AMG Driving Academy Stage 1 SLS -- part 2

The next morning I woke up early to take a stroll around the area overlooking the Monterey Bay in front of the hotel. Afterward, as requested by our hosts, I had a very light breakfast. We took a short bus ride to Laguna Seca and came out of the bus to a whole fleet of AMG vehicles that we were going to use and abuse throughout the rest of the day.

The event started off with a quick orientation and overview of driving positions as well as how to "correctly" drive on the track.  The whole orientation did not take more than 30 minutes.  We were then quickly broken into driving groups/teams and sent out to our vehicles.  There was 8 rotations in total and we spent about 1-hour in each rotation.  There was definitely no lack of vehicles.  Each of us paired up with a driving buddy and the two of us were assigned to a car.

We started the day learning to drive the corkscrew on a C63 AMG as well as a CLK Black Series. The track was split up into sections so we can focus on practicing and honing our skill on a particular aspect of the track.

 

Later, we moved on to drag racing and emergency braking in a SL63 AMG and E63 AMG.  Eventually, we finished the morning with emergency lane change and autocross in the SLK63 AMG and the SLS.  One thing I would like to point out is the SLS has A LOT of torque.  There nothing that kills your lap time like drifting into the running start of my timed autocross lap.  The winner of the autocross won later in the evening a $6,000 limited edition IWC AMG titanium watch.  My team/group did get the overall win for having the best lap times so we all won mini-cones -- which I proudly display on my desk in my office.

We took a short break for lunch of freshly grilled steak and chicken and continued the afternoon with taxi rides around the track with Tommy Kendall and Bernd Maylander as well as driving the full track in a CLK Black Series and the SLS.