One does not simply hop into a race car. One must prepare. First, a team of physical trainers run tests to gauge things like how stressed your heart is at rest and how much grip you can exert with each hand. Then, you're fitted for a fire suit, helmet, gloves, boots, and a HANS device. A seat is formed around your frame, built by a team armed with foam and tape. The driving instructors then send you around a racetrack in a stock car, just to see how you handle it. And then you have to duck. Twice.
The first time is to avoid nailing your head on the Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3's gullwing door. The second is to evade the roll cage jungle that's been fitted to the SLS GT3, which is the kind of car you'd expect from Bruce Wayne Racing Development. As its name suggests, this SLS is built for customers keen on racing in any of the various GT3 classes in Europe against the likes of the Audi R8 LMS, Porsche 911 GT3 R, and BMW Z4 GT3.
My opportunity to test the SLS GT3 came on a rainy day on a former airbase in northern Germany. After the Russians left post-Cold War, the airfield was transformed into an automotive testing facility, replete with wet surfaces, a near-2-mile-long runway, and a configurable road course. Mercedes runs its AMG Driving Academy here, and today I'm taking the 4500 euro (about $6025) graduate course.
The GT3 looks menacing merely sitting still in the garage. Affixed to its widened exterior are all manner of carbon-fiber canards and spoilers -- that big one out back stretches wider than my arm span. Underneath the hood and behind the front axle is the same 6.2-liter V-8 you'll find in the standard car. This one however connects via torque tube to a sequential six-speed gearbox, gear whine and shift paddles included. Another change: The V-8 makes 10 less horsepower than the road-going version, thanks to air inlet restrictors required by the FIA that level the playing field. Nevertheless, thanks to its sub-3000 pound weight, the GT3 boasts the same 5.3 pound-per-horsepower ratio as a Corvette ZR1.
Acceleration, then, is quite satisfactory. But it's the effect of the GT3's aerodynamics, uncompromising suspension, and ludicrous tires (measuring 12 inches wide up front, 13 inches rear) that I have to prepare for.
After the fitting, makeshift physical, and a few familiarization laps in a standard SLS -- that's right, the 563-horsepower supercar is the warm-up car -- it's time for the GT3. The first task? Drive down the runway, turn around, and come back. Repeat. The seemingly simple assignment's goal is to get me acclimated to the sensation of the speed and stopping power. It is astoundingly difficult.
After being strapped in with five belts, my total range of motion is the three-fourths of a turn my hands can make and the few inches of travel the pedals afford my feet. The GT3's dash and beltline sit at eye level; the majority of my field of vision is gone. The switches dominating the center console remind me just how many bad decisions are at my disposal (a red button housed under a plastic lid is one of three safety systems that blow the door hinges off in the event of a rollover -- Bruce Wayne, indeed).
My instructor, Patrick Simon, who splits his time between Le Mans endurance races and being a German TV personality, sits in a custom-fitted passenger seat. He triggers two toggles and presses a button. The engine bursts, fires, and settles into an uneven idle. Pulling the right paddle to engage first, I gently start applying throttle while releasing the clutch. The GT3 bucks and lurches forward. Race cars don't like going slow. Turning out on to the runway with nothing but open asphalt ahead, I roll into the throttle.
The side-mounted exhaust explodes into a deafening cacophony that my earplugs can't muffle. I pull the right paddle each time the shift lights turn red, flat on the throttle -- the ECU pulls timing between the instantaneous shifts. Behind me is gunfire. Or a Spitfire. Or both -- I don't know. Through the radio, Simon calls out the braking point. While the brake pedal rests comfortably under my left foot, my leg strains to smash it with enough pressure.
Proper brake application demands intense initial pressure and a tapering off as you turn in, as if a taunt string has attached the steering wheel to the pedal. I strain each time to get it right, missing apexes, braking points, shift points. And that taste... did I bite my tongue?
I emerge from the runway exercise without a coherent thought. Simon asks how I liked it, but my response isn't so much words -- more like gasps for air. And a giant "Yeehaw!"
When Simon says it's time for the 1.5-mile, 14-turn road course, the dread starts burbling in my in stomach. Simply driving the GT3 in a straight line overloaded my senses. The mental dexterity required to overcome, to take in the tactile bedlam and execute calm decisions, is unfathomable. How will this ever work? Then I realize I'm about to drive a race car, while jet lagged, on an unknown track in the wet.
The track combines flat runway straights and turns of varying camber that pass through undulating terrain. My first few laps are as embarrassing as seventh grade school dances. I want to turn too late. I stop too early. I zig, the track zags. I can't see the reference points I had picked out in the standard SLS. Simon tells me to get closer to the curbing, but all I can remember are the warnings from earlier in the day to avoid touching it, because the tall painted curbing can damage the very expensive-looking carbon splitter and/or send you pirouetting into the fields.
On the straight I see the shift lights for the first time. Each tug on the right paddle returns more thrust and an audible reward; 215 kph flashes on the digital readout. Oh, the braking zone! The distance indicators are zipping by - 200, 150, 100 - and I panic, crushing the brake pedal. I stop a good 50 feet before the turn.
It takes a few heavy brake applications to get used to the immense amount of pressure required from my left foot and the stopping capabilities it can produce, but it starts coming together beautifully when I do. I can pick a spot on the track where I want to finish braking, visualize it, and somehow my left foot knows exactly how hard to push. Threshold braking up to the apex rapidly becomes addicting. I get it right maybe twice.
It's not until the third lap that confidence starts seeping in. The track beings to flow. Speeds rise, and I start meeting apexes. I'm beginning to learn how to communicate in GT3-speak. Once I recognize what understeer feels like, how subtly light the steering gets when the rear tires give up, I feel confident. Only when the tires actually do give up and Simon makes worrying sounds over the radio am I reminded of the GT3's price tag. Best back off a little bit.
My day ends with exhaustion and an even greater respect for racing drivers. From the next morning to the next week, I'm addicted. I want to go back and keep cutting time off my lap. If anything, I know that I haven't properly driven a race car -- I'm still preparing.
