Driving on Snow Is the Best Way to Learn How to Race on a Track

courtesy Aston Martin

So you’ve decided it’s time you went to a track day. You’ve waxed your used GT-R. You’ve bragged to your friends. You’re ready for that feeling in your chest that alternates between “oh yes!” and “oh shit!”

But you’re nervous. You know that driving a car on a race track, especially for an amateur like you, means risking danger and disappointment. Get overconfident and you’re liable to stick it into the wall, wondering whether you signed that Do Not Resuscitate order. Stay well within your abilities and you may as well stick to public roads and save your money.

Luckily, there is one place for the aspiring racer to push it to the limit without too much fear: on the snow.

I went into Aston Martin’s snow driving course, basically a fantasy camp for the wealthy, with minimal track experience. And after two days on the six-turn, one-mile, snow circuit built in a rancher’s field in Crested Butte, Colorado, I felt I had some skills to be proud of. The key wasn’t the crew of professional racing instructors or the professionally groomed tracks, though those did help.

It was the fact that driving on snow is perhaps the best way to really learn how to drive on asphalt. Snow offers about one tenth as much grip as dry asphalt does, even when you put snow tires on a 500-horsepower drop-top Aston DB9. Ice (which made its presence known as rubber pushed aside snow) offers even less. That lowers the speed at which you lose control of the car. You’re always at the limit of grip. The process of spinning out in a corner, for example, takes more time to play out, giving you more time to think and anticipate. Which gives you more time to learn.

The most important parts of a racetrack are the turns. Going through the approach, the apex, and the exit means thinking about accelerating, braking, shifting the weight of the car, contact patches, and much more. Snow provides more feedback than asphalt. You can feel the car shift its weight when when you jump off the gas. You can actually hear the crunch of snow that means you’ve got grip. When it goes quiet, get ready to slide.

Because it’s so easy to slide, you immediately feel when things have gone awry, and you’ve got more time to make adjustments and get the car back in line. Or you can blip the throttle and slide the rear end around like Jeremy Clarkson (though one of the Aston reps said the Top Gear host’s exuberant driving style might not be ideal).

On an asphalt track, everything happens quickly. Instinct is everything. That makes learning anything difficult for newbies. On snow, one has time to think and consider and react, well before things get out of hand. Turns are more gradual. Acceleration and braking are limited. Mistakes are forgiven. Rather than turning the driving up to 11, it’s dropped down to 1. Bonus: Power slides are a blast.

Driving powerful cars on a snow course with an expert instructor is perhaps the closest one can get to a consequence-free video game in the real world. But you don’t need to shell out ten grand and play Ice Capades: The 007 Edition to develop some skills. Bridgestone offers a much more affordable winter driving school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, using Lexus’ equipped with Blizzak winter tires, while Porsche and Lamborghini each have their own programs.

Or, you could just find an empty road and try some stuff out on your own. But in the interest of appeasing the mayor of Boston (and lawyers), we officially recommend you think very carefully beforehand.