Sturm und drang was in abundance at the Phillip Island race track for Nissan's GT-R drive day earlier this week. The German phrase -- literally 'storm and stress' -- summed up the day. While the Nissan provided the drang, the elements provided the sturm. With predominant dark grey, rain-filled clouds and a driving wind, we expected a chorus of overweight women in horned helmets to strike up a tune at any time.
Nissan had arranged for existing owners of the R35 GT-R and motoring media to attend the racetrack at Phillip Island for a day of familiarisation with the upgraded '10MY car and to meet Kazutoshi Mizuno and Toshio Suzuki (pictured on the track).
Mizuno-san rejoices in the three-pronged title of Chief Vehicle Engineer, Chief Product Specialist and Program Director with specific responsibility for the R35 GT-R and upgrade programs. It's much easier to think of him as the father of the GT-R and, indeed, he encourages this thinking by saying: "GT-R is my son."
Suzuki-san is the man who set the controversial lap time of the Nordschleife (Nurburgring) in the GT-R, upsetting Porsche in the process.
The highpoint of the day, in fact, was a ride around the track in the left seat as Suzuki did his level best to tame the GT-R in the atrocious conditions. Acknowledging that he was not going to set any sort of new lap record on the rain-strewn track, he went out to set a new benchmark for spectacle instead.
Under his guidance, the GT-R would enter bends with plenty of speed, despite the heavy braking beforehand. On a trailing throttle, the car's rear end would step out, rally-fashion, before the apex. By the time it had arrived at the apex, Suzuki was sinking the boot into it to keep the tail out under power. Unfortunately, due to a combination of the treacherous nature of the track and the determined efforts of the GT-R's traction and stability control systems, the car would correct the slide around the apex or beyond.
More unfortunately, the car would be carrying too much speed with Suzuki's right foot still firmly in charge, so the GT-R would power on with the suspension of the outside front wheel vibrating badly as the car grappled with sudden understeer.
On the exit from the corner, the car would re-adjust the torque split and braking for an oversteering attitude. We concluded the lap without incident, although a bird of undetermined genus was clipped with the car's right front corner on the final lap.
Our ride with Suzuki was illuminating, but it came at the wrong end of the drive program -- an hour after this writer had displayed his complete lack of familiarity with either the track or the car.
The track day began with a briefing from Steve Pizzati -- he of Top Gear Australia fame. Pizzati is a personable bloke who quickly puts you at ease, suggesting newbies don't need to go out there and try to show everyone how it's done. He further offers the sensible observation that "there's no such thing as a slow accident."
It might be argued that Pizzati should be back on TV. SBS was right to select him for the role, but -- and here's a bit of personal opinion for you, like it or not -- it appeared his ad lib commentary on cars was being pruned by SBS editors for whatever was most dramatic and snappy. His remarks came across as hyperbolic banality. How would you do in the same situation? Maybe not as well as you think.
Pizzati should be back on the box (with more sympathetic editors and a decent script, perhaps) -- even if it's only to host a documentary series entitled 'Racetracks of Australia'.
Anyway, Nissan had set up a series of witches' hats around the track for different mini tests to help drivers warm up and learn both about the track and the car. A professional or semi-professional instructor accompanied each driver. The unfortunate victim in the left seat during my initial run was V8 Supercar driver Luke Youlden. From the pits, we accelerated onto the track at full throttle and over the rise on the main straight, I was instructed by Youlden to stand on the brake pedal and bring the car to a halt. The GT-R was in fourth with some revs left in hand when I began braking. Even on a dry track -- as it was at the time -- the GT-R took a few seconds to pull up and the ABS was working hard the whole time. You could feel the system redirecting brake pedal pressure from rear to front and then subsequently less for the left-front wheel.
Youlden took me through the accepted cornering practice for the GT-R at Turn Two, which is arguably the most demanding turn on the track. It's wide open, but you have to tackle it in two bites. Brake into the corner and keep the nose in tight, near the apex, let the car drift out again to the middle of the track on part throttle and turn in a second time without easing up on the throttle much, before accelerating out the other side. In essence, you're making two apexes for the same corner.
The next instruction was to let the car coast through Turn Three, which is a much faster and wider open bend -- no braking required. This was followed by a slalom set up by the folks at Nissan on the short straight. On a subsequent lap, I became so wrapped up in my own internalised debrief of what went wrong in Turn Two that I completely forgot to attempt the slalom on the straight. "Errr..." said the instructor as I tore past the cones on my right.
After everyone had run through the half-lap course a few times, Nissan opened up the rest of the track -- merely minutes before a heavy downpour hit the track. Pizzati learned of the imminent storm from a weather website on his mobile phone and warned us to expect "Plan B," which would probably involve retiring for the day to the nearest pub.
To the credit of all involved, Plan B was left on the shelf and everyone had a shot at driving the GT-R in the wet. Sadly, whatever I had learned previously was now redundant, because the safe driving technique for the Nissan around Phillip Island is entirely different on a wet track than on a dry track. Never mind the 'two bites at Turn Two' trick, just stay on the outside of every corner, said my instructor -- no longer Youlden by this stage.
My first drive in the wet was also my first drive on the full track. Only being familiar with half the track meant that I was occasionally cresting a rise without knowing which way the track would turn. This made for some moderately interesting moments and my co-driver was not always at ease with this scenario.
On the approach to Turn Four, which is a sharp right-hander, he said: "Brake... Harder... HARDER!" As I turned in, the car's tail let go but stability control pulled it back into line. The difference between what would have been a 'safe' entry speed for that corner and the actual entry speed might have been 10km/h or a bit more. Not a lot, in other words. All credit to the instructor for observing that the braking was inadequate for the appropriate entry speed. The car's oversteering step to the left was pretty lame compared with what Suzuki-san was executing an hour later -- but then I'm not him.
"So when you say 'harder', you mean 'harder'?" I suggested to my co-driver.
What else can I say about the day? We left the car in R-for-Race for everything: transmission, suspension, traction/stability control. You can disable the stability and traction control entirely, but that didn't seem to be recommended.
If the instructors seemed cautious to a fault, well, they were probably experienced in the ways of overconfident journalists and there was certainly some potential for mayhem. We were told that a customer the previous day had speared off the track and incurred about $12,000 worth of damage to the GT-R he was driving at the time. I guess that puts the score at Journalists: 0, Customers: -1.
The Phillip Island track is deceptive at times and driving around the outside of the corner seems very much counter-intuitive, but when you consider that, the GT-R's ability shines anew. It's a car that seems to encourage what might be called bad habits in other cars. One of the instructors sitting alongside said that braking into the corner on entry was actually the preferred mode in the 4WD turbo terror. I like that.
The GT-R is a great car, no doubt about it. A high-performance rear-drive car like an HSV or FPV would have been handfuls of handful around the track in the same circumstances, without being as quick as the Nissan. That's not to criticise the locally-manufactured large cars, it's just a statement of fact. The GT-R shames cars priced both above and below it.
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