As car enthusiasts, I don’t believe any of us are a stranger to the ‘random’ police check. Apparently if you drive an $800,000 supercar, the result is the same. After numerous roadside pull-overs for RBTs and ‘car admiration’, the owner of the white LFA decided to make a stand, albeit not the one you’re probably thinking.
Instead of getting annoyed or feeling ‘hassled’ by the police, he decided to give them an insight into the world of supercars. He organised a day to take some members of the local constabulary out to the Holden Driver Training Centre at Norwell. ‘Don’t worry about finding your own way there, we’ll arrange to have you picked up’.
The morning started with some members of the Brisbane Super Car Club at Flute in Paddington. A beautiful restaurant, great staff and a menu to drool over, it was a fantastic beginning to the morning.
From here it was only a short squirt through the suburbs to our next location, Lexus of Indooroopilly. Here we had a few more cars join the troupe including the VERY unique, and in my opinion beautiful chrome LFA.
The car that garnered most of my attention here though was the fully prepped Lexus IS-F race car.
Taken from Car Advice:
“The Lexus IS-F racer is powered by a TRD-developed naturally aspirated 4.7-litre V8 that produces approximately 450kW. A six-speed no-lift sequential rear-mounted Hewland SL-600 transmission with line-lock and launch control sends drive to the rear wheels.
StopTech brakes and FabCar custom-designed ZF Sachs suspension hide behind 18-inch BBS racing wheels, which sit at the corners of the wide-body carbonfibre exterior – the whole package weighing 1290kg.”
It was here that each police officer got to jump into the passenger seat of a different supercar. I’m sure there was some ‘pulling of rank’ when choosing who got to sit where. A scramble from Indooroopilly, along the river and onto the Pacific Motorway turned into a very pleasant cruise down the highway to Norwell, with just a few ‘downshifts’ to allow the police the eargasm that is the exhaust note of these cars and generally allowing them to feel what it’s like to cruise in exotic territory with everyone staring at you as you cruise past.
Ferrari 360 from Rent a Dream Car.
Mark bought out his turbo 86 in lieu of his R35 GTR on the day for a bit of fun.
As always, Supa and his Lotus were in attendance.
A red stallion prancing down the freeway.
It’s not often that you get to witness sights as spectacular as this in your daily commute. The sound and presence of these two cars is hard to top… however… but I’ll get to that later.
Upon arriving at the Holden Driver Training Centre at Norwell, we were greeted with some V8 supercars on hand.
Unfortunately, due to a recent conclusion in the battle of noise limits, these bad boys were not to be put on the track in all their glory. The noise limit towards the back of the track has to be so low that the exhausts on the standard Holden drive cars had to be modified to be quieter than stock! Ridiculous for a racetrack that has been there for 25 years.
After a nice lunch, we got to hit the track. We were separated into two groups for various activities. My group got the skidpan first.
A mixture of police officers and supercar owners, it was an interesting combination and I was looking forward to seeing how they went on track.
The course was coned out into a circle circuit. The aim of the challenge was to drive between the cones, some tight, some wide, for 3 laps trying to achieve the quickest time, and of course there were penalties for knocking cones over.
I assumed it would be an even playing field with the center cars being the weapon of choice…
…however I’ve been wrong before.
The boys couldn’t resist the chance to drive their cars in a safe and legal environment. Not to mention that it gives everyone a fantastic chance to hear and see these machines in action.
The growl from this SLK 55 was beautiful…
…but when it comes down to it, the F1 sound of the LFA is mind blowing.
400KW supercars, AWD supercars, stock V6 commodores, a Lotus in play and the quickest car on the day around the cones was this AG3NT in his 190kw WRX STI.
Over the other side of the field was the other group.
This was a slalom course, having to wind the V6 Omega through the cones, u-turn at the end and drive back, stopping in the box for the quickest time. There was no supercar advantage here as the noise compliance was very much under scrutiny at this part of the circuit.
I am quite proud to say that I laid down the quickest time of my group around the slalom course.
The next activity of the afternoon was the turntable. A giant spinning disc in the ground that as you drive over, grips your car and spins it, forcing you to correct. It was an eye opener having the instructors first show you how to do it properly, getting off the gas and purely correcting the car by steering only. The clincher was next when they showed us how it could all go horribly wrong through the incorrect application of power or late/early steering.
It was a lot of fun having a play and learning how to control a violent, sudden slide.
To wrap up the day the instructors got behind the wheel of two brand new VF commodores. The SS and the SS-V and took us around the track at full noise (on the modified quiet exhausts).
It was crazy being a passenger, having raced my private car at Norwell before the noise restrictions. Seeing the highly trained race car drivers/instructors behind the wheel with their foot buried on the accelerator far past where I would be on the brake, using every inch of the track, hanging on the racing lines, tyres squealing on the edge of the corners. I never thought I’d get out of a standard Commodore with a smile on my face, but alas, I sure did.
After a ‘tough’ day of driving it was time to cruise home. Everyone said their farewells, the police jumped back into the passenger seats of the cars and we headed back to Lexus to drop everyone off. The afternoon was now in ‘Golden Hour’ which allowed for some brilliant photos.
R35 GTR
Ferrari 599 GTB
Earlier I mentioned that the Gallardo and LFA cruising together would be hard to beat. However I believe this is arguably one way of doing it. 1/250th of the entire worlds LFAs, cruising side by side in harmony. Glorious.
Thank you to the organisers of the day, the police that attended, Lexus of Indooroopilly, Flute at Paddington and of course the staff and drivers at The Holden Driver Training Cenre. It was a brilliant day.
You can check out more of my work on my Facebook or my website Sharp Imagery.
-Daniel
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