6 Things I Learned After A Day Of Drifty Ice Lake Driving

The current Seat Leon Cupra has been with us for a few years now, steadily improved with small bumps in power and subtle exterior tweaks. Now though, the Spanish hot hatch - which most of us in the CT office have a soft spot for - has had its most major change thus far, with the addition of optional four-wheel drive on the ST Cupra estate.

Offering an additional pair of driven wheels for the estate only baffled us initially, but apparently it’s down to the four-wheel drive packaging already being sorted for the estate-based Leon X-Perience. And anyway - a four-wheel drive estate with 297bhp plus a 0-62mph time of 4.9 seconds sounds like all the car you could ever need, so we’re not complaining.

Clearly keen to show off what its new creation is capable of, Seat dropped a handful of them off at an iced-over lake in Finnish Lapland, inviting four-time WRC champion Juha Kankkunen along to the party. Well, technically it was actually his digs - the Juha Kankkunen Driving Academy in Kuusamo - where the retired-but-not-really-retired Finn spends his days teaching people to be rally heroes.

Here’s what we learned…

Four-wheel drifts in the Leon ST feel unnatural at first

I’ve attempted to drift numerous cars both on tarmac and on ice with varying levels of success, but they’ve almost exclusively been rear-wheel drive. Four-wheel drive requires a different approach. Exactly how different depends on the kind of system, but in the case of the Leon, which will rarely send more than 50 per cent of power to the rear wheels, you don’t need to do a much in the way of counter steering.

I found myself instinctively applying opposite lock whenever the back end stepped out, but doing so is generally unnecessary and often counter productive. With the Haldex clutch-based system keen to shuffle power back to the front wheels (depending on ESP settings) to bring the car back into line, it’s just a case of keeping your foot down to control the slide with the throttle.

The occasional corrective application of opposite lock can be helpful, but for the most part it’s about trusting the equipment underneath you. After a few laps I was getting the hang of it, but I’d quite happily spend a whole week at the track to get some practice in. And have fun, obviously.

Improving car control is much easier with nothing to hit

The beauty of driving on an ice lake is if you do spin, the worst that’s going to happen is you’ll hit a low-lying snow bank, wounding your pride but not the car. So, you’re much more confident to push past the limits, making it the ideal environment for improving your driving.

And improving car control is easier in ‘slow motion’

Provoking slides in the dry generally takes a lot of force and it takes quick reactions to catch the slide, but there’s no such issue on the ice. Even though ’our’ Leon test cars were wearing spiked tyres, getting the back end to rotate didn’t require much effort. And because it’s all happening much slower, you have time to think about exactly what you’re doing in terms of steering inputs and throttle usage.

This gives you the opportunity to learn exactly what you should be doing with a car at and beyond the limit, while also learning how the car in question handles itself when the grip runs out. It’s as close to driving in slow motion as you’re going to get, until someone works out how to make a real-life version of that ‘slo mo’ drug from Dredd…

A little dab of the brakes sets the car up nicely for a corner

This is an important lesson I learned during some driver training with Porsche last year, but that ‘slow motion’ effect we’ve just been talking about gives you much more time to appreciate what’s actually happening. That little dab of the brakes shifts the weight forward and stabilises the car, setting it up nicely before it’s chucked into the bend.

ESP systems aren’t always fun killers

Another thing the ice highlighted rather nicely is the different levels of the Cupra’s ESP system. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t allow for a whole lot of fun in its fully on setting, regularly and conspicuously cutting the power. Spoilsport.

Thankfully, a tap of the ESP button switches it to the off-but-not-really-off ‘ESP Sport’ setting. I was expecting this to lightly tone down the power-sapping antics of the full on setting and nothing more, but it actually allows for a surprising amount of slip. Only when you make a sizeable cock-up will its interventions become obvious. Not only that, but in ESP Sport the four-wheel drive system will keep the power going to the rear for longer, where the full-fat serving of ESP will be much more keen to shove everything back to the front.

On the subject of power split, it’s theoretically possible for the four-wheel drive system to send 100 per cent of the Leon’s 297 horses to the rear, but generally you’re not going to see more than 50 per cent gong back there. Other VAG applications of the Haldex system - for instance the new Audi RS3 - have different software that allows for more of a rear bias.

Juha Kankkunen is a driving god

Just when I thought I was getting good at holding four-wheel drifts, we got in a car with Juha Kankkunen. Unsurprisingly, the bonkers fast handful of laps he belted out made my efforts look particularly pedestrian.

It wasn’t just the speed and control that was startling: it was the smoothness. With me behind the wheel every lap ebbed and flowed as I tried my best to keep the speed up while catching each slide, but with Juha it was an utterly seamless and effortless affair. It was as though he was gently and efficiently spreading butter on a slice of bread, while I was haphazardly punching the dining table with buttered fists.

Things got particularly interesting when we switched to a passenger lap from Jordi Gene. The former WTCC driver is a Seat brand ambassador these days (he also had a hand in setting up the ESP Sport setting), and the company likes to wheel him out at events like this, seemingly with the purpose of making journalists feel highly inadequate about their driving.

As a circuit driver primarily, his laps were noticeably less smooth than the lap with Kankkunen. He didn’t make it look quite so effortless: steering inputs were more aggressive and he was counter-steering and man-handling the car to a much greater degree. But crucially, he was still bonkers fast, and considering it sounded like he’d done little to no ice driving before this event, you can’t help but doff your wooly hat to the man. It served as another reminder that pro drivers simply aren’t human…