“I think this might be the coolest driving school in the world. Pun only slightly intended.” – Henry Catchpole
Henry starts off the video by explaining that he’d never driven a car on studded tires across the face of a frozen lake before. It’s fair to say that he got up to speed quite quickly, learning the balance required to truly get the most out of a rear-engine vintage aircooled 911 when driving in limited grip situations. Flogging a rear-engine car like this takes a deft hand on the steering wheel with lots of corrective counter steer, as well as a reasonably well-governed throttle foot.
Pitch the car sideways with a ‘dab of oppo’ and a flexed thigh muscle full of ‘welly’, and you just might learn the intricacies of ‘snap oversteer’. But if you slowly feed in more and more throttle and steering, occasionally crossing arm over arm and coming all the way back again, you just might get the car to balance on the throttle and smoothly, fluidly, drift through the corner. Dancing on ice is a difficult proposition, and a Porsche 911 is by no means an easy dancing partner.
Traction on ice, especially when augmented by a few thousand sharp and pointed tire spikes, has never been a problem with 911s. Slam the throttle, the weight transfers to the back, traction appears seemingly out of nowhere, and the car just rockets away. Turning corners on ice is a whole other proposition, requiring intricate instruction for the average driver to ‘get it’. There’s a reason 911s make great rally cars. Sadly not all 911 drivers make for good rally drivers. That’s exactly what this Below Zero school is for. If all its good for is teaching you weight transfer, then it was all worth it.