there, but for the most part he gave me enough rope to hang myself, and I almost did. The walls of the track were hard-pack snow, eight feet high, and at one quick set of esses, I’m pretty sure that my exit took the rear end of the car within about a millimeter of setting off an avalanche of depreciation. But Filippo remained cool.
His advice was to be patient on turn-in, carry enough speed to generate useful load transfer when you brake, and please don’t run over the photographer. At the moment he said the last one, I was attempting a heroic slide for the benefit of said photographer, who was standing in the middle of the lane. “He’ll move,” I said. “Photographers are all crazy.” And I was right.
So it all worked out. I confirmed that all-wheel-drive Maseratis on winter tires are good in the snow. You’re welcome. Later, the photographer sent some shots from the afternoon. I scrolled down to the ones from the corner where I almost ran him over, since I felt like I got it nice and crossed up there. And indeed, there was the Levante, heroically sideways, geysers of snow shooting back from all four tires. And there, behind the wheel . . . well, there was a shadow over the driver, but I could see the white collar of a rugby shirt. Which is what Filippo had been wearing.
Hey, fine with me. If you’re going to have your cherished memories burnished by a stunt driver, at least get the one who’s not afraid to go sideways.
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