Sometime this winter, my good friend and fellow photographer Alok Paleri called me, asking „hey dude, would you like to spend a whole day drifting you car on snow?“. Well, obviously, long discussions and persuasions followed until, 7 seconds later, I said „yeah, of course!“.
You see, as opposed to me, Alok is actually a full time photographer, not just a spare time shutterbug and he works at Drive&Fun, a company that organizes events like high performance driver trainings. As every winter, they also did snow driving events in Thomatal, Austria, one of which I was kindly invited to.
So I got my scooby ready (i.e. I put some fuel in it and checked if any other fluids were missing) and left for Thomatal on saturday afternoon two weeks ago. As I’ve recently swapped my diffs and gearbox for a short ratio Type-R setup, which also gives me the benefit of a 35/64 front/rear torque split I was especially excited about the possibility to test the behaviour of my old GC8 on snow, wondering how much new rear-end agility I’d be able to discover. Turns out a lot.
Going out for my first run late on saturday on the well prepared but very icy track, all I did was spin the car. I was seriously wondering whether I’d accidentaly bought a gearbox that converts the GC8 to rear wheel drive. Of course that wasn’t the case, but it turns out that a fixed 35/65 gives you a car which behaves almost exactly like a RWD car on ice.
Kindly being allowed to have a go in a BMW 130i for a few laps allowed me to confirm that feeling, with the beemer being slightly easier to hold due to its softer suspension being better suited to the icy ground and also because it naturally had more steering lock than my scooby, giving you a bit more to play with.
All it took though, was to learn how to actually use anything less than 70% throttle in the scooby, because that’s something I pretty much never had to do with my old (boring) 50/50 split and lame diffs. So I went faster and faster until at some point I decided to relocate a rather large part of my front…
..into my trunk. It’s just more practical, you know.
Of course there were other participants, who all too seemed to profit a lot from the professional advice given by the instructors throughout the day.
Obviously, testing the limits sometimes includes going over them. The well-prepared track, which had nicely banked edges instead of ice walls ment that the tractor was all that was normally needed.
The professional organization also included measurements of the snow’s depth and quality by specialist, using very sophisticated techniques.
In cultures that are slightly less accustomed to snow, these techniques haven’t yet progressed quite as far.
..which had some interesting results.
At the end of the day, I think I’ve never learnt so much about my car in a single day. For fun, I prefer to drive in fresh snow, cause that just gives you more traction and more stuff flying around to make pics look all amazing, but for learning someting about driving your car, this day of driving on a very icy track was just ideal. In case you have never been to a snow drift day, I can only recommend it!
So after another 5-hour drive, a large part of it on german autobahns at 6000rpm (short gearing isn’t ideal everywhere…) I safely made it back home and put the GC8 in its usual spot. Looking back at it I couldn’t resist taking another pic of it as it was standing there, battered and dirty but still going strong! 🙂
Some more pics as usual on silverpics.ch, and if you wanna see more pics of people „testing“ the snow, visit the silverpics facebook page.
Pictures of myself in the car obviously by Alok Paleri, lokkydesigns.com. Thanks a lot for that and for a really nice weekend, mate!Sometime this winter, my good friend and fellow photographer Alok Paleri called me, asking „hey dude, would you like to spend a whole day drifting you car on snow?“. Well, of obviously, long discussions and persuasions followed until, 7 seconds later, I said „yeah, of course!“.
You see, as opposed to me, Alok is actually a full time photographer, not just a spare time shutterbug and he works at Drive&Fun, a company that organizes events like high performance driver trainings. As every winter, they also did snow driving events in Thomatal, Austria, one of which I was kindly invited to.
So I got my scooby ready (i.e. I put some fuel in it and checked if any other fluids were missing) and left for Thomatal on saturday afternoon two weeks ago. As I’ve recently swapped my diffs and gearbox for a short ratio Type-R setup, which also gives me the benefit of a 35/64 front/rear torque split I was especially excited about the possibility to test the behaviour of my old GC8 on snow, wondering how much new rear-end agility I’d be able to discover. Turns out a lot.
Going out for my first run late on saturday on the well prepared but very icy track, all I did was spin the car. I was seriously wondering whether I’d accidentaly bought a gearbox that converts the GC8 to rear wheel drive. Of course that wasn’t the case, but it turns out that a fixed 35/65 gives you a car which behaves almost exactly like a RWD car on ice.
Kindly being allowed to have a go in a BMW 130i for a few laps allowed me to confirm that feeling, with the beemer being slightly easier to hold due to its softer suspension being better suited to the icy ground and also because it naturally had more steering lock than my scooby, giving you a bit more to play with.
All it took though, was to learn how to actually use anything less than 70% throttle in the scooby, because that’s something I pretty much never had to do with my old (boring) 50/50 split and lame diffs. So I went faster and faster until at some point I decided to relocate a rather large part of my front…
..into my trunk. It’s just more practical, you know.
Of course there were other participants, who all too seemed to profit a lot from the professional advice given by the instructors throughout the day.
Obviously, testing the limits sometimes includes going over them. The well-prepared track, which had nicely banked edges instead of ice walls ment that the tractor was all that was normally needed.
The professional organization also included measurements of the snow’s depth and quality by specialist, using very sophisticated techniques.
In cultures that are slightly less accustomed to snow, these techniques haven’t yet progressed quite as far.
..which had some interesting results.
At the end of the day, I think I’ve never learnt so much about my car in a single day. For fun, I prefer to drive in fresh snow, cause that just gives you more traction and more stuff flying around to make pics look all amazing, but for learning someting about driving your car, this day of driving on a very icy track was just ideal. In case you have never been to a snow drift day, I can only recommend it!
So after another 5-hour drive, a large part of it on german autobahns at 6000rpm (short gearing isn’t ideal everywhere…) I safely made it back home and put the GC8 in its usual spot. Looking back at it I couldn’t resist taking another pic of it as it was standing there, battered and dirty but still going strong! 🙂
Some more pics as usual on silverpics.ch, and if you wanna see more pics of people „testing“ the snow, visit the silverpics facebook page.
Pictures of myself in the car obviously by Alok Paleri, lokkydesigns.com. Thanks a lot for that and for a really nice weekend, mate!