Yahoo Autos Porsche Camp4 Canada Will Turn You Into An Oversteer-Addled Goon
You can't have much more fun in a car than sliding it in the snow: Especially in a brand-new Porsche with studded tires at Mecaglisse, a gorgeous snow-covered track a couple hours north of Montreal. That's Porsche's Camp4 Canada, which beyond being a hell of a good time, will teach you all the finer points of going sideways.
Porsche invited R&T to an abridged version of the program, which crammed in all the driving into one all-too-short afternoon. To be fair, I'd consider anything short of living at the track with these cars at your disposal "all too short."
The day was split up into four "modules;" a slalom with the 718 Cayman S; a figure eight with a 911 Carrera S; and a Scandinavian flick and road course, both with the 911 Carrera 4S. Each car is fitted with gloriously-named, serious-looking Nokian Hakkapeliitta tires with 1.5-mm studs, which give impressive grip on the icy surface.
Before you get on track, though, there's a briefing. There's always a briefing at these sorts of events, but unlike most others, this one is actually informative. The lead instructor at the track plays some slides with graphics explaining what you need to know about weight transfer and how you use it to reach, then exceed, the limits of grip. We also spent time talking about how to induce and correct oversteer and understeer–skills that would soon be very important.
Chances are if you're reading this website, you know how all this stuff works, but the briefing provided a great, illuminating refresher.
Our driving started at the Scandinavian Flick module in the C4S, a car that takes some getting used to if you're more familiar with rear-drive sports cars. The exercise goes like this: you accelerate hard up to a cone where you then get on the brakes, get the car pointed left, then drift a long, sweeping right hander.
The first part is simple enough–go hard on the brakes right at the cone to get weight on the nose while steering left, and the car wants to turn in. It's holding the slide in the right-hander that's tricky. Once the car is at the desired angle of slip, you hold the slide on throttle while keeping the steering wheel nearly dead straight. Mercifully, I didn't spin here, but more often than not, I'd lose the slide or understeer towards the snowbank. By the time I was juuuuust starting to understand the technique, it was on to the next exercise.
After the C4S, taking the rear-drive 911 Carrera S out on the figure eight feels much more natural. First, our instructor had us induce oversteer and understeer so we could correct each, but then the real fun started. First, we had to drift around one half of the figure eight, before attempting to drift all the way around, in both directions. I spun many times.
But when you get it right, it's magic. Soon enough I, a driver with not much talent to speak of, was drifting the car one handed at an angle I'd like to think make looked me like a hero. Annoyingly, I never managed to string together a full figure eight without spinning, but if there's any place in the world you want to spin a car, it's here.
There are snow banks lining the course, but even if you bonk one pretty hard, you're not likely to damage the car. If you get stuck, a Cayenne support vehicle will tow you out, and if you do end up making a small dent, the instructors won't mind too much, so long as you're being safe throughout the day.
The third exercise of the day was a simple slalom, the only one in the 718 Cayman S. At least initially, the Cayman is easily the most intuitive car of the three. The 911 C2S feels light, but the Cayman feels downright wispy by comparison. It's all too willing to rotate with even the slightest hint of throttle, thanks to its superb, balanced chassis and the impressive torque of its new 2.5-liter flat-four.
As friendly as the Cayman is, it's still incredibly easy to spin on the slalom because it's all-too-tempting to give it a boot full of throttle, at which point, you'll whip around like a top. It takes a lot of finesse to give the car just enough throttle to get the rear hanging out around each cone, especially as the surface becomes more slippery. Virtually everyone spun here, making it all the more satisfying when you got it right.
Even in spite of my lack of delicacy, the Cayman's unbelievable balance shined through. It's approachable and playful in a way that few other sports cars are–especially at this price point.
It's getting back in the Carrera 4S that's perhaps more astounding. What at the beginning of the day felt heavy and alien, suddenly became shockingly intuitive.
We were on the road course, which has a handful of corners of various radii and some nice elevation changes. It's here, after time spent in the rear-drive cars, that the C4S, with its variable front-to-rear torque split, truly clicks.
With the C4S, the throttle pedal is your best friend. Understeering towards a snow bank? Get on the throttle. Holding oversteer through a sweeping corner? Again, get on the throttle. You see where this is going. In my notes on the C4S, I simply wrote "magic, magic, magic" and, "throttle fixes everything," which isn't an overstatement.
Soon enough, you'll be bouncing off the rev limiter looking out your side mirror, laughing hysterically.
Up until this point, I've never really seen the need for an all-wheel drive 911–the regular old C2 has more than enough grip and traction on the road, as long as you know how to exploit it. But, the C4S is something else entirely. Not so much an old-school sports car as a technological marvel that's still fun as hell. It's easy to understand why these make such great all-weather daily drivers.
By the end of the day, I probably wasn't the Colin McRae-esque when-in-dobut-flat-out sideways hero I imagined myself to be, but damn if I didn't want to keep going. And going. And going.
The course is heavenly, and on these aggressive tires, the 911 and 718 Cayman are unbelievably capable. Despite big power, the cars are very approachable on the icy surface–even with stability control fully off. That's also the benefit of driving on ice, where oversteer happens much more gradually than on a grippier surface. You'll have all the time in the world to catch slide before you end up in a snowbank.
Combine the location and the cars, and you have the perfect place to get introduced to the world of car control and countersteer. It's amazing.
The program costs around $4000 ($5295 CAD), but that includes two days of driving, three nights at a lovely hotel, and food. All you have to do is get yourself to Montreal. It's a lot of money, but, it's hard to think of a way to have more fun in a car, while learning way more than you ever did in Driver's Ed. If this sounds appealing, Porsche will hold the school in the same location next February. Reserve your slot early.
You Might Also Like
