Frankfurt am Main / St. Moritz, 9 February 2011. Aston Martin’s third annual winter driving experience; Aston Martin ON ICE has seen a strong increase in participants as the event firmly establishes itself as a true highlight on the St. Moritz’s ‘must do’ list. Attracting international customers to this alpine winter wonderland, the third annual edition took place over six days of spectacular super car ice driving.
Approximately 150 customers from 22 countries – including, the UK, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Portugal, Belgium and even as far afield as Russia, the UAE and Singapore –challenged themselves on the glassy Swiss Ice field of Samedan. Fifteen Aston Martins from the current model range including DBS, four-door Rapide, V12 Vantage and DB9 were all made available, all fitted with winter tyres for customers to be put through a series of exercises. Drifting through spins, oversteer, understeer, circuit braking and swerving manoeuvres as well as handbrake J-turns will complete their training for a final competitive parallel slalom competition around the frozen circuit.
All guests stayed at the luxurious 5-star Grand Hotel Kempinski des Baines in St. Moritz, hosted by the Aston Martin team.
Jeffrey L. Scott, Managing Director of Aston Martin Lagonda of Europe: “An Aston Martin sets the standards of expected excellence for hand built sports cars. Driving such a powerful sports car on ice, and learning how to control it as a master driver, is simply the peak exhilaration point of this kind of performance driving. This demonstrates that with proper handling, driving our sports cars in the winter on snow and ice is not only performed confidently with our great technologies, but also extremely exhilarating to do.”
The Aston Martin driving instructors were on hand to offer guests expert tuition on how to use the safety technologies featured in Aston Martins to gain the maximum enjoyment whatever the road conditions. All Aston Martin sports cars use the latest active safety systems such as Anti-lock brakes (ABS), Dynamic Stability Control (DSC), Electronic Brakeforce Distribution (EBD), Emergency Brake Assist (EBA), Traction Control (TC) and Positive Torque Control (PTC). A key element of the training programme is to show how they all work in harmony, constantly communicating with each other to help the driver maintain control. Furthermore, the programme will help the participants learn how to drive their sports cars safely even with some driver aids switched off.
The exciting event Aston Martin ON ICE in St. Moritz is part of a comprehensive driving programme for customers, joining the Aston Martin ON TRACK and Aston Martin ON TOUR events. This year’s event is the kick-off to the BIG 5 European event series, followed by Aston Martin ON TRACK events in Boxberg (Germany), Spa (Belgium), Monza (Italy) and Nürburgring (Germany).
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