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Key in the ignition. Full tank of fuel. No traffic. Even better – no traffic law enforcement for kilometres, either.
You’d think I would have been feeling quite smug right now, sitting behind the wheel of a Porsche Panamera 4S – except I am not. Not at all. In fact, I am feeling distinctly troubled, with an oozing sense of forebidding doubt numbing my fingers’ grip on the steering-wheel's rim.
For one, the Panamera 4S in question has its steering-wheel on the wrong side – with the PDK shifter to my right. The tyres are a trifle underspecced too – 255/40/19 Nokians, not really original equipment rubber. Then there is the all-encompassing weather problem…
It is 20-degrees below freezing outside, 50-degrees colder than when I had left Cape Town a day earlier. The driving surface? A frozen Arctic lake with the kind of fine powered snow cover Inuits and Samis have at least a dozen colloquial terms for.
Skis, a snowmobile or some keen Huskies and a sled are all things I would happily have optioned for as a mode of transport, instead of being seated low-down in the Panamera, touching the pedals with my winter socks (you can’t really drive in Mogul boots - coincidentally).
As the two-way radio - haphazardly clipped onto the passenger side sunshade – crackles into life, I am forced to expel the last vestiges of self-doubt. “Remember, with PSM off, it’s much more fun.” Great. Hooligan instructors, too. I had no chance.
It was all fair game though. I had traveled about as far north on Planet Earth as you can fuel-up a Panamera to learn superior car control at the Porsche driving centre near Ivalo, Finland.
Instructors' vehicles - 911s for driving, Cayennes for recoveries - awaiting deployment from the Saariselkä carpark.
Met eish ja
Ivalo? It’s hardly the most happening place in Europe, but, if you have a serious snow sport fetish, Ivalo’s location 300 km north of the Arctic circle is peerless.
It has the lowest population density in Europe and more snow-covered trees and hectares of Arctic wilderness than Porsche has special edition 911 models – and that’s a lot…
Porsche already boasts an Alpine driving centre in Lungau, Austria. There’s a similar Arctic set-up at Camp4 near Rovaniemi in Finland, too.
So why another one? Well, the demand for customer tuition and the search for an even more dramatic Arctic driving location lured the Porsche driving school instructors as far north as one can possibly go – to the frozen expanse of the 780-hectare Lake Pasasjärvi.
After bargaining a lease agreement with the three (very) hardy farmers who control the land around Lake Pasasjärvi, Porsche is now in the position to offer Zuffenhausen’s master driving course at the venue – an intense "Ice Force" training experience, which runs from January to the end of March. Hence the reason for my being there...
Generally one has to complete the three-day Porsche precision driving course to be allowed entry to the Lake Pasasjärvi Ice Force training. In my case, it was (foolishly?) waivered on the pretext of me being a) a motoring journalist with some level of driving expertise, and b) the sole South African present.
Carrying the passport of a snow-scarce country, I was politely exonerated of any responsibility or performance expectation. Especially since I was the only one present at the course with absolutely no extreme cold weather driving experience.
Lake Pasasjärvi. Draw as many ice-streak circles as you wish without ruining tyres or transmission components, as you would at a traditional track day.
The world’s biggest skid-pan
Lake Pasasjärvi, as a setting, even for the bourgeois well-traveled and jaded, is staggering.
As a South African, whose only ice surface frame of reference is the Northgate Ice Arena, Pasasjärvi’s sheer dimensions (7.5km long, 1.5km across) are awe-inspiring. Honestly, if you carved up all the ice on offer here you’d be able to cool the entire crowd's brandy-and-cokes at Loftus for a season.
Porsche’s instructors only use a tiny part of the Lake’s total frozen surface at any time. For our intense one-day instruction run there was a 140-m diameter open oval, three dynamic handling - well, in actual fact, drifting - tracks and a traditional slalom section, the latter serving as an induction run, of sorts.
Although all Porsche’s hardware was present at the stowage facility (in a heavily wooded area five minutes drive from the Lake’s perimeter) we would be driving Panameras only.
Run-off areas are prodigious, positively begging you to exploit the Panamera's sideways ability on the low-fiction iced surface.
There's only one way: sideways
The course consists of a morning and afternoon session, split by lunch.
Our group was five-cars strong, with two drivers per Panamera. Instructors lead the way, curiously in 911s, signaling via two-way radio communication.
Due to the extreme temperatures (-20 Celsius is standard daytime fare) driver changes are done with extraordinary swiftness, and there is none of the traditional standing around at a corner listening to the instructor babbling about.
All communication is done in-car via the radio network to shield one from the elements.
You follow your instructor (ours was an Austrian bloke by the name of Guido) around for one familiarisation lap of each course, then you’re on your own. Guido simply stands at a central point on the course layout (freezing himself to death) and comments on your driving via the radio with a healthy dose of irony-laced humour.
Although the chronology of events does sound a bit harsh, the Lake Pasasjärvi driving course is an advanced tier option and a mandatory level of advanced driving skill is expected.
The sense of independence (not having the schoolmaster-like presence of an instructor in the passenger seat) engenders a sense of self-discipline and surgical levels of concentration.
Subsequently, the collective press corps (comprising Italians, Chinese, Austrians and myself) was exceptionally well behaved. If you make a mess, you forfeit ice-drifting time due to a Cayenne-assisted recovery. Simple as that.
Essentially, the Porsche driving school’s Lake Pasasjärvi Ice Force course has only three principle aims: to ensure students don’t freeze to death, don’t use the brake pedal and go as sideways as possible when driving.
You can’t really ask for more hallowed dynamic driving principles than those, surely?
700Nm sends all four-wheel spinning at once. Instructors encourage students to stay well clear of the Sport Plus mode's hair trigger right-pedal sensitivity.
So it’s easy then?
As you would have surmised from the opening paragraph, I was not exactly brimming with confidence when sent off on my first lap of the dynamic handling track.
I knew the fantastically complex Panamera 4S all-wheel drive system would be peerless on the ice surface of Lake Pasasjärvi, yet the pressure instructors bring to bear on you to be as sideways as possible at all times rapidly pushes one past your comfort zone and onto a higher, more challenging skills plateau.
Despite Guido's appearance mimicking that of a Michelin man, due to the sheer volume of layered Arctic clothing instructors wear to brave the elements out on the various handling courses, his ability to gauge my cornering vices were exemplarary. “Less steering lock” or “more aggressive throttle lift, you need more grip at the front,” were the phrases crackling over the radio set.
I started off in the all-wheel drive 4S and I’ll admit it was not the most intuitive of experiences.
You really have to trust the all-wheel drive system, and shy away from correcting the car, whilst still remembering to provoke it severely to initiate any four-wheel drifting action – the latter being the only thing instructors want to see.
On all-wheel drive performance road cars I know correcting a slide is futile. The front and rear differentials simply grind into a huge torque-addled mechanical argument with each other - sending you careering off the road and into some scenery.
Steering inputs are required to be smooth, deliberate and precise - just remember to bring the bottom hand off the wheel rim when correcting slides...Otherwise it's a Jägermeister penalty at dinner.
Lift-off, move around
Due to the low friction nature of ice, overwhelming the Panamera’s balance is hardly a problem - especially with 500Nm on call.
The 200-stud Nokian snow tyres retain just enough grip to enable steering. With the all-wheel drive Panameras, the skill is to ensure you enact the perfect moment of axle weight transfer to get the front wheels to bite, enabling a swift turn-in.
Leave your throttle lifting antics too late (or steer too aggressively) and you’ll simply understeer, which elicits a crackle from the two-way radio, with the Guido enquiring, “Your PSM is off, right?” Seriously, these Porsche driving instructors live to see people go into wild oversteer or four-wheel drifts...
After two laps I find the happy balance point between brutal throttle lift-off and smooth steering inputs.
As you feel grip on the front differential settle with traction, you simply keep the steering-wheel straight and allow the torque distribution interplay between the front and rear axles to four-wheel drift the car around. It’s obviously not something to be replicated on a high-fiction asphalt road surface…
Tyres are by Nokian (no, they don't do the phones too) and called Hakkapeliittas - don't worry, not even the Finns can pronounce it properly. Embedded studs are 4mm long and they are 200 of them. Works brilliantly.
Turbocharged snowplough
On the second dynamic handling track, we were let loose in Panamera Turbos. Here the additional power seemed to drive most of our group into bouts of wild snow bank exploration, primarily due to the higher corner entry speeds and associated understeer.
An interesting aside at this stage was my growing admiration for the Panamera Turbo’s all-wheel system’s ability to extract drivers (including my magnanimous Lebanese driving partner) from their snow bank-embedded peril.
Those Porsche diff locks work properly. Even with the undercarriage resting on some snow, and one wheel off the ground, some wheel twirling at the helm and reverse-gear throttle input got us back on track again.
After a quick lunch we set about the third dynamic handling track for the instructors’ highlight (and cheap entertainment) of the day: confidence-buoyed journalists in rear-wheel drive Panameras.
I was feeling quite chipper at this stage. I had not yet ploughed into a snow bank, thereby circumventing the dreaded "recovery Cayenne" radio call.
The author falling into rhythm with the Panamera S - all the high-performance sedan you'll ever need.
Flicking Porsche's two tonne sedan like a (go) kart
The most important lesson up until the start of the rear-wheel drive Panamera session centred around the unbalancing of the car.
Sure, you need to be hostile in terms of throttle application. This shifts weight from the rear axle to the front to guarantee you have steering input and as little weight as possible at the back - making it more prone to go "light" and drift around.
When you have weight at the front and engage the steering with too much vigour, you simply convert all momentum to speed-scrubbing understeer. Smoother inputs from the helm usher in the delicate drift inertia all petrolheads dream of.
Judicious throttle applications, sometimes in third gear to rein in surfeit wheelspin, and smooth (yet quick-witted) counter-steering had me sliding the Panamera S with some dexterity.
My drift angles (and duration) would probably not have impressed Walter Röhrl, yet they were plenty good enough to require one-and-a-bit's worth of opposite lock, which was fine by me.
It’s a wonderful car, the Panamera. Admittedly, it's not pretty - though snow covered, in this Arctic wilderness, it looks at its best.
Dynamically though, it's just more superior in terms of balance, driving position and single-minded purpose than any other four-door performance car. I’ve drifted M5s, AMGs and XFRs on high-fiction surfaces and none of them have the same benevolent balance and steering accuracy of a Panamera.
Even on a low fiction surface, a two-tonne car should not be this responsive when drifting from one end of the steering rack’s locking ratio to the other.
When you’re wagging a two-tonne performance car from side to side, extreme lateral forces can turn any electric power steering’s feedback consistency to mush.
Panamera’s front-wheel directional detailing through the helm stays true right up to and beyond the limit, enabling you to make inch-perfect steering corrections.
The dreaded (yet highly capable, low-range enabled and courteously staffed) Cayenne recovery vehicle in action.
Lessons well learned
Did I manage to overextend myself? Sheepishly, yes.
It was on my last lap when I held a slide to a near perpendicular angle (nose facing clipping point) before parking the rear wheels up on the snowbank – no all-wheel drive traction to extract myself this time.
The radio crackled into life. Guido scrutinised my over-exuberance immediately. “Aah, I think we have a rear-wheel drive Panamera stuck on turn five. PSM on for you, maybe, no?” What would the world be without that imcomparable Austrian humour, right?
So, it's worth it then? Well, the travel schedule from South Africa to Ivalo is quite punishing and you'd need to book well in advance as the courses seem to be gaining popularity.
Gauged as an environment in which to accelerate pure driving skills, it's absolutely proper.
The instructors want to see you develop car control and show it off by gathering up lurid slides, instead of completing silly slalom exercises.
As one would expect from Porsche, the vehicles are immaculately prepared and when you do suffer an error of judgement (unlike at a conventional track day) there’s negligible damage - a quick tug from the recovery Cayenne setting you on your way again.
On the debit side? Well, one does get a few odd looks from the air hostesses when trying to counter-steer your dinner plate on the plane flying back home…
You’d think I would have been feeling quite smug right now, sitting behind the wheel of a Porsche Panamera 4S – except I am not. Not at all. In fact, I am feeling distinctly troubled, with an oozing sense of forebidding doubt numbing my fingers’ grip on the steering-wheel's rim.
For one, the Panamera 4S in question has its steering-wheel on the wrong side – with the PDK shifter to my right. The tyres are a trifle underspecced too – 255/40/19 Nokians, not really original equipment rubber. Then there is the all-encompassing weather problem…
It is 20-degrees below freezing outside, 50-degrees colder than when I had left Cape Town a day earlier. The driving surface? A frozen Arctic lake with the kind of fine powered snow cover Inuits and Samis have at least a dozen colloquial terms for.
Skis, a snowmobile or some keen Huskies and a sled are all things I would happily have optioned for as a mode of transport, instead of being seated low-down in the Panamera, touching the pedals with my winter socks (you can’t really drive in Mogul boots - coincidentally).
As the two-way radio - haphazardly clipped onto the passenger side sunshade – crackles into life, I am forced to expel the last vestiges of self-doubt. “Remember, with PSM off, it’s much more fun.” Great. Hooligan instructors, too. I had no chance.
It was all fair game though. I had traveled about as far north on Planet Earth as you can fuel-up a Panamera to learn superior car control at the Porsche driving centre near Ivalo, Finland.
Instructors' vehicles - 911s for driving, Cayennes for recoveries - awaiting deployment from the Saariselkä carpark.
Met eish ja
Ivalo? It’s hardly the most happening place in Europe, but, if you have a serious snow sport fetish, Ivalo’s location 300 km north of the Arctic circle is peerless.
It has the lowest population density in Europe and more snow-covered trees and hectares of Arctic wilderness than Porsche has special edition 911 models – and that’s a lot…
Porsche already boasts an Alpine driving centre in Lungau, Austria. There’s a similar Arctic set-up at Camp4 near Rovaniemi in Finland, too.
So why another one? Well, the demand for customer tuition and the search for an even more dramatic Arctic driving location lured the Porsche driving school instructors as far north as one can possibly go – to the frozen expanse of the 780-hectare Lake Pasasjärvi.
After bargaining a lease agreement with the three (very) hardy farmers who control the land around Lake Pasasjärvi, Porsche is now in the position to offer Zuffenhausen’s master driving course at the venue – an intense "Ice Force" training experience, which runs from January to the end of March. Hence the reason for my being there...
Generally one has to complete the three-day Porsche precision driving course to be allowed entry to the Lake Pasasjärvi Ice Force training. In my case, it was (foolishly?) waivered on the pretext of me being a) a motoring journalist with some level of driving expertise, and b) the sole South African present.
Carrying the passport of a snow-scarce country, I was politely exonerated of any responsibility or performance expectation. Especially since I was the only one present at the course with absolutely no extreme cold weather driving experience.
Lake Pasasjärvi. Draw as many ice-streak circles as you wish without ruining tyres or transmission components, as you would at a traditional track day.
The world’s biggest skid-pan
Lake Pasasjärvi, as a setting, even for the bourgeois well-traveled and jaded, is staggering.
As a South African, whose only ice surface frame of reference is the Northgate Ice Arena, Pasasjärvi’s sheer dimensions (7.5km long, 1.5km across) are awe-inspiring. Honestly, if you carved up all the ice on offer here you’d be able to cool the entire crowd's brandy-and-cokes at Loftus for a season.
Porsche’s instructors only use a tiny part of the Lake’s total frozen surface at any time. For our intense one-day instruction run there was a 140-m diameter open oval, three dynamic handling - well, in actual fact, drifting - tracks and a traditional slalom section, the latter serving as an induction run, of sorts.
Although all Porsche’s hardware was present at the stowage facility (in a heavily wooded area five minutes drive from the Lake’s perimeter) we would be driving Panameras only.
Run-off areas are prodigious, positively begging you to exploit the Panamera's sideways ability on the low-fiction iced surface.
There's only one way: sideways
The course consists of a morning and afternoon session, split by lunch.
Our group was five-cars strong, with two drivers per Panamera. Instructors lead the way, curiously in 911s, signaling via two-way radio communication.
Due to the extreme temperatures (-20 Celsius is standard daytime fare) driver changes are done with extraordinary swiftness, and there is none of the traditional standing around at a corner listening to the instructor babbling about.
All communication is done in-car via the radio network to shield one from the elements.
You follow your instructor (ours was an Austrian bloke by the name of Guido) around for one familiarisation lap of each course, then you’re on your own. Guido simply stands at a central point on the course layout (freezing himself to death) and comments on your driving via the radio with a healthy dose of irony-laced humour.
Although the chronology of events does sound a bit harsh, the Lake Pasasjärvi driving course is an advanced tier option and a mandatory level of advanced driving skill is expected.
The sense of independence (not having the schoolmaster-like presence of an instructor in the passenger seat) engenders a sense of self-discipline and surgical levels of concentration.
Subsequently, the collective press corps (comprising Italians, Chinese, Austrians and myself) was exceptionally well behaved. If you make a mess, you forfeit ice-drifting time due to a Cayenne-assisted recovery. Simple as that.
Essentially, the Porsche driving school’s Lake Pasasjärvi Ice Force course has only three principle aims: to ensure students don’t freeze to death, don’t use the brake pedal and go as sideways as possible when driving.
You can’t really ask for more hallowed dynamic driving principles than those, surely?
700Nm sends all four-wheel spinning at once. Instructors encourage students to stay well clear of the Sport Plus mode's hair trigger right-pedal sensitivity.
So it’s easy then?
As you would have surmised from the opening paragraph, I was not exactly brimming with confidence when sent off on my first lap of the dynamic handling track.
I knew the fantastically complex Panamera 4S all-wheel drive system would be peerless on the ice surface of Lake Pasasjärvi, yet the pressure instructors bring to bear on you to be as sideways as possible at all times rapidly pushes one past your comfort zone and onto a higher, more challenging skills plateau.
Despite Guido's appearance mimicking that of a Michelin man, due to the sheer volume of layered Arctic clothing instructors wear to brave the elements out on the various handling courses, his ability to gauge my cornering vices were exemplarary. “Less steering lock” or “more aggressive throttle lift, you need more grip at the front,” were the phrases crackling over the radio set.
I started off in the all-wheel drive 4S and I’ll admit it was not the most intuitive of experiences.
You really have to trust the all-wheel drive system, and shy away from correcting the car, whilst still remembering to provoke it severely to initiate any four-wheel drifting action – the latter being the only thing instructors want to see.
On all-wheel drive performance road cars I know correcting a slide is futile. The front and rear differentials simply grind into a huge torque-addled mechanical argument with each other - sending you careering off the road and into some scenery.
Steering inputs are required to be smooth, deliberate and precise - just remember to bring the bottom hand off the wheel rim when correcting slides...Otherwise it's a Jägermeister penalty at dinner.
Lift-off, move around
Due to the low friction nature of ice, overwhelming the Panamera’s balance is hardly a problem - especially with 500Nm on call.
The 200-stud Nokian snow tyres retain just enough grip to enable steering. With the all-wheel drive Panameras, the skill is to ensure you enact the perfect moment of axle weight transfer to get the front wheels to bite, enabling a swift turn-in.
Leave your throttle lifting antics too late (or steer too aggressively) and you’ll simply understeer, which elicits a crackle from the two-way radio, with the Guido enquiring, “Your PSM is off, right?” Seriously, these Porsche driving instructors live to see people go into wild oversteer or four-wheel drifts...
After two laps I find the happy balance point between brutal throttle lift-off and smooth steering inputs.
As you feel grip on the front differential settle with traction, you simply keep the steering-wheel straight and allow the torque distribution interplay between the front and rear axles to four-wheel drift the car around. It’s obviously not something to be replicated on a high-fiction asphalt road surface…
Tyres are by Nokian (no, they don't do the phones too) and called Hakkapeliittas - don't worry, not even the Finns can pronounce it properly. Embedded studs are 4mm long and they are 200 of them. Works brilliantly.
Turbocharged snowplough
On the second dynamic handling track, we were let loose in Panamera Turbos. Here the additional power seemed to drive most of our group into bouts of wild snow bank exploration, primarily due to the higher corner entry speeds and associated understeer.
An interesting aside at this stage was my growing admiration for the Panamera Turbo’s all-wheel system’s ability to extract drivers (including my magnanimous Lebanese driving partner) from their snow bank-embedded peril.
Those Porsche diff locks work properly. Even with the undercarriage resting on some snow, and one wheel off the ground, some wheel twirling at the helm and reverse-gear throttle input got us back on track again.
After a quick lunch we set about the third dynamic handling track for the instructors’ highlight (and cheap entertainment) of the day: confidence-buoyed journalists in rear-wheel drive Panameras.
I was feeling quite chipper at this stage. I had not yet ploughed into a snow bank, thereby circumventing the dreaded "recovery Cayenne" radio call.
The author falling into rhythm with the Panamera S - all the high-performance sedan you'll ever need.
Flicking Porsche's two tonne sedan like a (go) kart
The most important lesson up until the start of the rear-wheel drive Panamera session centred around the unbalancing of the car.
Sure, you need to be hostile in terms of throttle application. This shifts weight from the rear axle to the front to guarantee you have steering input and as little weight as possible at the back - making it more prone to go "light" and drift around.
When you have weight at the front and engage the steering with too much vigour, you simply convert all momentum to speed-scrubbing understeer. Smoother inputs from the helm usher in the delicate drift inertia all petrolheads dream of.
Judicious throttle applications, sometimes in third gear to rein in surfeit wheelspin, and smooth (yet quick-witted) counter-steering had me sliding the Panamera S with some dexterity.
My drift angles (and duration) would probably not have impressed Walter Röhrl, yet they were plenty good enough to require one-and-a-bit's worth of opposite lock, which was fine by me.
It’s a wonderful car, the Panamera. Admittedly, it's not pretty - though snow covered, in this Arctic wilderness, it looks at its best.
Dynamically though, it's just more superior in terms of balance, driving position and single-minded purpose than any other four-door performance car. I’ve drifted M5s, AMGs and XFRs on high-fiction surfaces and none of them have the same benevolent balance and steering accuracy of a Panamera.
Even on a low fiction surface, a two-tonne car should not be this responsive when drifting from one end of the steering rack’s locking ratio to the other.
When you’re wagging a two-tonne performance car from side to side, extreme lateral forces can turn any electric power steering’s feedback consistency to mush.
Panamera’s front-wheel directional detailing through the helm stays true right up to and beyond the limit, enabling you to make inch-perfect steering corrections.
The dreaded (yet highly capable, low-range enabled and courteously staffed) Cayenne recovery vehicle in action.
Lessons well learned
Did I manage to overextend myself? Sheepishly, yes.
It was on my last lap when I held a slide to a near perpendicular angle (nose facing clipping point) before parking the rear wheels up on the snowbank – no all-wheel drive traction to extract myself this time.
The radio crackled into life. Guido scrutinised my over-exuberance immediately. “Aah, I think we have a rear-wheel drive Panamera stuck on turn five. PSM on for you, maybe, no?” What would the world be without that imcomparable Austrian humour, right?
So, it's worth it then? Well, the travel schedule from South Africa to Ivalo is quite punishing and you'd need to book well in advance as the courses seem to be gaining popularity.
Gauged as an environment in which to accelerate pure driving skills, it's absolutely proper.
The instructors want to see you develop car control and show it off by gathering up lurid slides, instead of completing silly slalom exercises.
As one would expect from Porsche, the vehicles are immaculately prepared and when you do suffer an error of judgement (unlike at a conventional track day) there’s negligible damage - a quick tug from the recovery Cayenne setting you on your way again.
On the debit side? Well, one does get a few odd looks from the air hostesses when trying to counter-steer your dinner plate on the plane flying back home…
