There are times when everything seems to fall into place. Consider starting out with two days of intense driving on the full course at VIR, then driving to Georgia for two days at the first AMG Academy Advanced Course held at Road Atlanta. Four days of driving on two world-class road courses. Even better – the AMG Academy meant driving AMG cars supplied by MBUSA and instruction from a hand-picked crew of higly experienced instructors following a curriculum based on the courses taught in Europe for years. How do you top that?

Ok, there were negative aspects – the weather was beastly hot at both VIR and Road Atlanta. In fact it was worse at Road Atlanta with daytime temps in the mid-to-upper nineties with high humidity. BUT, the AMG Academy course more than compensated with the weather-related discomfort with great cars, exercises designed to help students improve their driving skills, and experienced instructors focused on helping students become better drivers.

Great cars – every student got to drive the C63 AMG, E63 AMG, SLS63 AMG, and SLK55 AMG three or four times with each car being used for different exercises. Students also got to drive the SL63 AMG and the CLK63 AMG Black Series, but only once in each car. The CLK63 AMG was used to produce a video for each student during three hot lead/follow laps around the Road Atlanta course. The SL63 AMG was used only for skid pad exercises designed to get students comfortable with handling a controlled slide. Pretty heady stuff, and let's just say turning off the ESP makes it pretty easy to break the rear wheels loose. Needless to say many students found themselves suddenly facing the wrong direction with an instructor telling them to make their steering correction faster.

In case you're wondering, the instructors used hand-held radios turned to a frequency received by a scanner in each student car. The scanners were connected into the car's audio system via the AUX input. As we switched cars, the instructor would change the channel on his radio to match the scanner frequency set for each group of student cars. All students in the group could hear the instructor, but there was no way for students to talk back to the instructor while in the car.

I could go on and on about the AMG Academy experience, but it was two days jam-packed with exercises that saw student groups (there were four) rotating from one exercise to the next with just enough time to grab a little water before either moving to a new section or swapping cars. Just as a sample, the day one schedule for the red group: (AM) Wet Skid Pad (SL63); Braking practice in turns 10a and 10b (SLS63); Drag race with stop box and tricky slalom (E63); Emergency Lane Change on a partly wet track (C63); Lunch; (PM) lead/follow sector 1 training (E63); Classroom on the racing line at Road Atlanta; lead/follow sector 2 training (SLK55); Autocross (C63); Full course lead/follow laps (SLS63); Dinner. Day two was a little lighter with the focus mostly on lead/follow exercises at increasing speeds. Day two also included a timed autocross (SLK55) to pick the drivers with the three best times to represent their run group in the overall class competition to be held at the end of the day. Day two is also when each student got a solo drive in a CLK63 Black Series rigged to produce a video record for each student. Instructors used the videos to critique each student's performance; then it was out for more lead/follow at increased speeds, finishing with what felt like very fast laps in the SLS63. I was too focused on getting the line right to check the speedometer, but it wouldn't surprise me if we exceeded 120 MPH in places in the SLS which has amazing acceleration, handling, and brakes.

I'll try to post some video, but the video is HD and the full file (three laps) is almost 200MB in size. As time permits, i'll try to edit it down and post it.

We ended day two with an autocross shootout among the top twelve students (the three fastest times from each group), with the top three finishers receiving very nice prizes during the closing session. After turning in our course surveys, each student was given a bag containing gift items that included an individual picture posed next to an SL63 in a large frame with our course completion cerfificate.

The AMG Academy was one of the most rewarding experiences I've had on the track. It combined the chance to drive a nearly full lineup of terrific AMG cars with the opportunity to learn some advanced driving techniques under the watchful eyes of higly skilled instructors. It also offered lots of lead/follow time helping students learn to deal with the challenging Road Atlanta course. The sense of satisfaction gained from facing the daunting challenge of turn twelve on the Road Atlanta course is a special part of the whole experience. What makes theis hard? See if you can find some video because it's really hard to describe the blind uphill approach that changes to downhill and leads into a high speed right hand turn onto the front straight. The first couple of times through this turn are pretty intimidating.

Highlights: driving the amazing SLS63 AMG. It's just a fantastic car with blazing acceleration, excellent handling, and brakes to match the rest – there was never a doubt that the SLS brakes would quickly get the car slowed; the diabolic slalom exercise designed to make sure you were looking up and ahead; and laps on the track. While lead/follow isn't as fun as open lapping, it did get students familiar with the track while keeping things safe and sane – which is not to say that we were creeping around.

What could be better? How about the AMG Academy's three day Pro course set to run at Road Atlanta the last three days of June. Sadly, it's sold out. Oh, and it's the only time the Pro course will be offered this year. It's also the last course to be held at Road Atlanta this year – all the remaining courses will be on Laguna Seca on that other coast.