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"Don’t rev the (expletive) out of it," screams veteran racer Tomas Mezera over the intercom. The instructions are duly obeyed by the pupil driver on the track who changes up to fourth and nods his head, even though the instructor is standing behind the Queensland Raceway pit wall, some 200m away.
"Ease on the throttle," is the next instruction Mezera enthusiastically gushes as the driver sweats it out in the cabin of the Porsche GT3 where the airconditioning has been turned off. Welcome to the high-pressure world of driver training, Porsche style.
Mezera, a former Bathurst winner and veteran of many forms of motorsport, has been running the Porsche Sports Driving School for five years at Mt Cotton training centre and the Queensland Raceway in south-east Queensland.He says they get participants from around Australia and Asia through the courses which start with three introductory levels at Mt Cotton, then progress to the top two levels at QR.
For the media launch of the new GT3, Porsche put the assembled motoring journalists through the demanding level four "Master" course. Mezera was joined by V8 Supercar driver Fabian Coulthard, a former Carrera Cup champion who moves to the Holden Racing Team next season, and several race engineers from various motorsport ventures.
Mezera and Coulthard would be our instructors with the journalists split into two teams of four. Thankfully I was in the team with the more cool-headed Coulthard. Training begins with a detailed talk by a fired-up Mezera. It seems he does everything at 100mph, although he is careful to ensure that everyone understands each point before moving on.
He describes everything from correct seatbelt harness procedure to correcting under- and oversteer. The two teams then gather around the car as our instructors talk through the various controls and demonstrate the six-point racing harness.
The instructors follow up by taking us out on the track in one group in a Cayenne SUV to show us the lines through the corners, the apexes which are depicted with cones and the braking markers. Then I am strapped into the passenger's seat for the ride of my life as Coukthard take each of us for several fast laps in the GT3.
My own exploits at QR have been in much less powerful cars and motorcycles so the g-forces in the GT3 through corners and under acceleration and heavy braking are remarkable, even on road-going grooved rubber. I concentrate on braking markers, apexes, turn-in points while at the same time trying to keep my morning tea firmly in place.
Now it's our turn to drive while Coulthard sits beside us, urging us to keep the power on when we want to back off, push the brakes even harder and not to turn so early into the corners. "Then we are not so brave," says Mezera. "You will be in the car on your own with earphones connected to our CB radio and the great thing is you can't talk back."
Now the pressure is really on, although Coulthard's reassuring voice over the headphones shows little emotion, just cool encouragement. We then drive several with the instructor in our ear while we are trying to stay focussed, not panic and keep the speed up.
And there is no chance for "bench racing" lies after each session because a flash stick full of the car's telemetry is loaded into a laptop and a race engineer shows us exactly how fast we were going, according to the unerring satellite Drift Box software.
My engineer is Andy McElrea, a former New Zealand Formula Ford and Trans Am champion who runs a team in the V8 Supercars development series. And he has the same story for me as all the other journos: we are too brave under brakes into corners resulting in lower exit speeds and slower lap times. "As they say, in with care, out with flare," he says echoing Sir Jack Brabham's dictum of "in slow, out quick".
It's an easy lesson, but do you think we learn? No. Throughout the various sessions which lengthen from five to 10 laps at a time, the high-speed turns one and two remain our downfall. By the closing sessions, I'm on the brakes earlier and on the gas earlier, but it's still not enough.
On my best lap of 63.6 seconds around the truncated Clubman circuit, I am entering turn one almost 20km/h faster than Mezera on his 60.1 second fastest lap, but exiting 20km/h slower. Foolhardy bravery under brakes may have served me well in my limited racing excursions, but it is not good for my lap times.
To back up the lesson on slower entry and faster exit speeds, McElrea hands me a copy of the graph that compares my lap and Mezera's. It's a lesson I can take home with me and ponder at my leisure. The other major lesson is about being smooth.
Mezera points out that application of brake and throttle needs to be smooth to control the pitch of the car which determines the level of grip available at the front for steering and the rear for power. "The Porsche is very sensitive to pitch because there is no weight in the front," says Mezera.
"When you get off the brakes, the front pops up very quickly and then you have less steering grip, so you have to get off the brakes slowly." It's a similar situation with getting on the power. Meanwhile, body roll is controlled by winding on and off steering slowly and smoothly.
I heed the advice and the smoother I drive, the more my laps times tumble. It may not look as spectacular for the cameras, but it pays dividends on the telemetry graph. At the end of the day, we've done about 30 laps on our own and 10 with an instructor.
The Master course costs $2997.50 and, unless you already have a CAMS racing licence, you can only do it after you have competed the first three levels costing a total of $4070. If you go all the way through to the GT3 Cup course, it will have cost you an astronomical $13,062.50, but you should be ready to mix it with some of the best in the high-adrenaline world of racing.
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