ADAC Training Update (30.Aug)

It was a glorious finish today at the training and what better than to see the thumbs up sign from the trainer. I must say I've had a really great day today, complete with fine weather and all.

The start wasn't that good though. Was caught up in traffic on the autobahn between Troisdorf and Bonn. Ended up being late by about 30 minutes for the training. However, I was lucky enough because the candidates were just leaving the training room and heading towards the test tracks. We were a group of 10.

At first we had to wiggle our way through markers spaced at about 10m. It was a good exercise for sharp steering. The lesson learnt at the end of the exercise was 'Steer earlier, steer less'.

The next few exercises were on handling the car on different surfaces. Rough, smooth, dry and wet. The worst condition was ofcourse the smooth and wet. I've only read about ABS and ESP in technical docs and the internet, but today I experienced both live. The worst part of the surface runs was a circular track that was used to experience the forces when driving along bends. The radius of curvature of that track was about 10m and I guess the fastest I drove around was about 35kmph. I could literally feel the ESP system blocking my wheels individually as I was handling the curve. I must say that the VW Golf is a truly wonderful machine when it comes to stability.

It was a long day, but truly exciting and fun-filled. I learnt a lot of things that I could probably not learn anywhere else (except if I actually face an accident situation)!