Dances on ice

It’s an arresting combination of elements that add up to a unique experience which has no peer in Australia. All the ingredients of a lavish European escape – the food, the wine, the location and the accommodation – all based around a central activity that is at once challenging and frustrating but ultimately hugely rewarding. This is the Audi ice driving experience, a program that takes place on the other side of the world at the Audi driving experience winter ‘campus’ high in the Austrian Alps.

At over a kilometre long and up to 300 metres wide in parts, the ice driving facility sits just outside the picturesque ski town of Seefeld, just three hours from Munich. Three days of coming to terms with the most unforgiving driving surface on earth in high-performance vehicles that can accelerate from 0 to 100km/h in 3.9 seconds (and that’s the slower of the two).

This is the ultimate destination trip that kicks off in Munich itself, where guests meet for an immersive six day experience that begins with a very auto-focused program, before becoming more lifestyle-oriented around the central task of trying to master car control on a surface that renders steering redundant and more often than not turns the driver into a passenger.

It’s a group of mixed personalities and backgrounds, all united by some connection to the Audi brand and varying degrees of curiosity about driving on the ice to wanting to hone skills already acquired through motorsport or indeed other similar courses.

From literally every state in Australia (almost) some have travelled from Australia especially for the ice driving experience, while others have combined the trip with other European travel plans. 

Both couples and those travelling solo find themselves heading for Ingolstadt for ‘round one’ of this unique trip as the inimitable Steve Pizzati – Audi Australia’s Chief Driving instructor – does his best tour guide impression and gives some background on a course he’s been involved with for the better part of 25 years.

The first part of the trip affords participants an overview of the Audi brand and the sprawling facility that makes up its head office in Ingolstadt. It takes in some of the production facilities at the massive plant which effectively dominates life in Ingolstadt, the vehicle delivery area which resembles an airport lounge and the iconic Museum mobile with its constantly changing collections from the brand’s illustrious past.

Then a quick visit to the Audi Sport complex at Neuburg where the new Formula 1 facility is under construction behind the huge 2.1-kilometre test track that dominates the site, and of course the famous trophy room – an Aladdin’s cave of trophies that chart the brand’s tremendous motorsport successes. From rally to DTM, Formula E and most recently Dakar, the spoils of motorsport dominance are all here including the brand’s 16 years of Le Mans success, highlighted by original 24 Hours of Le Mans trophies that only go to a manufacturer that has won three times in a row. Audi Sport has three of them.

Overnight in the old town of Ingolstadt at the 500-year-old Adler hotel and then the group heads into the mountains towards Austria and the ice, stopping for a leisurely lunch on the shores of picturesque Lake Tegernsee along the way.

The base for the ice driving experience is the Hotel Sacher in Seefeld – a luxurious ski resort complete with its luxury spa facilities, wet and dry saunas, ice plunge pool, steam baths and indoor/outdoor pools. It offers the perfect counter to the time spent on the ice, and given its proximity to the ice fields just three kilometres away, it negates the need for o’dark thirty starts and makes the perfect venue for lunch each day.

The Audi driving experience in Germany runs one and two day ice driving experiences in Seefeld, so the three day course offered here is specially curated for the Australian market – after all, it is a significant trip just to get to the glorious Austrian Alps.

The ice driving ‘campus’ exists in a valley just outside the picturesque ski village of Seefled, where local farmers have become expert at producing and grooming ice over what is essentially pasture that provides lush grazing for their livestock during the spring and summer months. The topography of the area is such that it is largely shielded from the sun for most of the day and protected from the elements, allowing the ice coverage to be maintained and indeed ‘worked on’ using water pumped from the adjoining river during the several months the site is active as an ice driving school.

In fact it was at this very site that Audi became the first manufacturer to develop and run a driving program to showcase the capabilities of its cars, the combination of quattro and ice producing a compelling argument for the former. From these relatively humble beginnings, the Audi driving experience in all its many faceted glory was born, creating an entity with international reach that now includes courses on everything from race craft and high-performance motoring to lifestyle drives and courses designed specifically for chauffeurs and close security personnel.

As with all Audi driving experiences, the ice driving component of this trip is conducted under the tutelage of top motorsport professionals and trained Audi driving experience instructors.

This year’s ice driving took place under the hawklike gaze of Florian Gruber and Klaus Wicha, two highly accomplished racing drivers and instructors from different motorsport disciplines whose impressive resumes, not to mention significant patience, meant they were well placed to steer the group towards some semblance of competency on the ice.

Florian’s racing career has been conducted on the great race tracks of Europe, driving everything from GT3 cars to a specially produced Apollo Speed model in which he set a record 7:11.57 around the Nürburgring Nordschleife, putting in him some very rare motoring company in the process.

His fellow instructor on the ice, Klaus Wicha, is one of Germany’s most experienced rally co-drivers, having competed in the highest categories of European and World rally for the past two decades. From German and Austrian titles to World Rally Championship podiums, Wicha is no stranger to the vagaries of driving on slippery surfaces.

And slippery it was. This is perhaps the only time when it’s preferable to drive because you can’t stand up. Even wearing studded overshoes, the likelihood of falling on the ice when swapping from RS 5 Sportback and the all-electric RS e-tron GT was one of the major hazards.

With a group of chauffeurs and close security personnel being put through their paces in a fleet of S8s on another part of the ice, the program got underway in earnest.

Seemingly easy exercises to begin with that quickly showed how unforgiving a surface the ice and snow can be. Even at walking speed, and with quattro and studded tyres, grip was a precarious thing – as was steering. With 331kW and 440kW of power from the RS 5 Sportback and RS e-tron GT respectively, one of the first things you learn is judicious use of the throttle. Different approaches for the two very different RS cars also comes into the equation – the e-tron GT’s extra weight  providing better grip in some instances, but also more momentum if things got out of hand. 

And it is so very easy to ‘come unstuck’ on the ice, but it’s for that very reason that people travel from all over the world to take part in the program and to learn from the best.

Working from understeer exercises to oversteer and power slides, 180 degree flick turns to timed courses at the end of each day, slowly the skill levels crept up – but they were coming from a reasonably low base. Praise was thin on the ground, and it’s a fair bet that in their haunted dreams years from now, participants of the experience will wake in the night screaming ‘more power, more power’ – mimicking the desperate pleas of Florian on the two-way radio. But a nod of approval from Klaus was a precious thing and more than made up for the head shaking. A rare ‘well done’ felt like a gold medal endorsement and banished the despondent feeling after wiping out a line of cones and ending up facing the wrong way. Many, many times.

Heading back to the resort for lunch each day, participants were always chomping at the bit to get back out on the ice and improve on the morning sessions. Exercises became more complicated and involved as time went on, but so too did confidence and the competitive nature that lives in us all. Let’s just say it wasn’t only the instructors’ stop watches that came out at the end of each day – not that there’s anything wrong with a little healthy competition.

Evenings in between were spent relaxing at the resort and taking in the spa facilities, with dinner at the resort or at specially selected restaurants in Seefeld itself. On the final night the group travelled into the nearby forest in horse drawn carriages to sample Austria’s finest in traditional surrounds.

It’s certainly a trip of many parts and while the ice driving is undoubtedly the star of the show, the lifestyle aspects make for a perfect balance. There’s also an undeniable sense of camaraderie that develops over the course of the trip, as different people with a common interest take part in an exercise that is well outside the experience of most Australians and indeed plenty of Europeans for that matter.

Ultimately, what each individual takes away from an experience like this is deeply personal, but in this writer’s opinion, getting it right on the ice, just once, makes it all worthwhile and is probably the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Of course with the very ‘European’ nature of the Hotel Sacher’s extensive spa facilities, there’s also plenty of opportunity to operate with clothes off – but what happens on ice drive, stays on ice drive.