Joachim Winkelhock demonstrates the right way to steer. In his experience, he says, most people have learned bad habits.
3. Handling track
“The GTC is a very new car, but it’s not a racing car,” Jockel says as we head for the handling track. Thanks to automatic stop/start, its average fuel consumption is only 4.9 litres per hundred kilometres – a big advantage in Jockel’s view, since even racing drivers need to minimise their fuel consumption. “If you drive, brake and change gear smoothly, you use less petrol and have to make fewer pitstops,” he explains.
As Jockel begins the first lap of the handling track, I feel like I’m on the north loop of the Nürburgring. There are lots of hills and dips and sixteen bends, and after two warm-up laps he demonstrates how onboard technology makes the car safe. As we round a bend, he suddenly spins the wheel: instead of skidding, the GTC is automatically braked and stabilised by the ESP (Electronic Stability Program). There’s no substitute for safe driving: “If you hit a bend too fast, ESP is going to be no help at all.”
Jockel has had many accidents in his 25-year career, but has never suffered more than slight injuries. So what has he learned from this? “Predictive driving,” he says. “I’ve always got my eyes on all the mirrors. I know what’s behind me, beside me and in front of me, and I don’t just mean the guy in front, but the car in front of him. If his brake lights come on, I can react as quickly as possible.”
Ours is the only car on the handling track, so there’s no chance of bumping into anybody else, but my first lap still seems to take twice as long as my instructor’s. There are cones at the top of each bend, and he tells me to drive as close as possible to them. I do my best, but he says I’m still metres away. When he takes over at the wheel again, I can see the difference between us: he takes bends much later and more sharply, but with no trace of haste. This is smooth, controlled driving, with the tyres passing within a hair’s breadth of the cones as the GTC is pushed to the limit.
As we finish our session, I know that I’ll never be as fast as Jockel. “That’s quite normal,” he says. “It takes time to get used to a new car and a new track. If you spent another couple of hours here, you could be almost as fast as me.”
The test centre at Dudenhofen
Strict security procedures apply at the Dudenhofen test centre, and a sign at the entrance warns that even mobile phone cameras are banned. Some say there is even a top-secret area, but be that as it may, the site, located southeast of Frankfurt, is one of the best places in Europe to test new cars. Opel tries out its vehicles here under real-life conditions, and non-GM manufacturers also test their prototypes.
There is a wide choice of tracks: the banked high-speed track (marked in blue) is the high point of the experience, allowing driving without lateral forces at up to 250 kilometres an hour. Opel’s engineers have also created a 12-kilometre endurance track (red) with various bends and surface types.
The “torture track” (yellow) includes potholes, humps and cobblestones, while the hill track (orange) has gradients of up to 30%. There is also a noise and comfort track (green) used to measure things like tyre noise.
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Joachim Winkelhock, the ex-Formula One and DTM driver: In 1999 he won what’s probably the world’s most prestigious race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Today, he tells us what driving is all about and what makes the Astra GTC so special.
