There are three core activities in which man
must consistently outperform woman in order to feel like a proper
bloke. The first is cooking meat outdoors over an
open flame, the second is football and the third is driving. And of these, our opinion of our driving tends
to be the most over-inflated. Cooking
a barbeque or playing football invariably involves other people;
it’s hard to remain convinced you’re Jamie Oliver or Pele as your
guests crunch through the burgers you’ve just torched, or when you’re
beaten for pace down the wing by the 20-stone lad from the Dog &
Duck.
But driving is often a solitary activity; as
you sit there alone and marvel at your own ability it’s easy to
convince yourself that no-one could possibly drive better. Taking criticism of your driving from a bloke is difficult
enough, but SEAT has taken the bold step of offering its mainly
male customer a day of being both criticized and comprehensively
out-driven by a team of female instructors. Bit too bold, perhaps. I foresee a lot of emasculated buyers making
appointments with their local TVR dealer.
Not me. I’m entirely happy
about being an entirely average driver and am happy to take advice
from handy pedallers of either gender, so I’m possibly not the ideal
guinea pig. My motivations for attending are rather different. Stockings
and suspenders might do it for some blokes, but for me it’s girls
in Sparco and Nomex. And as the Hills, Schumachers and Villeneuves
prove, driving ability is plainly genetically influenced. You can’t
yet do much about your own genetic make-up, but imagine how much
better your chances of fathering the next world champion would be
if your partner could hold a 100-yard powerslide.
I’m
hoping to come back with a few driving tips, and maybe a wife. But
first I’ll have to get past Barbara Armstrong. Twice British ladies
rally champion, Barbara is the chief instructor at the Seat Race
School, based at Prodrive’s test track near Kenilworth, and runs
it with a mixture of ruthless efficiency and maternal regard for
her 20-strong band of lady race and rally drivers. Seat’s guests
spend the day learning techniques that will make them smoother,
quicker and safer. Sadly you can’t buy your way onto it – you have
to be invited. Most attendees will be fleet buyers, repeat Seat
customers or will have bought the new Leon Cupra R. It’s quite an
incentive.
My first activity is the wet handling area with Barbara in the
passenger seat. Using a Toledo with a switch to disable the anti-lock,
we barrel in at 40mph, aiming the right wheels at a strip of low-
friction asphalt and the lefts at a strip of tiles with no grip
whatsoever. The difference throws the car into a violent, clock-
wise flat spin. Immediately I learn something: when you have a spin
like this on black ice you keep the wheels pointing straight ahead
and don’t attempt to correct. This way the car will travel in a
straight line, keeping you in your lane on the motorway. Add any
lock and the car will both spin and turn, making a bad situation
considerably worse.
Next
it’s a slalom course on a wet, low- grip surface in a Cupra R with
the standard stability control disengaged and rally driver Frankie
Duncan next to me. It’s rare to feel these systems working in nor-
mal road driving; it’s not until you can test them in a safe environment
that you realise how good they are. Hurtle through the cones with
the system on and you can feel the wheels being braked as they lose
grip; you are slowed but the car stays on line. Try it with the
system off and you get either terminal understeer or lairy over-
steer if you lift OK I managed to get the back end out – and hold
it – a couple of times in a vain attempt to impress Frankie, before
having a colossal spin and decimating one of Barbara’s cones.
So what’s it like teaching men when they think
they know best? ”I’ve had it all,” says Amanda Whitaker, who races
single seaters and sports cars and has lined up on a grid with Montoya
and Darren Manning. ”I’ve had blokes actually pat me on the knee
and say, Vs okay, dear, I know what I’m doing.’ But some guys prefer
to have a woman instructor – they think it’s more of a challenge
to their machismo to have a man pointing out their errors. And we
can tell if you’re any good by the time you’ve changed from first
to second.”
”And we can tell the ones who are going to be trouble,” adds Barbara,
eyeing my shiny new Shoei lid. ”They’re the ones who turn up with
their own helmets wearing racing boots.” After a few laps of the
high-speed handling circuit with Amanda, whose instruction on lines
and braking is the clearest I’ve ever had, it’s time for the rally
circuit with Andrea Hall. She’s a former national Formula 2 rally
champ, three- time national ladies rally champion and lead singer
in a band called Massive.
We’re in a Cupra R with a full roll cage and four-point harnesses.
I’ve done these things up a few times, but when Barbara insists
on strapping me in, I don’t object. I thought I was doing okay,
I really did. I was giving the Leon the lot wherever I could, braking
in a straight line towards the turn-in point, heel-and-toeing fairly
cleanly then back on the gas for a neat apex and exit. Then we swapped
seats and Andrea did that really irritating thing that only properly
talented drivers can, and just drove through every bend 10mph faster
than I did. If you’re the sort of bloke with a jaundiced view of
women drivers, you’d be well advised to listen to this lot. I emerged
with ego intact, a few new skills and a cone signed by all the instructors.
Sadly, none had added her phone number.
