Wheels on fire

THERE'S nothing like doing an advanced driving course to shatter one's illusions about being a good driver.

A driving student takes an Audi TT around Sandown, Melbourne.

THERE'S nothing like doing an advanced driving course to shatter one's illusions about being a good driver, but the experience gained is invaluable for potential emergencies.

I've always thought of myself as a good driver. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have been in the passenger seat of my car - not to mention other drivers on the road - who think differently, but my unblemished driving record is, in my opinion, testament to the fact that I know how to control a car and how to drive defensively and safely.

Or at least that's what I thought I was doing. Audi, like many car manufacturers, runs a driving course for its customers whereby they can improve their driving skills through learning from professional drivers. In the interests of self-improvement, I decided to attend an advanced driving course at Melbourne's Sandown Raceway at Audi's invitation to find out if my driving skills really did match my idea of how good a driver I am.

For 15 years the Audi Driving Experience has been an invitation-only, dealer-based program but this year the company opened it to the public, investing $6.8 million in a fleet of 40 cars that span the breadth of the Audi range. You don't need to be an Audi driver to attend; you just need a full Australian driver's licence and to be over 21 years of age (prices start from $750 for the full-day advanced driving experience). On this particular cold and windy day in Melbourne, Audi assembled a team of its celebrity ambassadors - including chef Kylie Kwong, newsreader Sandra Sully and Olympic sailing gold medallists Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page -to join the course.

The point of a driving course such as this is to give drivers confidence and the skills to back it up, but to do that the first thing the instructors here do is knock some of the ego and self-assurance out of the participants.

The course is led by Steve Pizzati, an Australian race driver turned instructor and a former host of Top Gear Australia. The first thing Pizzati asks the assembled group to do is to raise their hands if they consider themselves in the top 20 per cent of drivers. Almost everybody raises their hand. By the end of the day, although we have learned valuable new driving skills, most of the attendees would probably not put their hand up if they were asked the question again.

The first exercise is about learning what to do in an oversteer or understeer situation. Understeer is what happens when you approach a corner at speed and the car is going too fast to turn at a sharp enough angle. Oversteer, as the name suggests, is what happens when it steers too much, or in other words when the wheels get away from the driver and the car spins out of control.

To learn how to get out of an oversteer situation we have to get the car into one. That means turning off the car's electronic stability control, hitting the accelerator for a short run up to a bend, which has been especially wet for exercise. We are told by the instructors not to be shy and to give the car everything it's got and then, just before the bend, turn the wheel as hard and as far as it will go. It goes against everything you know and is a much harder thing to do than it sounds. Not surprisingly, the car oversteered and our job was to regain control of the car. The key to getting out of it is to counter-steer, and to point the front wheels in the direction you want to go. "Keep your eyes on where you want the car to be," the instructors keep telling us as we go through the exercise several times and eventually it starts to get less threatening.

Then it's time to learn about how to stop the car, first by getting it to 50 kilometres an hour and hitting the brakes hard to engage the ABS and then at 110km/h while simulating avoiding a collision with an obstacle. This is where the real value lies in a driving course such as this. In normal driving we never get to use our ABS braking system until we're in an emergency. Simulating that situation in controlled conditions not only gives a driver experience in handling the car; it also gives the confidence that you know what will happen when you do it.

The course also involves track lapping under the guidance of professional drivers and a timed steering slalom challenge as well as instruction on driving posture and how to grip the steering wheel (two hands, one at 3 0'clock and the other at 9 o'clock). As a driver with almost 30 years of experience on the road, I was being taught things for the first time, but perhaps the most valuable was the lesson in how ABS brakes work and knowing how to bring a car to a stop quickly while maintaining control. A life lesson like no other because, as Pizzati says, "statistically speaking driving is the most dangerous thing we do".

TIPPING HATS TO A ROCKET

It doesn't take a long time in Los Angeles to realise that this is a city of cars. Public transport is sorely lacking and, given the city's urban sprawl, not a practical way of getting from A to B. Taxis are rare and they don't usually stop if you hail them. The city's attitude towards pedestrians verges on hostility (footpaths just stop all of a sudden) and if you want to ride a pushbike on the road then you are taking your life into your hands. If you want to enjoy Los Angeles you need to embrace its way of life and that means getting behind the wheel of a car.

On a recent trip to California WISH borrowed a brand-new Audi RS 5 Cabriolet - so new that it wasn't even available for sale at that time (the car will be launched in Australia later this month) - to drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara, 150 kilometres up Highway 101. But before we even hit the freeway, which is where the RS 5 really comes to life, we were constantly reminded of the beauty of this car and the reaction it can elicit from people.

Not only is Los Angeles a city designed for drivers, it's also a city designed for parking, or more specifically valet parking. So even though the RS 5 Cabriolet has front and rear parking sensors and a rear camera to make reverse parking easier, for a relatively small fee - and tip - you will never need to use them. You can exist as a driver in Los Angeles without ever having to park your own car. The valet parkers in Los Angeles see and park a lot of very expensive luxury cars: Ferraris, Rolls-Royces, Bentleys and Aston Martins seem to be as common as Toyotas and Hyundais in certain parts of the city. But the RS 5 Cabriolet never failed to excite the valet parkers at hotels and restaurants in Los Angeles. Comments ranged from "wow, nice car" all the way to the somewhat comforting "we'll take good care of your Audi for you, sir". In hotels in Los Angeles the hottest cars are parked in the driveway rather than hidden in an underground carpark and let's just say that we never had to wait too long to collect our RS 5 when we wanted it.

Thanks to a 4.2-litre V8 engine that delivers 331kW of power, the car drives like a rocket, and with a seven-speed S-tronic dual clutch gearbox that's exactly how you can drive it. Put your foot down on the freeway to overtake another vehicle and you're in for a surprise. Put the top down (or up, it doesn't matter) and the RS 5 Cabriolet just looks hot. The only problem with driving a car such as this in Los Angeles is that the valet parking attendants expect a hefty tip.