The air bag: Drift Academy can teach vital driving skills

Even old dogs can learn some new tricks at GGI Entertainment’s Drift Academy in Dubai.

GGI Entertainment’s Drift Academy. Courtesy GGI Entertainment

‘What’s the weather like, your side?”

“Not too bad. How about yours?”

“There’s about four inches of fresh snow.”

“Right, I’ll meet you at the ­garage, and we’ll go out.”

So went the winter conversations between my friends and I when we worked in the retail motor trade in Scotland while studying at college and university. If the snow had fallen, we were out in some ghastly, poorly handling saloons such as Morris Marinas, just to get the feel of what goes wrong when it goes wrong.

Fast forward to 2005 and I discovered that I still had a grip on slippy stuff at the Volvo Winter Challenge in Ivalo, Finland, where I spent a whole day on the world’s biggest ice rink, sliding cars around to Mozart, lilting waltzes arriving at me through the stereo. That was easily the most fun a person could have in a car with three times their normal number of clothes on.

Since then, and apart from a short and unplanned car rescue mission in Baku – another story, including wolves – I’ve tried to keep things on the straight and narrow, or at least between the white lines and generally pointing in the direction of intended travel. I was pretty certain, with time and little opportunity, I was getting rusty in any discipline requiring sideways movement, so I booked myself into GGI Entertainment’s Drift Academy in Dubai.

Now, this isn’t really drifting, because the courses are driven in front-wheel-drive cars, and a drift is technically a power slide, which is pretty near impossible in a front-driven car. But as my tutor, Rami Azzam, tells me, the effect is the same. As he smoothly demonstrates the technique in a Volkswagen Scirocco, I can almost smell the snow again.

The almost total loss of grip at the rear of the car is created by fitting rather clever plastic wheel covers over the rear tyres. The fronts still act normally and do the driving, but with no traction at the rear, the practice of unbalancing the car, and learning how to correct the resultant slide, is what the fun is all about. It’s a practical skill to have, too, especially if you plan a winter holiday with any ­driving.

It takes me longer than I expect to get the hang of subtle inputs and feeling the car again, and there are quite a few frustrating moments as I pirouette gracelessly to a stop. I’m not sure in one session I’m entirely successful, and it’s a lot more tiring than I expect. But it allows the driver to experience, slowly and safely, with no chance of a horrible accident, what happens in poor grip conditions. Importantly, there’s always a skilled instructor with you, and he has a slave brake fitted to the passenger footwell.

It allows you to understand what conditions can be like in the rain, and it’s not a bad idea to be prepared. A bit like my old chums and me in industrial-area car parks in the dead of a Scottish winter.

It’s a course anyone travelling to colder climates should take, and should also be a must for anyone who has children who learnt to drive here.

Foggy and rainy winter driving here is a lottery. Accident statistics are horrifying. Anything that can be done to arm yourself with a bit more experience should be on your list.

How did I get on? Well, let’s just say that it seems old dogs can be taught new tricks.

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