Driving on ice takes bit of practice

Peter Bleakney

SPECIAL TO THE STAR

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLO.–I've always been a firm believer in the use of winter tires, so when Bridgestone asked me to drive some Blizzak-equipped cars here, they were preaching to the converted.

This event, however, proved to be less about the hardware and more about upgrading the software in my noggin.

Nothing like a few hours of slip-slidin' away in a selection of front and all-wheel drive vehicles to sharpen your winter driving skills.

The Bridgestone Winter Driving School has been operating in Steamboat Springs for 25 years. With three state-of-the-art ice and snow tracks, a variety of testing surfaces, and an instructor pool stocked with professional drivers from Pro Rally to Formula 2000, it's considered one of the best schools of its type anywhere.

Being nestled in the Colorado Rockies at an elevation of 2,200 metres, cold and snow are pretty much a given.

And so it was, as my day dawned with a fresh blanket of puffy white snow and a chilly -12C. Perfect.

I was taking the Second Gear program, an all-day event that costs $425 (all figures U.S.). Courses range from the half-day First Gear for $245 to the two-day Fifth Gear program ($2,250), in which students learn advanced rally techniques like the "Scandinavian Flick."

I was just hoping I wasn't going to "flick" one of these vehicles into a snow bank.

The day started with the requisite classroom session, conducted by Morgan Kavanaugh, a former motorcycle racer who has been teaching the art of winter driving here for 21 years.

The goal of the school is to have every student come away with an understanding of a vehicle's dynamic on snow and ice and, through lots of track time, acquire a reflexive and instinctive level of winter driving skill.

Of course, before we hit the track, we have to learn what not to do. Kavanaugh says that a driver's natural instincts, when under pressure, are usually wrong.

Understeering, or plowing while turning, is probably the most common problem situation in winter driving. And the hardest to correct.

Carry too much speed into the turn, crank the wheel, and voilà, the car keeps going straight and you're heading for the ditch. The natural tendency is to hit the brakes and turn the wheel harder. Wrong. That'll just make it worse.

Lift off, he tells us, reduce the steering angle and wait for the front tires to restore grip.

It's counterintuitive, and as we discovered, the exercise requires faith and patience. But it works.

Oversteer describes the opposite situation, when the back of the car swings wide – usually caused by decelerating while cornering or applying too much power in a rear-wheel-drive car. This is a little easier to correct: steer into the skid, look where you want to go and gently accelerate.

What are the two biggest winter driving rules? Adjust your speed to the conditions (slow down, Mario), and separate your controls. Separating controls means keeping braking, acceleration and steering inputs isolated. Brake before you turn, negotiate the corner, then accelerate. As Kavanaugh puts it, "You can't pull the trigger till the gun is aimed."

The other biggie is to look where you want to go – not where you don't want to end up.

Talk is well and good, but it was on the 11-turn snow-and-ice track where I got to put these theories into practice.

The school uses Toyota vehicles, and on this day the class was driving front-drive Camrys and all-wheel drive 4Runners.

Each car is equipped with a two-way radio so instructors, who view the proceedings from various vantage points, can communicate with us.

And believe me, these guys don't miss a beat. They know where you're looking, even behind your Foster Grants.

For most of the exercises, the ABS and stability controls are on vacation.

No electronic nannies for us. It was just our hands, our feet, our butts and four Blizzak tires on a winter wonderland.

The conditions were particularly icy that day, which lent an extra dimension of drama as we practised our cadence braking, accident avoidance and vehicle weight transfer through the corners.

Just like performance driving on dry pavement, we were encouraged to use the same lines through the bends, keep our eyes up and use smooth inputs. But driving on this slippery stuff means there's a considerable delay to every input, and patience and anticipation are your friends.

Patience, because when the car understeers, your corrective measures can seem to take an eternity.

And yet, when the front end bites and the car goes from understeer to oversteer, you have to anticipate the back end coming around and correct with some opposite lock and a touch of throttle. Overcompensate and the dreaded fishtail enters the picture.

So much to think about, and yet it really is a "feel" thing that becomes more natural the more you do it.

The beauty of the school is that students are allowed – no, encouraged – to exceed the limits of traction in this safe environment, and then dial back the inputs to where they can negotiate the track in a controlled fashion.

Indeed, getting a series of corners right with beautifully controlled oversteer is some of the most fun you can have in a vehicle.

With the day done, and the last snowy corner negotiated in the fading mountain light, I couldn't help but feel this had been one of the most beneficial learning experiences of my automotive life.

These are lessons that can be applied to any driving situation.

The school runs from mid-December through early March, and hosts around 1,000 students per season, ranging from private individuals to law enforcement to the military.

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