Home » How Porsche Uses Flour To Make You A Better Driver

How Porsche Uses Flour To Make You A Better Driver

Porsche Flour Track (1) Copy
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If you went to a high performance driving course and they directed you out on to the skidpan, you wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. You might nod knowingly if they turned the sprinklers on to kick off some wet driving lessons. When they start putting flour on the road though, you might ask some questions. And yet, I’m told this is actually a valid training technique that totally isn’t made up.

This story came to us from Twitter. One @AskYatharth was posting about their glorious trip to the Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles. “The most fun thing was the flour track,” they said. I’d never heard of that, so I read on. “They dump a bunch of white flour onto a track and [you] try to finish it as fast as possible,” they explained. “Here you are, going 20 mph, having the time of your life.”

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Most of my experience with white flour is with pancakes, or when I’m cooking up my excellent fried chicken. I’d never heard of it in an automotive context before, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

Yatharth’s experience basically explains the whole point of the exercise. “The flour track taught me more than anything else,” they explain. “I could experiment, brake hard, accelerate, spin out, [and] see what happens. All this theory I read could be felt here, safely, instead of actually getting up to dangerously high speeds and sliding into concrete.”

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That makes sense. When teaching car control, it’s great if you can find a way to lower the speed at which the vehicle loses grip. This allows the driver to find the limits of adhesion without having to react as quickly as they would at higher speeds on a dry, grippy surface. What didn’t make sense to me is where the flour came into it. The typical way this is achieved is with water and sprinklers, after all!

 

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To find out what the deal with the flour was, I simply asked! Brandon Schulhof is a marketing expert with the Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles and was more than happy to answer my questions.

“The purpose of applying flour to our Low Friction Handling Circuit is to maintain a consistent low-grip surface,” he explained. “It’s a polished concrete/dry module, [with] no water system.” While the facility does have a sprinkler-equipped skidpad, this is a separate thing entirely.

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The Porsche Experience Center has the usual sprinkler setup, too, but the flour track is something different.
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From above you can see the powder quite clearly.

“The powder (flour) gives us a consistent, low-mu surface, which is perfect for car control training,” Brandon says. By low-mu, he’s referring to the coefficient of friction—which is referred to in equations by the Greek letter Mu (μ). Basically, flour makes the surface slippery.

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There’s a little more to it than that, though. “As rubber transfers to the concrete, the surface’s grip level increases,” he says. “This reduces the ability to break traction easily, making the exercise increasingly difficult.” It creates a natural progression for any exercises undertaken on the Low Friction Handling Circuit.

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The course is great for teaching car control and drifting techniques.

The flour is literally just scooped out of a bucket and dumped on the track. Then, a broom is used to spread it out into a thin, even coating. That’s enough to create a nice low-friction surface for wheeling about with abandon.

Obviously, it takes a little more effort than just switching on a bunch of sprinklers. At the same time, nobody has to get wet, and the infrastructure required is minimal. Just a bucket, a broom, and some elbow grease.

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Applying the flour is a simple task.

I realized I should have asked if they used plain or white flour. And, of course, whether there was a gluten-free option. But ultimately I suspect it doesn’t matter a whole lot for this application. It’s about friction in this case, not bubbles of air or wheat proteins.

Ultimately, it sounds like a blast, and it’s just one aspect of the Porsche Experience Center in LA. Beyond that, Brandon tells me there’s much more fun to be had. He notes the LA facility also has a “Kick Plate module” of which there are only two in the country. It’s a hydraulic plate that causes the vehicle passing over it to suddenly oversteer to test the driver’s reactions.

The kick plate installed at Porsche’s experience center in Silverstone.

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The Kick Plate at the LA facility. That strip of dark tarmac by the yellow cone shifts left or right to suddenly induce oversteer.

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Porsche’s Ice Hill setup seems like something out of a glorious automotive theme park. I guess that’s what it is.

There’s also a traditional concrete skidpad called the “Low Friction Circle,” and the polished concrete Ice Hill with a 7% slope and water jets to really test a driver in low-grip conditions. Then there’s the 1.3-mile Handling Circuit, a Dynamics Pad, and an off-road park, too. I felt like it was kind of mean of him to boast about this given I’m stuck sitting 7,000 miles away but I suppose he was just doing his job.

In any case, I learned something today. If you want to learn car control, apparently a little sprinkle of flour is of great assistance in that regard. Who knew?

Images provided by Porsche Experience Center Los Angeles

 

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WaCkO
WaCkO
24 days ago

And this boys and girls is how donuts are made.

James Carson
James Carson
24 days ago

I drive on a low mu surface every winter here in the great white north. Some days it’s ice other days snow or rain or a fun mix of all three. Always challenging, exciting and random. Avoiding other vehicles and pedestrians just adds to the frission.

notoriousDUG
notoriousDUG
24 days ago

Long ago, in like the 90s, I went to a go-kart place in I think Atlanta that had a slick track. It was sealed concrete and the cars had very hard tires so it was a drift fest. Plus if you tipped the kids running it they would toss baby powder out in the turns.

Freelivin2713
Freelivin2713
24 days ago

That’s a big pizza pie, in the sky…that’s Amore!

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
24 days ago

After my brother and I mastered and got tired of taking our 1/32 scale slot cars around the tracks we set up, we got the goofy idea of spraying WD-40 onto the curved sections. The lurid power slides that ensued amused us. If drifting had been a thing back then (late 60s) we might have sprayed the whole track.

Maryland J
Maryland J
24 days ago

Now I’m suddenly curious what driving through a Non-Newtonian skid pad would look like.

I assume flour was chosen because of its uniformity, price, and benign impact to the track/vehicles.

Data
Data
24 days ago

This brings a totally new meaning to “All purpose flour”.

Jesus Chrysler drives a Dodge
Jesus Chrysler drives a Dodge
24 days ago

Seems like an interesting way to test the handling of my Porsche Paneramera.

Knowonelse
Knowonelse
25 days ago

Hmm, bags of flour. Too bad this wasn’t known when the Mythbusters tested out vehicle escape techniques. That would have been fun to see bags of flour spread out by the perps to thwart those in pursuit.

Cerberus
Cerberus
25 days ago

Sounds like a great idea and more predictable than, say, wet leaves in New England. Prefer it be someone else’s car to clean after, though!

Car Guy - RHM
Car Guy - RHM
25 days ago

I hadn’t heard they were using flour there, but they were having issues with rubber build up on the surfaces. This most likely helps reduce that. As for the wetted surfaces, it is all reclaimed water, no fresh potable water is used. The kickplate and low friction circle fun to drive, highly recommend trying them out. I was involved in the planning and design of both facilities.

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
25 days ago

So if you spritz it with water and let it dry on a hot day do you get a cracker?

DolanDuk
DolanDuk
25 days ago
Reply to  Cheap Bastard

Yes, but the texture is a little rubbery

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
25 days ago

…and when it eventually rains, your car will stick like glue.

Musicman27
Musicman27
25 days ago

Please tell us they feed us donuts.Please tell us they feed us donuts.Please tell us they feed us donuts…

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
25 days ago

So the next time I’m slinging my car through the twisties and hanging the ass out in a power slide, I can refer to it as going “whole wheat?” Talk about driving syruptitiously.

Last edited 25 days ago by Canopysaurus
JC Miller
JC Miller
25 days ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

It has to be maple!, okay?

Last edited 25 days ago by JC Miller
Shooting Brake
Shooting Brake
25 days ago

I’m not at all surprised, seeing that Porsche used to have a Pancake engine. 😉

Last edited 25 days ago by Shooting Brake
Parsko
Parsko
25 days ago

If you rinse if off, but don’t get it all, you actually increase stickiness in an Elmer type of way.

FuzzyPlushroom
FuzzyPlushroom
25 days ago

“Here you are, going 20 mph, having the time of your life.”

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had behind the wheel of a car was in my first car, a non-turbo, automatic Volvo 244 with a set of Firestone Winterforces and ~50ish pounds of kitty litter in the trunk, through an inch or two of fresh powder on twisty back roads. I believe them.

Squirrelmaster
Squirrelmaster
25 days ago
Reply to  FuzzyPlushroom

I had a similar experience, but with a 244DL with the 4-speed stick out in my family’s pasture land. The synchros were shot for third and fourth gear, so second gear was all it could do, but it was an absolute blast for pretend rally racing at 15-20mph.

TOSSABL
TOSSABL
25 days ago
Reply to  FuzzyPlushroom

185/70 WinterForces on an old Subaru GL made me feel like an absolute driving god on snow & gravel. And, the consequences were quite low

TOSSABL
TOSSABL
25 days ago

I had no idea I was so ahead of the curve back in the 70s when I made an ad hoc Hotwheels track in my father’s flour barrel!

Last edited 25 days ago by TOSSABL
Rabob Rabob
Rabob Rabob
25 days ago

Absurd food waste so Porsche drivers can do meme car-control exercises is a level of opulent indulgence I never thought I’d read about

Alexk98
Alexk98
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

I’d argue a couple scoops of flour is a lot less wasteful than dozens or hundreds of gallons of water. Not to mention the Porsche Driving Center isn’t exactly for memes, it’s proper education, and something like this that provide genuine lessons in car control in a controlled and safe environment is genuinely useful. A few scoops of flour while learning real skills is hardly the biggest waste of resources to be arguing about compared to some opulent past times.

Rabob Rabob
Rabob Rabob
25 days ago
Reply to  Alexk98

I’ll keep that in mind next time a semi carrying flour flips in front of me on the freeway

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
25 days ago
Reply to  Alexk98

Pretty sure its going to take a lot more than a couple scouts of flour. Probably several pounds to cover a single section. Thats a lot more expensive than a few hundred gallons of water that could be reused for landscaping.

Captain Muppet
Captain Muppet
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

Back when I was in to drifting I could wear out 4 pairs of rear tyres in a morning. Using just a Miata.

Flour is cheaper and less wasteful.

Mechjaz
Mechjaz
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

Your pissing in the Cheerios isn’t exactly helping the food waste problem, either.

OrigamiSensei
OrigamiSensei
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

As a longtime resident of SoCal I’ll happily argue that using flour is a lot more palatable and less wasteful than burning through our scarce water resources.

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
25 days ago
Reply to  OrigamiSensei

How much water do you think it took to grow that wheat? And that water isn’t wasted if its later used to irrigate the lawn.

Col Lingus
Col Lingus
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

Shirley. You can’t be serious.

JC Miller
JC Miller
25 days ago
Reply to  Col Lingus

“I am serious — and don’t call me Shirley.”

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

Agreed.
Sand is far less wasteful and more abundant.

PaysOutAllNight
PaysOutAllNight
24 days ago
Reply to  Urban Runabout

Sand is far more abrasive.

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
23 days ago

So is Adrian – but nobody seems to mind.

Horizontally Opposed
Horizontally Opposed
25 days ago
Reply to  Rabob Rabob

I believe you are being sarcastically funny, sir?

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