Do you feel like testing your off-road skills, your wet skid prowess and your speed around a track, all within reach of an excellent cappuccino? Mercedes-Benz World has the answer
I had a slightly surreal experience over my breakfast the other day. I was just enjoying some coffee and toast and looking out of a big picture window, when I saw a car below, gliding around slowly, sideways. It looked positively balletic as it drifted silently around a donut-shaped track: never speeding up, never slowing down, never changing its position, namely pointing towards the middle of the donut while gliding in a perfect circle around it.
This is the view that greets you every day at Brooklands, just outside London, once one of the world’s most famous racetracks, now preserved as a homage to the motor car. Mercedes-Benz World, the development that has taken over the circuit, offers a series of ‘Driving Experiences’ to keen drivers from the age of 10 upwards.
The ‘donut’ below the first-floor restaurant is officially called the Wet Skid Circuit; then there are Handling Circuits, a Dynamic Straight, Wet Straights, and a 4-hectare off-road circuit. Altogether it’s the most complete and varied adventure driving centre in Europe, and quite possibly the world.
We started with the Wet Skid Circuit. Soon after breakfast, we went down to the donut-shaped track we had been watching and climbed into a car with an instructor. Could we do what he had been demonstrating? I was quite confident. Like any other enthusiastic driver, I noticed he’d been steering into his skids, keeping it all perfectly balanced; how hard could it be?
Our instructor pointed out the wet skid circuit was a special low-friction, ultra-slippery surface which was kept constantly wet by an array of sprinklers. The car was a standard Mercedes CLK. I jumped in the driver’s seat, set off onto the track from the entry lane, and promptly spun the car around in several rapid circles and off the side, coming to rest on the grass beside it (fortunately there is nothing to crash into). Hmm - better try again. Onto the track, instantly sideways, and once again, that feeling of utter helplessness as the car revolved around its own axis like a helicopter blade: nothing I did, whether turning the wheel or prodding the accelerator or brakes, made a blind bit of difference.
I tried this several more times, with exactly the same results. I even grew to rather enjoy the rapid 360 degree panoramic view as we rotated out of control, though I was less fond of the now familiar ‘whump’ as we eventually rotated off the track, onto grass, and came to a sudden halt.
Eventually the instructor took over as I sat in the passenger seat with folded arms and a frown, convinced I’d been had. He drove onto the circuit - and held the car perfectly in position, pointing towards the middle, while making progress in a perfect ‘O’ sideways around the circuit. “It’s all about the throttle (accelerator), not the steering,” he said, demonstrating balletic delicacy with hands and toes.
The other parts of the driving experiences were all memorable - being blasted around a track in a racing car, then taking the helm and seeing how quickly you can accelerate and brake in the wet and dry. The off-roading experience, in Mercedes offroaders, is extensive, challenging and very muddy. But the other standout is the children’s driving experience. There are no age limits; children just need to be tall enough to reach the pedals of a Mercedes A-class (in reality 10-12 years old) and they can drive a car around a special circuit. (Not the wet donut; an easy circuit.)
It all makes for an exciting, and exhausting, day: you feel like you’ve done some physical exercise, which means the slick restaurant and bar area at the car museum (didn’t I mention there was one of those?) look very welcome. Just go easy on the donuts. – Robert Buchanan