Hey guys, just want to share my experience of the Mercedes drive day I attended. My dealership invited me to participate in the Mercedes Australia "Accelerate" Driving event. It was my first time attending events of this type, I went in with a brief idea of what to expect, but in reality it was so much more than that.
I have done some crazy stuff on the road before, in my beloved Subaru, however this time was very different. It was an entirely new experience, to be able to go flat out on the track, in a safe environment, and with the instructor next to me to provide guidance. It was a lot of fun, and I have gain a lot of new and valuable experience from it.
There were 24 people, and 8 instructors with a fleet of 18 cars. We were divided into groups of 3, each of us got plenty of time to drive with the instructor next to us and go through the full program.
The day started off with lunch, followed by an hour long introduction and technical briefing of all the latest active safety assistance and collusion avoidance systems available on the cars.
To start the actual driving event, we were given a E 350d to drive around the track at a moderate speed. The instructor was going through everything, from seating positions, to turning in and braking points, and most importantly, where to look on the track. Afterwards we were allowed to go for several flat out acceleration runs and practice full emergency braking. I was very impressed by how well the car handled the abuse, we did more than 15 of these runs and the brakes absorbed it all. The car was extremely stable, and kept tracking perfectly straight in heavy braking even though I have both of my hands off the steering wheel.
The 2nd part of the event demonstrated the effectiveness of the drive assist/pilot capabilities of the current E class. We jump into another E 350d, the instructor switched on all the auto pilot functions and the car locked onto the car in front automatically. Basically our E 350d was tracking the car in front, it accelerates and decelerates, and corners in syn with the car in front. They then tested the collusion avoidance system by purposely edging our car into another car on the left, the sensors detected an imminent collusion and the safety system steered our car away from the path of collusion. There were also a few obstacles set up to test the effectiveness of the forward collusion avoidance/auto braking system. The car braked impossibly late, but it just managed to avoid hitting the objects in front, by about 20 cm. The last component of this segment was the self parking function. Unlike earlier systems, the car can manage everything by itself with no intervention from the driver, it can also drive itself out of the same parking space, which atm even the Tesla Model S cannot do.
Things got a lot more fun when we got to drive a C 250 with solid plastic rear tires, on a wet skid pad. Our aim was to drive around the S shaped cones and around this 180 deg bend, which was marked out by the cones. The purpose of this exercise was to show us how effective the ESP system is working to keep the cars pointing at where the drivers wanted the car to go. The instructor had a go first, showing us just how little grip there was, he spun the car around with barely any throttle input. My two group members went before me, and they both spun the car around twice with ESP off, but with ESP on I was amazed by how tightly it kept the car in line, even with 100% throttle, the ESP was constantly cutting the engine power and trimming the brakes at each corner to keep the car in line. So with ESP on, both of my group members managed to drive around the entire course without spinning.
Given that I have seen the mistakes made by the other two, and the fact that I have a C250 as well, I had an idea of what to do and how the car will behave. I was gentle with the throttle but quick and precise with the steering and somehow managed to drift around the course without spinning out or going completely sideways, the instructor was impressed enough and let me drift around for another lap
instead of driving another one with the ESP on.
These are the plastic rear tires.
We then moved to another section of the skid pad, this time in a GLA 250. A pile of cones was placed about 300 m in front of us and when the instructor tell us to, we have to accelerate towards it at full throttle and then slam on the brake and turn to the direction that is given by the instructor when he say so. I must have been approaching the cones at 100 km/h plus when the instructor shout out "left" so I instantly slam on the brakes and turn. Everything happened so quickly, it was a purely reflex based response. there was no time to think. My instructor seems to be impressed, saying "it seems like you have done this before" to which I replied "Yeah, things get a bit interesting when you drive in Sydney"
I will continue my review tomorrow, the next parts includs driving the C 63 and the S 63 on the track, follow by driving the big Actros trucks, and then a few hot laps in the C63, driven by my instructor.
I have done some crazy stuff on the road before, in my beloved Subaru, however this time was very different. It was an entirely new experience, to be able to go flat out on the track, in a safe environment, and with the instructor next to me to provide guidance. It was a lot of fun, and I have gain a lot of new and valuable experience from it.
There were 24 people, and 8 instructors with a fleet of 18 cars. We were divided into groups of 3, each of us got plenty of time to drive with the instructor next to us and go through the full program.
The day started off with lunch, followed by an hour long introduction and technical briefing of all the latest active safety assistance and collusion avoidance systems available on the cars.
To start the actual driving event, we were given a E 350d to drive around the track at a moderate speed. The instructor was going through everything, from seating positions, to turning in and braking points, and most importantly, where to look on the track. Afterwards we were allowed to go for several flat out acceleration runs and practice full emergency braking. I was very impressed by how well the car handled the abuse, we did more than 15 of these runs and the brakes absorbed it all. The car was extremely stable, and kept tracking perfectly straight in heavy braking even though I have both of my hands off the steering wheel.
The 2nd part of the event demonstrated the effectiveness of the drive assist/pilot capabilities of the current E class. We jump into another E 350d, the instructor switched on all the auto pilot functions and the car locked onto the car in front automatically. Basically our E 350d was tracking the car in front, it accelerates and decelerates, and corners in syn with the car in front. They then tested the collusion avoidance system by purposely edging our car into another car on the left, the sensors detected an imminent collusion and the safety system steered our car away from the path of collusion. There were also a few obstacles set up to test the effectiveness of the forward collusion avoidance/auto braking system. The car braked impossibly late, but it just managed to avoid hitting the objects in front, by about 20 cm. The last component of this segment was the self parking function. Unlike earlier systems, the car can manage everything by itself with no intervention from the driver, it can also drive itself out of the same parking space, which atm even the Tesla Model S cannot do.
Things got a lot more fun when we got to drive a C 250 with solid plastic rear tires, on a wet skid pad. Our aim was to drive around the S shaped cones and around this 180 deg bend, which was marked out by the cones. The purpose of this exercise was to show us how effective the ESP system is working to keep the cars pointing at where the drivers wanted the car to go. The instructor had a go first, showing us just how little grip there was, he spun the car around with barely any throttle input. My two group members went before me, and they both spun the car around twice with ESP off, but with ESP on I was amazed by how tightly it kept the car in line, even with 100% throttle, the ESP was constantly cutting the engine power and trimming the brakes at each corner to keep the car in line. So with ESP on, both of my group members managed to drive around the entire course without spinning.
Given that I have seen the mistakes made by the other two, and the fact that I have a C250 as well, I had an idea of what to do and how the car will behave. I was gentle with the throttle but quick and precise with the steering and somehow managed to drift around the course without spinning out or going completely sideways, the instructor was impressed enough and let me drift around for another lap
instead of driving another one with the ESP on.These are the plastic rear tires.
We then moved to another section of the skid pad, this time in a GLA 250. A pile of cones was placed about 300 m in front of us and when the instructor tell us to, we have to accelerate towards it at full throttle and then slam on the brake and turn to the direction that is given by the instructor when he say so. I must have been approaching the cones at 100 km/h plus when the instructor shout out "left" so I instantly slam on the brakes and turn. Everything happened so quickly, it was a purely reflex based response. there was no time to think. My instructor seems to be impressed, saying "it seems like you have done this before" to which I replied "Yeah, things get a bit interesting when you drive in Sydney"
I will continue my review tomorrow, the next parts includs driving the C 63 and the S 63 on the track, follow by driving the big Actros trucks, and then a few hot laps in the C63, driven by my instructor.
