Driving Aston Martins on Ice
Tooling around in rear-wheel drive, 400-plus hp cars on a track made of ice sounds like an exercise in both the ultimate frivolity and stupidity. Doing it in cars that cost anywhere from just under $100,000 to more than $300,000 with professional rally and race drivers urging you on sounds like an even worse idea. Yet that is just what I spent a day doing at the Aston Martin on Ice program in Crested Butte, Colorado.
The program runs anywhere from one to three days in length and takes place on a private ranch that Aston Martin (and other car companies like Mazda, who also used the same track this year) rent for the winter. Once the snow falls in Crested Butte, Colorado, where the school takes place, the track is groomed and snow-packed. Small snow banks along the edge and Aston Martin’s cones and flags mark where apexes, exit points, and turns exist in the great white expanse surrounded by the Rocky Mountains. This is the third year that Aston Martin has run the program and according to the company it’s been a runaway success. Aston says that they’ve put roughly 100 people through the program and that the conversion rate (or percentage of people who end up buying an Aston Martin after attending the program) is close to 90%. They’ve had attendees from as far away as India and Ghana, and while they don’t openly discuss clients, they’ve had an attendee list populated with a number of well-known names.
The morning begins at 8 am when we are all up for breakfast at the Tipple House, a luxury rental home that was once a mining bunkhouse. Aston Martin rents the Tipple House for the Aston On Ice program and the property offers accommodations for as many as 14 people with private bathrooms and bedrooms, ski-in ski-out privileges, and a hot tub. It’s high up on the mountain and some of our small group feel the effects of the 10,000-plus-foot elevation after flying in from sea level the night before. Complaints range from extremely sleepless nights to headaches and nausea, but a breakfast of omelets and yogurt parfaits seems to calm some of the more sensitive flat-landers.
Once we’ve eaten and packed up our gear for a day of work at the ice track, we head back down through the town of Crested Butte to the Ranch that sits just shy of 7,000 feet above sea level and just outside of the quaint main town. There we meet the team that will be tutoring us on the ways of ice driving.
At the track, a team of six professional instructors, all with experience that ranges from rally to formula car and quarter midget racing, take a class of as many as 26 guests through a number of exercises designed to teach how to handle a powerful, rear-wheel drive car, in very slippery conditions. In the case of this particular Wednesday morning, we are a group of six journalists revving to get out on the ice.
Paul Gerrard is the head instructor and former Director of Global Training at the Jim Russell Racing Driving School. He warmly introduces himself and talks about some of the races he’s competed in, including a number of Continental Tire Sports Car Challenges and a Speed World Challenge GT. Gerrard starts off by telling us that our perceptions about rear-wheel drive, and “perfectly” balanced cars are wrong. He argues that any good driver can find the balance of a car and use it to push that vehicle to its limits, without losing control. “If someone tells you that a car is unbalanced because its 60/40, then they’re driving it wrong,” he insists, and then goes on to tell us that he’ll prove it.
At the skid pad Gerrard gets his first opportunity. We all pile into two $200,000-plus Aston Martin Rapide Ses and head over to a relatively flat area with two circles of cones. The idea at the skid pad is to get the car to consistently slide sideways around the circle. My instructor, Matthew, takes me through the loop a few times with all the nannies on, then with a few of them off, and finally in full track mode where all traction control is minimized. In each mode traction, ABS, and throttle control click on later and later into a slide. From the passenger seat I watch Matthew’s hands work the wheel with delicate precision as the surface below our snow tires gradually wears away and changes. “The idea is to balance the slide with both throttle and steering. You have to unwind the wheel to get the tires to grip and you have to learn to feel the slide and look where you want to go, not where you don’t want to.”
It’s my turn to get behind the wheel and try. In full auto the big, heavy-feeling, 552-hp Rapide S will slide, but not as much as I want it to. Traction control keeps the nose pointed in the general direction I want it to go and only by giving the car more throttle can I get the rear to swing out. Once that happens though, the driver assistance systems kicks in and takes throttle away, immediately cutting power to the slide and bringing the rear end back in line. There’s one spot on the western side of the circle that is more slippery than the rest of it, and even with traction on I still tend to slide out too wide.
After a few more turns, Matthew reaches over, and holds the traction button down, putting the car into Sport mode where the driver assistance systems come on later. Unfortunately we won’t be turning all the systems off on the ice. In Sport mode, the Rapide S is much easier to slide and maintain more constant throttle. After a few turns around the circle, Matthew reaches over again and holds down the traction button once more. A warning pops up on the dashboard letting us know that the car is now in full Track mode and all the systems that were keeping me and my passengers pointed in the right direction are now in a more dormant mode. As I start the exercise again, the tires simply spin on the ice and then finally grab, just a little. In Track mode the circles that I’d been doing smoothly, now become entertaining curly-cues that force me to go first one direction and then the other as I over apply throttle or steering. Finding that perfect balance in track mode, with a big V12 hanging out on the nose, proved to be a bit harder than I’d hoped.
Next we head to a braking exercise in which we accelerate to around 40 mph and then slam on the brakes, negotiating the impending slide through a series of cones guiding us through a late apex right hand turn. The idea with the exercise is to get the driver to brake in a straight line and then steer, and to learn to control the car at a higher speed. Each one of us files into our own Aston Martin. I choose $200,000-plus, 540 hp DB9 GT Volante, drop the top, and head for the course. It’s relatively warm and amazingly sunny for February in Colorado, and with the top down I get to hear the incredible notes from the V12 engine. We rotate through the exercise, each time getting more aggressive with throttle and brake until we’ve all successfully and smoothly negotiated the stretch.
Once we finish the braking exercise, the instructors set up a short slalom course along the front straight of the mile long ice track. Here we get a handful of opportunities to accelerate and then push the Astons through the slalom without losing control, spinning out, or having to apply too much brake. After a few goes of it I get the pattern down and manage to maneuver the $300,000-plus white V12 Vanquish Volante quickly through the slalom without occasion.
After lunch, it was time to start lapping the full track. The weather had changed some and flat white light filtered through low snow-clouds making the changes in the track conditions trickier to see. After each lap of the track we brought the cars in, stopped for a few seconds, chatted with the instructors about finding the right line, changed cars and gabbed with each other about persnickety turn 4, and then headed back out.
Lapping the ice track teaches the true meaning of patience and balance. Turn in too early on a corner, and just like on an asphalt track, your line out of the corner is slow and sloppy. Turn too late on ice and you end up in a slide that causes the car to cut throttle and usually gets you pointed in the wrong direction. Each time the cars would head out on track the best-grip line would change. Where there was grip moments before, solid clear ice peeked through. Turn 4, a late apex, off camber, uphill left hand turn that followed a short and fast chicane proved to be the most frustrating corner of the day. After chatting with Gerrard after each lap I finally found a decent line that both prevented the car from cutting power or applying brake when I didn’t want it to, yet allowed it to move through it quickly. While most folks who track or autocross know the theory about slow-car fast, this was the absolute opposite experience—fast-car slow. I never reached more than 60 mph on the ice track, and some corners, like tricky number four, you just had to take at 20 mph and below. There was no way around them otherwise.
Surprisingly enough, the best, most fun, and most manageable car on the ice track was the $100,000 V8 Vantage GT. It was lighter, infinitely flingable, and offered up less power than its V12 brothers, making it quicker off the line and ultimately quicker around the track. By the end of the track laps, another journalist and I were jockeying for seat time in the car because it was that much fun.
Once we were called in after track laps, it was time to have one more go at the slalom course, for time. The slalom that the instructors set up was slightly different from the one earlier in the day, and we didn’t get an orientation run to find the lay of the thing. We all had to do it blindly and hope we could get through it quickly. I jumped in the Aston Martin GT with Gerrard sitting shotgun and headed off. He timed me through the course from the passenger seat. Like autocross, we were penalized for hitting cones, missing the stop box, or missing the course all together. I managed to get through cleanly, though I certainly could have gone faster on a second or third run. After all of us pushed through, we got out and protested that we wanted another go at it. Some of us missed the final turn, others overshot or undershot the box—all of us thought we could do better.
Instead of offering us another round, the instructors told us to climb into the passenger seats of the various Aston Martins and took us out on a 30-minute-long sideways, rooster-tailed tour of the track. While its not the fastest way around an ice track, it certainly proved to be the most fun. With Gerrard in the driver’s seat we hit a top speed of 90 mph and avoided some of the other instructors attempts at soaking us with snow. By the end of it every one of us had smiles plastered to our faces. When we were done laughing, they took us into the warm yurt, offered us spiced apple cider, tea and snacks, gave us the results of our slalom (I came in second) and sent us on our way.
The program runs through the end of February this year and Aston is currently taking reservations for next year. Anyone can attend, and prices start at $1,200. For that price you get just the day at the track. At the top of the range is a $10,000 three-day affair that includes a stay at the Tipple House, airport transfers, three days of track time, and meals cooked by a local private chef.
I’d say for the experience of going sideways in beautiful, powerful, evocative luxury cars, in the wild and gorgeous Colorado Rockies, the price is definitely worth it.
All Photos are by Drew Phillips for Aston Martin.
