School for Porsche Sport drivers is all class

Speed kills. In everyday life, and after years of gruesome ad campaigns, any road user could be forgiven if suspecting imminent disaster lurked just beyond the posted limit.

So you need some mental preparation prior to attending a Porsche Sport Driving School. Drifting around a race circuit soaked with water and diesel fuel, scything around a tight and tortuous 'motorkhana' circuit, and blasting around the full layout in an exotic Porsche GT3 RS – this is a school where antics punishable on the street are, instead, encouraged.

Controlled environment
Of course it's all conducted within the safe confines of a closed circuit, and underpinned by a thoroughly logical philosophy – if you can learn to safely control a car at these speeds, you'll be more able to safely control a car at any speed, and especially in an emergency situation.

The Porsche Sport Driving School is headed by chief instructor and former Bathurst 1000 winner, Tomas Mezera. An obviously accomplished racer with a wealth of experience, his morning briefing leaves students in no doubt when it comes to the performance of Porsche models.

"These cars are the closest thing you can get to a race car off the showroom floor," he says, as the hair on the back of my neck begins to rise…

Tomas heads a team of pro instructors familiar to any motorsport fan. Guys like Alex Davison, Steve Johnson, Steve Owen, Daniel Gaunt, Motoring's own Luke Youlden – the list goes on.

The learning is largely practical, meaning the initial briefing is a prelude to considerable time behind the wheel. Mezera’s briefing, delivered with his hallmark laid-back humour, is summarised by two key messages: listen to the instructors, and don’t do anything stupid. After all, stability control won't help if your foot is planted firmly on the accelerator instead of the brake…

Following the briefing we head out to inspect the school's fleet and hear a rundown on Porsche's model range. A variety of models are available and throughout the day, students get to drive them all. As 85 per cent of students who pass through the school don't actually own a Porsche, doing a course like this is a great way to get up close with the brand and its high-end products.

There's the mid-engined Boxster and its hard-top sibling, the Caymen. Of course there's the rear-engined 911, but there's also the heavier front-engined Panamera and Macan, with the models available in a number of grades.

Precision engineering
This is the school's 'Precision' course, an entry-level affair suitable for all skill levels which is conducted at Mount Cotton outside Brisbane. There's also the 'Precision Plus' course, also at Mount Cotton, followed by the 'Performance', 'Master' and 'GT3 Cup' courses, which are all located at Queensland Raceway near Ipswich.

The Precision course will set you back $1485, while the GT3 Cup course, which utilises GT3 race cars with data-logging telemetry, tops out at a heady $6600. Hey, it's still a lot cheaper than buying a Porsche…

Attending this particular school were members of the Australian motoring and lifestyle media plus Porsche ambassador Torah Bright, the pro snowboarder who won an Olympic gold medal in the women's half-pipe in Vancouver in 2010.

Porsches have been a part of Torah's family for years, and these days she gets around in a Cayenne which, she says, easily fits all her snowboarding gear. We reckon it would also climb the mountains without raising a sweat.

Students split into small groups of five or six and each group heads to a different part of the Mount Cotton complex to tackle various tasks. First up for your motoring correspondent? The skid pan which, as it turns out, is a far superior way to start the day than even the best cup of coffee…

Slide time
With the track soaked with water and diesel and the PSM (Porsche Stability Management) switched off (the only time we do so), the difference between understeer (pushing the front) and oversteer (losing the rear) is understood in spectacular fashion.

Conducted at low speed this is an insane amount of fun, and with sufficient time behind the wheel of three test vehicles, we begin to appreciate the nuances of the rear and mid-engined layouts.

By the end of it, we were steering our way out of drifts and spinning-out less. All-up this is a handy skill to have, stability control or not.

Hopping into a nearby Cayenne gives our instructor a chance to showcase the SUV’s abilities on Mount Cotton's off-road test loop. With adjustable air suspension to increase ground clearance and a locking rear differential, it's amazing the types of terrain this vehicle can climb up and over. Whether you'd want your own $150,000 Porsche involved in these sorts of antics is a decision only you can make…

Next up was emergency braking. Conducted on another waterlogged skidpan, a series of demos from the instructor shows how braking distances increase exponentially with speed. Having a go ourselves, in anything from a lightweight 911 to the two-tonne Panamera, also showed just how effective Porsche's ABS system is.

Pulling the vehicle up quickly and securely, the wheels keep turning and so, when braking alone isn’t enough, the driver is still able to steer and thus avoid obstacles.

Need for speed
Then the motorkhana beckoned, where we navigated a tight circuit marked out with cones. Dubbed the 'Porsche Grand Prix', it allows you to put all the lessons learned in the previous exercises together, with your efforts timed by the instructor to instigate a little friendly competition.

Next, proceedings definitely took a serious turn as we ramped-up the pace on the road circuit. This was our chance to go for it, albeit with the reassurance of an instructor in the passenger seat coaching on braking points, racing lines, hitting apexes and powering out.

Smooth equals speed, as Tomas says, and the more relaxed you are the more you can feel what the car is doing. Mount Cotton isn't a race track as such with a top speed of only 160km/h on the back straight, but even so the next corner always approaches swiftly.

Just in case we were beginning to feel a bit cocky about our progress, we were then brought back down to earth with a few hot laps in Porche's ‘racer-with-lights’, the GT3RS. Worth the best part of half-a-million bucks, I hopped into the passenger seat next to former V8 Supercars and international Porsche Cup racer Alex Davison for lap which seemed to defy the laws of physics.

Which left one remaining exercise – a grand showdown on the motorkhana course which pitted every student against the clock to find an outright winner. With penalties for knocking cones, straying from the course or overshooting the final braking box, egos were on the line. The winner even took home a Porsche (well, a scale model of one).

Summing up
Attending the Porsche Sport Drive School accomplishes several things. Students come away with greater confidence and greater driving skill, but they also gain a better understanding of the dynamic forces at play when a vehicle is accelerating, turning and braking.

It's surreal to hop from one Porsche to another and attempt all manner of things totally off limits in the 'real world', but at the same time, it's great to feel your skills improving as the day progresses – skills which undoubtedly assist in your everyday driving.

Whether you're a rusted-on Porsche nut or you simply seek to be a better driver, a day with the Porsche Sport Drive School is a hugely enjoyable way to boost your ability while revelling in the mastery of these precision German rockets.

Head to www.porsche.com/australia/ for more information.