Other Sports August 2008

Back to school
Testing times on Maserati track

Special report by Russell Bray

It is easy after you have passed your driving test to think you know it all but it only takes a day at the exclusive Master Maserati Driving Course at the Varano race track near Parma in Italy to realise there is always more to learn.

The course, though available to other than Maserati owners, is designed to help buyers of the characterful Italian cars enjoy more of the performance of their vehicles while also becoming safer drivers.

And it is impossible to argue with the instructors when they have so many years of motorsport racing successes to their names. Running the day was 29-year-old Andrea Piccini, one of Europe’s top sports car racers with class wins in Porsches, Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Aston Martins … the list goes on.

Before you are let loose on the track, always with an instructor sitting by you, often with a hand hovering over the big, red engine kill switch, it is into the class room.

Much is made of the correct driving position, even of your hands on the wheel, so that you have total control and equally importantly can sense and feel if the car starts to slide in a corner.

Some people have not driven 400+bhp rear wheel drive cars before and that is intimidating enough.
And even though initially we will run with all the safety systems switched on, later on other settings such as sport mode the back of the car will be “loose.”

Many drivers sit too close to the wheel says Piccini and we are told not to left foot brake, just to use that foot to brace ourselves for heavy braking with the right.

We are taught the “classic” racing approach of slow (relatively speaking) into a corner and fast out. On the road this would have to be tempered according to traffic, visibility, speed limits etc.

All the Maseratis being used for the day, including the now replaced GranSport coupe have near 50:50 weight distribution but a mid-engined car with significantly more weight on the rear wheels would be more nervous says Piccini.

How we drive the car dramatically affects its weight distribution and that influences how much grip it has on the road.

Under hard acceleration with a GranSport the weight on the back wheels could increase from 48 per cent when cruising to 60 per cent, but brake hard and rear weight plummets to just 36 per cent.

Turn into a corner at that point and even the electronics will struggle to keep the back of the car in line.

So you need to come smoothly off the brakes before you turn and balance the car evenly on the accelerator.

It’s the same problem with lateral weight transfer: wrench the wheel hard and you “transfer” less weight to the loaded outside wheels than if you do it smoothly.

You can do things quickly then but do them smoothly and don’t saw at the wheel, wheel rotation must be smooth.

On a humid and baking hot day with thunderstorms threatening the concentration to do this while learning the braking points for the corners on this technical circuit soon has us sweating.

Piccini has driven a base lap and thanks to a telemetry system in the cars there is nowhere to hide. They can tell exactly where you braked, when you accelerated and how hard, if you backed off when you frightened yourself and so unbalanced the car. Heck, they can probably tell your birthday and what you had for breakfast!

When you get back to the pits a computer screen compares your car speed, engine revs, gear choice, throttle position, brake pressure and amount of steering compared to him at any part on the circuit.

All the cars had cameras and video recorders fitted but sometimes I forgot my video tape (not because I was that bad!) and wasn’t reminded. My first session, driving on instinct, though I have done some circuit driving before, saw my speed 123.9mph compared to 126.8mph for the instructor’s lap. I used 99.2 gas compared to 99.9 and my steering was only slightly more at 23.6 compared to 23.4. My engine revs were 5449 compared to 5556 for the base lap set by Piccini. My lap time was 1m 10.425 compared to 1m 07.339.

This seemed a good start and I was anxious to learn more and improve.

It had felt unnatural being able to floor the throttle from the corner’s apex (tightest point) knowing that the traction system would cut engine power rather than squeezing it on as I unwound the steering and balancing one against the other. I also found it strange driving with anti-lock brakes on a track because the sensation of front end lock-up isn’t going to come.

Of course the instructors had never met us before and these are expensive cars and the difference between a fast lap and hitting the wall is perilously small.Electronics tend to mean everyone goes home in one piece at the end of the day. My faults, I was told, was that I tended to brake too much, and so wanted to accelerate in the entrance of the corner, and because I did not release the brake pedal smoothly enough I was losing some precision of the front tyres.

This seemed odd because, according to the telemetry the instructor’s brake figure was 0.5 and mine 0.0. I need to grasp what this difference meant or the units to decide how big the difference really was.

For my second session, with the instructor telling me what to do, you have guessed it, I was slower. Car speed dropped to 120.1mph despite my use of brakes going to an identical 0.5 with the instructor, engine revs fell to 5246 and my accelerator figure dropped to 49.1.

The traces on the telemetry for each function were closer to the ‘base’ lap so apparently I was improving though the sheer speed was lower and my lap time 1.5 seconds slower.

Seems odd, but it was fascinating what small measurements you are dealing with.

The concentration needed to drive precisely the same lap after lap must be amazing. I have sent an email to Italy for more explanation than was possible at the time and await the reply with interest. When not on the track there were other driving exercises to do as part of this tremendous experience.

Behind the pits on a big area of Tarmac was an oval of two 180 degree corners with short straights in between. Here you were actually allowed to turn off the traction control and stability systems and power-oversteer around the corners.

Having to use first gear made it feel fairly brutal and with so much power I wasn’t totally happy with the instruction. We were told to come completely off the power and steer into the slide, but if this happened on the track at speed, in a higher gear, you would have to go back on the power (to a lesser degree) to catch the slide.

We all spun some of the time or the car ploughed into understeer because of not hitting the accelerator hard enough. A wet surface was also used for an ‘elk’ style swerve test where you approach at a predetermined speed and have to brake hard enough to made the anti-lock brake system work and then swerve left or right to avoid an obstacle – actually three cones that took quite a pounding.

How hard you needed to press the brake pedal was a graphic illustration of why you should sit in the correct position with enough support from the back of the seat.

There was plenty to think about.

You don’t need these techniques necessarily on the road, but if you follow them in a less extreme manner and concentrate more on your driving you will make the world safer for you and other people.