While we’d all like to feel that we can channel our inner Lewis Hamilton, driving a powerful sports car should be taken seriously. It’s all too easy to get complacent with the excellent handling and insane levels of grip of a modern sports car and have an errant stab of throttle see you exiting the road sideways. When renting an unfamiliar vehicle this is doubly true.
Most standard front wheel drive road cars are set up for understeer, where taking too much speed into a corner results in the loss of front end grip. This can be controlled by applying the breaks- the standard response of a driver faced with a skid- as the weight of the car goes forwards under breaking, increasing the grip of the front tyres. Rear wheel drive sports cars, however, are much more likely to over steer as they’re set up for more sporty handling. The front tyres only have to deal with steering so are less likely to lose grip, whereas the rears have to transfer the power to the road so are more likely to slide. Braking during oversteer takes weight off the rear tyres which makes things even worse. You need to catch the slide with the steering, balance the car with the throttle and make sure you don’t over correct the slide. This is not likely to come naturally the first time it happens!
With this in mind, throw a shed load more power than a standard road car into the mix and you could get caught out. The best advice is make sure you leave any traction control etc. switched on and don’t push the car too hard. Get some skid pan training, so you can learn car control in a safe environment.