For the 22 of us who made our way to Johore Circuit at Pasir Gudang, Malaysia, it's a pilgrimage of sorts. A must-do event for BMW fanatics and car enthusiasts, circled in red on our calendars. And just as we have been doing for the last couple of years, we will arrive early. Some of us with our flashy Bimmers and some of us in our tour bus.

But make no mistakes. All of us will have butterflies in our stomachs and springs in our steps. After all, nothing beats going through the Advance BMW Driving Experience on an idle Saturday morning right through the evening - undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable and satisfying events organised by BMW as well as Pirelli.

Formerly known as BMW Driver Training, the BMW Driving Experience started in Germany years back, highlighting to drivers the importance as well as techniques on safe driving. And this time round, using the 3 Series as training cars, it's no different.

Double-handed Slalom

Starting off with the training was a warm-up exercise. Going at a maximum speed of 20km/h, drivers had to zip in and out of cones to get a good feel of the car. "9 o’clock and 3 o’clock! No shuffling of the steering. Remember guys, it’s the Push technique." These were the constant words from Anuar, our driving instructor, as he made sure drivers get the basics right before heading off to the rest of the exercises.

Emergency Brakes

There's is absolutely nothing more satisfying than to hear the tyres screech as you gun the car towards the soapy ground and have every ounce of power channeled right from your head to the feet as you slam on the brake pedal for this course. E-braking at the stipulated marking gets harder but also more exciting as the speed increases (we started at 50km/h and gradually increased the speed).

It enforces you to put yourself in a real-word scenario, and of course, putting the car to the test. And mind you, it took us over 10 rounds of emergency braking to realise that the we really need to slam hard (and I really do mean hard) on the brake pedal for its full braking effectiveness. Lesson learnt? Increasing your driving speed by 10km/h does not mean your braking distance will increase by that couple of metres more. It can easily double the stopping distance.
Oversteer and Understeer



Oversteer is what occurs when a car steers by more than the amount commanded by the driver. It also means that you need to give your car less steering to get it to go around corners. Hence tending toward oversteer will make you car will feel pretty nimble cornering, but it can also make you lose control easily. Rear-wheel driven cars such as the 3 Series generally oversteer. This exercise teaches us what causes oversteer and how to counter it by releasing the accelerator and turning the steering towards the opposite direction.

Conversely, understeer is what occurs when a car steers less than, or 'under' the amount commanded by the driver. Understeering usually requires you to give your car more steering input than the corner should require to get it to go around. Front-wheel driven cars have a higher tendency of understeering. For this, we were told to toggle with the Dynamic Stability Control (DSC) to get a feel of how BMW cars maximise traction of all wheels when setting off or accelerating.

It is able to detect the first signs of oversteering or understeering and helps keep the vehicle safely on course, even if the tyres have varying levels of grip.but you have to work harder to get the car to turn if the DSC is switched off. Again, the trick is to ease off the accelerator and steer towards to direction you want.

Emergency Lane Change This exercise simply trains you to swerve away from an obstacle without releasing your leg from the brake pedal. Again, drivers started off with a low speed of 50km/h and gradually increased to 80km/h. We were placed under tight conditions to have a better understanding of how to avoid a collision or accident with an obstacle. The trick, according to Anuar, was to have a good line of sight. To put it simply, it's important to look at where we want to go.

The faster we drove, the faster our reaction time had to be. And it was only through this exercise that led us to better understand the whole vision thing. We did knock a couple of cones while we were at it (some literally ran over them). But it beats having pedestrians as our victims.

Brake, Swerve and Stabilise

Almost similar to the Emergency Lane Change that we did before, this exercise requires braking only after changing lane at a high speed. Not only did the wet weather help increase the excitement amongst driver, it also put the 3 Series as well as Pirelli's training tyres to the test.

After swerving either to the left or right at speeds of up to 80km/h on the wet track, drivers were required to do an emergency braking - again, to put ourselves in a situation where we need to react and stabilise the car without getting anyone hurt. Although it seemed like an easy task, we constantly hit the different cones that were in place. Anuar said it was due to two things - slow reaction time as well as wrong line of vision.

Although these exercises were seemingly dangerous, it enabled us drivers to better equip ourselves with the knowledge needed to avoid accidents on the road. Plus, it was definitely good fun to mess around with the cars the way we did.