Benjy
Active Member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2010
- Messages
- 985
- Car
- Audi R8 V10 5.2
What a fantastic day, guys if you haven't done this I fully recommend it as a great day and real fun to do things with an AMG that you might not do or want to do with your own.
I had a really great instructor by the name of Andre who was very patient and good teacher, instructing a very un-patient person like me.
Me and Nige started off by getting to MB World around 12:00 which the only thing that was a bit of a dissapointment on arriving was the fact that a carteen of Ribenna cost £1.80 the same as Nige found out was the cost of a can of coke. Hey ho....We signed up and waited for our names to be called, which in the meantime had a little look around the museum on the ground floor and fell in love with a very old but almost new looking SE convertible....absolutely stunning. Also some of the old SL's again were such stunning looking cars which you can see how MB took so much pride in the cars they built.
Come 1 o'clock my name was called out and I was shown over to a white E63 which was very surprisingly bigger than I thought inside and made my C63 look quite small, the bigger steering wheel and seat fitted my rather big end very nicely and I found the car on first impressions very comfortable. We pulled out with the hazrds flashing straight over the small roundabout and over to the straight skid pan. Andre told me that he wanted me to get upto 35 -40 mph and slam the brakes on when he said after he had switched off all the electronic safety systems on the car. Which I duly did and off I went, as soon as I hit the skid pan slammed the brakes on and subsequently put the big E into 2 spins. More scary than I thought.....Then we got back up to the end waited our turn and was asked to do the same exercise but this time with all the systems switched on BUT to take my hands off the steering wheel when I broke....I have to say that freaked me out a little...so I pushed the car to 40 mph hit the skid pan hands off the wheel and broker really hard. Not not saying you guys should try this but the cat went in a straight line even though the steering wheel moved left and right....This was the indepenpent braking system that all AMG cars are fitted with and shocked me to bits on how this car knew which wheel to brake as and when required to keep it in a straight line. Incredible!
My favourite part of the whole experience though was the circular skid pan and mastering drifting on the slippery service. I must admit we did go on this quite alot and was very addictive as you just wanted to master this. If like me you guys have seen this on the tele and thought "I could do that easily, its a piece of p* ss"...trust me it is very very diffcult and has a knack at getting it right. I loved it and managed in the end to get nearly 2 circuits sliding the back out, this time in a C63 estate.
Now onto the bit of the day where I jumped into the C63 in which I had told Andre that this is what I had been waiting for as it was really interesting to me to see how much I the C63 can be pushed, plus how far can you push it before the back end goes on you....all the sort of questions (stupidly) you think about when you buy one of these beasts......Well lets put it like this!
How stupis am I. I had NOT REALISED that I had not pushed my car on the roads half, well no where near half what the limits of what the C63 can do. OMG the way you can push this car and it just easts up the track and thats just me driving it, when you get one of the instructors or racing drivers ion these things, which Nige found out with his instructor. In Nigel's words "You head and mind cant work quick enough as to how hard these guys push these cars where you think its impossible to brake, turn in and accelerate" Incredible. What this did do for me though was just up my total respect in these cars at just how good they are as track tools as well as road monsters. Absolutely incredible. By the end of my 3 hour session I had one last go with the C63 round the track and had the back end of this car just losing traction around the tight bends as well as getting slight understeer with the way I was pushing the front end in hard into the bends.
All in all I thought this experience was one of excitment and fun, and the other the way my respect for these cars has increased due to their absolute thundering noise and the way they handle and perform on the track but also the huge leap forward in safety these amazing vehicles demonstrated to me and my mate.
I had a really great instructor by the name of Andre who was very patient and good teacher, instructing a very un-patient person like me.
Me and Nige started off by getting to MB World around 12:00 which the only thing that was a bit of a dissapointment on arriving was the fact that a carteen of Ribenna cost £1.80 the same as Nige found out was the cost of a can of coke. Hey ho....We signed up and waited for our names to be called, which in the meantime had a little look around the museum on the ground floor and fell in love with a very old but almost new looking SE convertible....absolutely stunning. Also some of the old SL's again were such stunning looking cars which you can see how MB took so much pride in the cars they built.
Come 1 o'clock my name was called out and I was shown over to a white E63 which was very surprisingly bigger than I thought inside and made my C63 look quite small, the bigger steering wheel and seat fitted my rather big end very nicely and I found the car on first impressions very comfortable. We pulled out with the hazrds flashing straight over the small roundabout and over to the straight skid pan. Andre told me that he wanted me to get upto 35 -40 mph and slam the brakes on when he said after he had switched off all the electronic safety systems on the car. Which I duly did and off I went, as soon as I hit the skid pan slammed the brakes on and subsequently put the big E into 2 spins. More scary than I thought.....Then we got back up to the end waited our turn and was asked to do the same exercise but this time with all the systems switched on BUT to take my hands off the steering wheel when I broke....I have to say that freaked me out a little...so I pushed the car to 40 mph hit the skid pan hands off the wheel and broker really hard. Not not saying you guys should try this but the cat went in a straight line even though the steering wheel moved left and right....This was the indepenpent braking system that all AMG cars are fitted with and shocked me to bits on how this car knew which wheel to brake as and when required to keep it in a straight line. Incredible!
My favourite part of the whole experience though was the circular skid pan and mastering drifting on the slippery service. I must admit we did go on this quite alot and was very addictive as you just wanted to master this. If like me you guys have seen this on the tele and thought "I could do that easily, its a piece of p* ss"...trust me it is very very diffcult and has a knack at getting it right. I loved it and managed in the end to get nearly 2 circuits sliding the back out, this time in a C63 estate.
Now onto the bit of the day where I jumped into the C63 in which I had told Andre that this is what I had been waiting for as it was really interesting to me to see how much I the C63 can be pushed, plus how far can you push it before the back end goes on you....all the sort of questions (stupidly) you think about when you buy one of these beasts......Well lets put it like this!
How stupis am I. I had NOT REALISED that I had not pushed my car on the roads half, well no where near half what the limits of what the C63 can do. OMG the way you can push this car and it just easts up the track and thats just me driving it, when you get one of the instructors or racing drivers ion these things, which Nige found out with his instructor. In Nigel's words "You head and mind cant work quick enough as to how hard these guys push these cars where you think its impossible to brake, turn in and accelerate" Incredible. What this did do for me though was just up my total respect in these cars at just how good they are as track tools as well as road monsters. Absolutely incredible. By the end of my 3 hour session I had one last go with the C63 round the track and had the back end of this car just losing traction around the tight bends as well as getting slight understeer with the way I was pushing the front end in hard into the bends.
All in all I thought this experience was one of excitment and fun, and the other the way my respect for these cars has increased due to their absolute thundering noise and the way they handle and perform on the track but also the huge leap forward in safety these amazing vehicles demonstrated to me and my mate.
she thinks 2 gas guzzlers would be to much 
