Private Air New York Magazine
Issue link: https://privateair.uberflip.com/i/431324
www.privateairny.com Private Air New York | Winter 2014/2015 62 DRIVE T his would be my wall of shame, the epitaph to my writing career, except for a few small details. is is the Lamborghini Winter Academy, that wall is made of powder soft snow and crashing is all part of the fun. Just moments after I slam off the track we're backing back on to the circuit and laughing hysterically as the wipers flail in vain at the massive chunks of snow blocking our view. My ego is totalled. e 691bhp monster I'm driving is fine. is time. Not everyone is as lucky as me. A rear wing is ripped off a Superleggera, two Aventadors actually hit each other and almost every car gets a battle scar by the end of the two day course. at helps explain the £5000 asking price. at and this is, well, Lamborghini. I'm joined by a group of customers that include Russians brought up in the snow through to a contingent from Singapore that have never seen it in their lives. is could get interesting… Lamborghini says the point of the course is to teach their customers how to handle their monstrous cars in a safe environment and how to fully exploit the four-wheel-drive system that has become an integral part of the Italian company's DNA. And that's true, but the real goal is to leave them grinning like Cheshire cats as they drift supercars like champions. at moment seems a world away, though, on our first laps of the course. Simply put, we are all rubbish. We slip and slide like elephants on skates, despite the specially studded snow tires and crawl down the back straight at a pedestrian 30mph. ere's so little grip it feels like a protracted suicide and when we're told we'll take this same stretch at 80mph the next day, we're sure the instructors are messing with us. en the hard work begins. e 2km circuit carved into the snow is replaced with cones and we start to break the process down. You see you don't drive round a corner on ice, it doesn't work. To follow the arc of a bend we'll have to master the rally technique and pitch the car into a dramatic slide 20m too soon, then walk a knife edge of throttle input and steering input to dance through