A day out at Porsche Experience, Silverstone
Discussion
TL;DR: Drove some 911s, had great fun.
A couple of days ago, I was lucky enough to go on a 911 driving experience at the Porsche facility at Silverstone. Thought I'd make a few notes for anyone interested.
To get to the centre, you drive through the main gates of Silverstone circuit itself and follow the access road round. Circuits on non-race days always have a slightly forlorn, windswept air to them, but your state of mind begins to change as you see evocative names such as Club, Vale and Stow. The centre is located a stone's throw from the middle of the Hangar Straight, and during my visit there were some Radical, BMW Z4 and Audi R8 GT cars testing. That in itself was worth the trip.
(library pic)
The car park was stuffed full of tasty metal; Porsches of all flavours were represented. Amongst my favourites:
Beautiful original Targa
Next door to its youngest son, the 991 Targa:
993
991 Turbo & 997.2 GT3 RS
The Porsche facility is on three levels: on the ground floor is a reception area with some current and historic models (and of course the massively overpriced Porsche branded goods - particular favourite was the carbon fibre pipe), first floor is a restaurant, and top floor is a viewing gallery.
On arrival, you are greeted and given a rather natty name badge:
The showroom had some very interesting vehicles:
Cayman GTS
991 C4S with Aerokit. Love the colour.
550 RS Spyder
RS Spyder
The staff then directed us up to the restaurant, where we had a beautiful lunch provided. A quick sign of a disclaimer, a further wander round the showroom and we went into the pre-drive briefing.
During this ten minute briefing, an instructor talks you through the format of the afternoon's driving experience. In essence, we were to try 2 cars: both 991s, but one a four wheel drive manual and one a two wheel drive PDK, the idea being to feel the difference between them in a variety of situations. The facility consists of several different circuits: two for handling, an "ice hill", a "kickplate", some straights, and a low friction surface. We were allowed to choose which we'd like to try, in case there was anything specific you were interested in. I opted to move from circuit to circuit, trying out as many as possible.
The circuits at the Porsche Experience:
You are then introduced to your instructor for the afternoon - mine was a very nice guy called Mark.
"My" 991 for part of the afternoon
So, the driving. I started in the four wheel drive, manual car. First of all we went to the handling circuit shown on the right hand of the above picture. This is a two-lane road way, very similar to a go kart track with some serious elevation changes. The first lap I was told to "mooch around", just to get the lie of the land. By the second lap, however, Mark the instructor, um, instructed me to start thinking about racing lines, hitting apexes and changing gears. This is when the real fun started. Every lap you begin to trust the car more and more, applying the throttle slightly earlier, knowing that the rears would just bed down and get on with it.
Mark then put the car in "Sports Plus" which transformed it. The sports exhaust opened its flaps, and the auto-blip started to work on the manual downshifts to perfectly match your revs. This is an incredibly clever system and makes you feel (and sound like) a properly heroic wheelsmith.
It's all very well thinking you're a good driver on the road, but I probably didn't hit one apex or brake in the correct place the whole time. Mark remained calm and assuring. Boy oh boy was it fun though.
Next, we moved to the kickplate. This is based at the beginning of the low friction (water sprayed) surface. It is a metal plate attached to hydraulic rams embedded into the road. You approach it between 20 and 25 mph, and when your back wheels go over the metal, the rams kick the plate randomly to the left or the right to induce oversteer. By that stage, you are on the low friction surface so catching the slide is pretty tricky. We had several goes (both in the 4wd and 2wd vehicles) with and without PSM (Porsche Stability Management) switched on to feel all the different combinations. I could have played on this all afternoon - how much more fun could you have than drifting a 911 around?
(If my explanation was terrible, you can see a video of it here: http://www.porsche.com/silverstone/en/porschedrivi...
We then tried the straights, which was an opportunity to do some 0-60 runs, as well as some 60-0 tests. One of the dictats that Porsche management enforce is the ability of their cars to decelerate from 60-0 in less than half the time it takes them to sprint from 0-60. To put that in context, think of the 918 Spyder with its 2.6 second 0-60 time...I would imagine your eyeballs would touch the windscreen. We performed some swerve avoidance tests too, which again highlighted just how mental you'd have to go on the road to exceed the performance of the vehicle.
As a finale, it was back out onto the other handling circuit for a few more "hot" laps (I was quite the helmsman by this point of course).
The only downside to the day? Not having the means to put a deposit down on anything!
A couple of days ago, I was lucky enough to go on a 911 driving experience at the Porsche facility at Silverstone. Thought I'd make a few notes for anyone interested.
To get to the centre, you drive through the main gates of Silverstone circuit itself and follow the access road round. Circuits on non-race days always have a slightly forlorn, windswept air to them, but your state of mind begins to change as you see evocative names such as Club, Vale and Stow. The centre is located a stone's throw from the middle of the Hangar Straight, and during my visit there were some Radical, BMW Z4 and Audi R8 GT cars testing. That in itself was worth the trip.
(library pic)
The car park was stuffed full of tasty metal; Porsches of all flavours were represented. Amongst my favourites:
Beautiful original Targa
Next door to its youngest son, the 991 Targa:
993
991 Turbo & 997.2 GT3 RS
The Porsche facility is on three levels: on the ground floor is a reception area with some current and historic models (and of course the massively overpriced Porsche branded goods - particular favourite was the carbon fibre pipe), first floor is a restaurant, and top floor is a viewing gallery.
On arrival, you are greeted and given a rather natty name badge:
The showroom had some very interesting vehicles:
Cayman GTS
991 C4S with Aerokit. Love the colour.
550 RS Spyder
RS Spyder
The staff then directed us up to the restaurant, where we had a beautiful lunch provided. A quick sign of a disclaimer, a further wander round the showroom and we went into the pre-drive briefing.
During this ten minute briefing, an instructor talks you through the format of the afternoon's driving experience. In essence, we were to try 2 cars: both 991s, but one a four wheel drive manual and one a two wheel drive PDK, the idea being to feel the difference between them in a variety of situations. The facility consists of several different circuits: two for handling, an "ice hill", a "kickplate", some straights, and a low friction surface. We were allowed to choose which we'd like to try, in case there was anything specific you were interested in. I opted to move from circuit to circuit, trying out as many as possible.
The circuits at the Porsche Experience:
You are then introduced to your instructor for the afternoon - mine was a very nice guy called Mark.
"My" 991 for part of the afternoon
So, the driving. I started in the four wheel drive, manual car. First of all we went to the handling circuit shown on the right hand of the above picture. This is a two-lane road way, very similar to a go kart track with some serious elevation changes. The first lap I was told to "mooch around", just to get the lie of the land. By the second lap, however, Mark the instructor, um, instructed me to start thinking about racing lines, hitting apexes and changing gears. This is when the real fun started. Every lap you begin to trust the car more and more, applying the throttle slightly earlier, knowing that the rears would just bed down and get on with it.
Mark then put the car in "Sports Plus" which transformed it. The sports exhaust opened its flaps, and the auto-blip started to work on the manual downshifts to perfectly match your revs. This is an incredibly clever system and makes you feel (and sound like) a properly heroic wheelsmith.
It's all very well thinking you're a good driver on the road, but I probably didn't hit one apex or brake in the correct place the whole time. Mark remained calm and assuring. Boy oh boy was it fun though.
Next, we moved to the kickplate. This is based at the beginning of the low friction (water sprayed) surface. It is a metal plate attached to hydraulic rams embedded into the road. You approach it between 20 and 25 mph, and when your back wheels go over the metal, the rams kick the plate randomly to the left or the right to induce oversteer. By that stage, you are on the low friction surface so catching the slide is pretty tricky. We had several goes (both in the 4wd and 2wd vehicles) with and without PSM (Porsche Stability Management) switched on to feel all the different combinations. I could have played on this all afternoon - how much more fun could you have than drifting a 911 around?
(If my explanation was terrible, you can see a video of it here: http://www.porsche.com/silverstone/en/porschedrivi...
We then tried the straights, which was an opportunity to do some 0-60 runs, as well as some 60-0 tests. One of the dictats that Porsche management enforce is the ability of their cars to decelerate from 60-0 in less than half the time it takes them to sprint from 0-60. To put that in context, think of the 918 Spyder with its 2.6 second 0-60 time...I would imagine your eyeballs would touch the windscreen. We performed some swerve avoidance tests too, which again highlighted just how mental you'd have to go on the road to exceed the performance of the vehicle.
As a finale, it was back out onto the other handling circuit for a few more "hot" laps (I was quite the helmsman by this point of course).
The only downside to the day? Not having the means to put a deposit down on anything!
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