Hampton Downs has a new attraction, a water-saturated 'skating rink' for cars. Reporter Mathew Dearnaley was invited to try it out
As a supposedly vulnerable commuter cyclist, it was hard to get my head around the notion of sending motorists to the race track to become safer drivers.
Even more mind-boggling was being challenged to join the "enemy" behind the steering wheel to deliberately spin a car out of control on a giant slab of smoothened concrete, under water jets designed to render the surface almost as slippery as ice.
An early recollection of being in a skidding vehicle was as the 14-year-old passenger of a novice driver whose loss of control in gravel before slamming into a parked car put me in hospital for a week with concussion and internal bruising.
So it was no easy task for BMW's driver training team to coax me on to the new "skid pan" at the Hampton Downs Motorsport Park in north Waikato, where drivers are taught to make the most of a bad situation in controlled conditions - hopefully to improve their odds of surviving crashes on the open road.
With the dimensions of a rugby field - 100m by 50m - to lessen chances of cars sliding off the end, the $800,000 pad is the largest in New Zealand and was formed with a single pour of cable-tensioned concrete.
It opened last month for emergency driving training.
Motor park managing director Tony Roberts reports a steady stream of clients, who will soon include police and ambulance drivers.
But he says his dream is to see hundreds of teenagers using it every day before being let loose on public roads.
Lead BMW instructor Mike Eady, a former motor-racing champion, tells me and the group of five thrill-seekers I am tagging along with that we are guaranteed to lose control of our cars in short order. All we can do then is hit the brakes to regain what little grip we can find on our automotive skating rink.
"You'll all spin out and what we have to do then is not fight the slide, but brake because you've basically lost control - your job now is to slow down before you hit anything."
But he assures us we won't be driving any faster than 25km/h, and perhaps no more than 3km/h on the most slippery parts of the pad, so I can be reasonably confident of not returning to hospital unless I trip on my shoe-laces scurrying out of the car.
After driving us around the pad in his BMW to demonstrate the slipping and sliding we are expected to perform, Eady and fellow instructor Martin Collins issue us with walkie-talkie sets and send us into battle in our vehicles to listen for radio instructions.
The first task of "understeering" involves speeding up before trying to turn sharply, to rob our wheels of all grip, sending the cars sliding straight ahead until the brakes are applied and control can be regained.
It takes me a couple of circuits before my turns are tight enough to lose control. Eventually I become bold enough, but veer uncomfortably close to the end of the pad before having the wit to apply enough brake.
Eady later twigs that I am pumping my anchors, as my father taught me 40 years ago, rather than slamming my foot down to activate the car's modern ABS braking system.
Then he dashes what's left of my driving self-esteem by telling me I am clutching the steering wheel at an outdated "ten to two" position, which I had always considered the mark of a safe and controlled driver.
Apparently racing drivers around the world have long gripped the wheel at a "quarter to three" to provide the greatest control, and who am I to argue with Eady, who is one of just 10 driving trainers around the world with special BMW accreditation.
It takes more trial and error before I manage to regain traction by applying just enough of the brakes to keep the car in motion before lurching to the next turn.
Although it may seem a no-brainer to brake after losing control, Eady says too many drivers panic and struggle to correct their steering, a pointless and potentially dangerous exercise.
The next challenge is "oversteering" for which we are told to drive slowly into a bend and then accelerate out of it, sending our cars into rear wheel spins. This requires a more active survival tactic, still using the brakes, but then "counter-steering" against the slide to get the front wheels to drag the errant rear wheels back into line.
Because I am in a front-wheel-drive car, which is not as well-balanced as rear-drive models but harder to spin out, Eady sits in the passenger seat and uses the handbrake to induce the required emergency.
After disgracing myself with a full-circle spin, followed by a few emergency stops, I get the hang of counter-steering out of trouble.
Then Eady tells me to put my foot on the throttle. This doesn't come naturally but after a few false starts every fibre of me is elated to feel the car shuddering out of the spin.
My feeling of victory is short-lived, though, as Eady tells me I am too jerky both on the throttle and the steering wheel, and need to relax a lot more. Easy for him to say.
He adds that only the most experienced and skilful drivers - and somehow I don't think I fit in that category - should try to accelerate out of a wheel-spin, as it requires fine judgment, and failure will simply increase the impact of a collision.
"Skid control is almost an oxymoron because if you're in a skid you've lost control so it's very hard to rectify it," he says.
"But there are a couple of things you can do - you can brake, you can opposite lock [counter steer] or if you're really, really good sometimes you can get yourself out of the slide."
Our session concludes with time trials in which I am shocked to find after a practice run that I came third among the six-member group, after being allowed behind the wheel of a BMW. But it turns out that the traction control system was inadvertently left on, automatically applying brakes to individual wheels on bends, so I have had an unfair advantage before turning it off for the grand finale and coming second to last.
Fastest round the course is 70-year-old Dutch-born Derek Romeyn of Cambridge, although he comes second to his 68-year-old brother Cees after being penalised for not stopping in the correct position.
The brothers both recall gaining their licences at the minimum driving age of 18 in their homeland, where it was compulsory to be trained by professional instructors.
They lament the lack of such a requirement in New Zealand, which Derek Romeyn says has too many aggressive drivers with inflated opinions of their driving prowess.
