Porsche 911 Carrera GTS

Every Porsche customer is offered a free driver training session. We take ‘our’ 911 along to try it at first hand

‘YOU’RE RIGHT-HANDED, AREN’T YOU?’ asks Mark Robins from the passenger seat of evo’s Carrera GTS. I’m guessing it’s not the fact I’m wearing a watch on my left wrist that’s tipped Porsche’s instructor off. ‘Ye-es?’ I reply, tipping the 911’s nose into one of the Porsche Experience Centre’s arcing, technical corners. ‘Have you ever noticed you sometimes relax your grip with your left hand when you turn the wheel, but you don’t with your right?’ he asks.

This is the first of several Sherlock Holmeslike observations I’ll learn from today, about my driving style, and also about how our 911 handles at, below, and beyond its limits. And how to apply those lessons on the drive home and, hopefully, for years to come.

Every new Porsche customer is offered a freeof-charge session like this one with a ‘Porsche Driving Consultant’ such as Robins. We’re at the Silverstone PEC to get an idea of what that training can involve. Customers decide what they’d like to get from the session: some haven’t yet locked down the spec of the car they’re buying and would like to try-before-they-buy different options from behind the wheel; some are regular trackday drivers; some have never been near a circuit. All the sessions have an emphasis on how to handle the car safely; Porsche feels it has a duty of care when it sells powerful road cars to people who may have limited driving experience or have never done any advanced driver training before. Plus, it’s fun.

Today Porsche has multiple PECS on multiple continents but the UK is where it started, initially at the MIRA and Millbrook proving grounds before this purpose-built centre was constructed at Silverstone in 2008.

It’s built on what was originally Silverstone’s figure-of-eight rally complex: I remember coming here as a child to see the ‘Silverstone Rallysprint TV Challenge.’ (Worth typing that into Youtube to relive the PEC’S past life.) The centre’s main handling circuit retraces some of the original layout, albeit without the water-splash and yump (though the crossover bridge remains on the infield). It’s all tarmac now, and designed to look like a public road: dotted white line down the middle, reflective corner markers of the kind you’d see on a B-road. The training majors on skills drivers can apply on the road – reading it fluently and interpreting its messages through vision and the car itself.

The 911 GTS is a clear communicator. It feels very much at home here, the limited-slip diff hooking up keenly out of the last corner and the front axle generating more grip than I’ve asked of it on the road. It’s remarkable how much speed you can roll into corners, even without trailing the brakes.

And it turns out I’m asking more of the front wheels with my right hand than my left. ‘If you imagine sawing a piece of wood, you’d brace it with

your less dominant hand and do the fine motor control – the sawing – with your dominant hand,’ Mark says. ‘It’s the same here: your right hand is doing more of the fine-motor control than your left.’

There’s another eye-opener for me in the brake testing zone. In addition to the main handling track, Porsche has built a secondary, more undulating circuit with two long straights within its infield, for extreme acceleration and braking. Porsche’s policy, Mark explains, is that a model’s 62-0mph braking time must be at least half that of its 0-62mph acceleration time. Given that our long-termer’s quoted 0-62 is 4.1 seconds, it needs to stop pretty smartly.

So, let’s find out. Robins gets me to perform an emergency stop from motorway speeds, wagering beforehand: ‘I’ll have a bet with you – you’ll stop just beyond that line in the distance.’ And I do. ‘How are you feeling the limit of the braking?’ he asks. I answer that I’m feeling the ABS juddering through the pedal, and using more or less pressure depending on how much vibration I’m feeling. ‘That’s good,’ he nods, ‘but there’s a better way.’ He tells me to relax my arms as I brake, explaining that enables you to feel the car’s deceleration rate by how far the G-force pulls your shoulders forwards from the seat. Again, I’m doing something with my hands without realising it: bracing my arms on the wheel when braking at full force. ‘It’s survival instinct,’ Mark points out. It’s an emergency stop, after all.

We try the exercise again, with newly slackened arms, and I stop well before the line, with less ABS intervention. Even accounting for my reaction being a bit sharper after a practice run, it’s a stark difference.

Among the most entertaining zones are those for skid control: a steering pad to balance the car in a continuous powerslide; the Ice Hill, a steep, low-grip slope soaked by sprinklers; and a straight-line skidpan, home to the ‘kick plate’ – a hydraulic platform pre-programmed to pull the rug from the rear wheels as they drive over it. Whether it nudges the car’s tail left or right is randomised.

Robins points out how crucial vision is – ‘lead with your eyes,’ as he puts it – looking at where you want the car to straighten out to, not anywhere else. Once your focus is on where you need to be, you can hold the 911 in a slide for the length of the strip, before straightening out neatly at the end.

I’ve really enjoyed the session, and Robins tells me I’m ‘a good pedaller,’ which is gratifying. But I’ve definitely learned a lot. Not least that the GTS is just as much fun on the circuit as on the road.

Date acquired December 2023 Total mileage 3415 Mileage this month 1323 Costs this month £0 mpg this month 25.1