Not yet 17 years old, but blonde hair, ... and already at the wheel!
01/10/2019
You usually meet older drivers and navigators at classic car rallies. So I was very surprised when I spotted the sign "L17 training ride" on the orange buggy with start number 17 at the Planai Classic.
The "L17 training" (official name: "Vorgezogene Lenkberechtigung für die Führerscheinklasse B") is an opportunity in Austria to obtain a driver's license for cars at the tender age of 17.
At first I thought that perhaps the sign hadn't been removed to protect the plastic windshield. But when I saw the teenager behind the wheel wearing a scarf and cap, it was immediately clear that she was a very young pilot.
Her name is Stella and she was born on July 3, 2002. She is not yet 17 years old and is already driving over all the mountains around Schladming in the difficult conditions with snow, ice and poor visibility in a rear-heavy buggy.
These three days certainly gave her more driving experience than two long years on the highway day and night.
On January 24, 2018, she received her L17 permit and has since gained around 45,000 km of experience on four wheels. However, it was all front-wheel drive, so the first day in a rear-wheel drive buggy on snow was a new challenge for the "still" 16-year-old.
Stella completed her license course in Germany on 24 February 2018 and took part in the Austrian National Automobile Slalom Championship with a Golf with her "national driver's license", where she won her class straight away without any karting experience and finished in an excellent 3rd place overall.
Hannes Schantl is and must always be there as an adult, whether as a supervisor at slaloms or as a co-driver at rallies and, of course, on public roads.
If you are concerned about road safety, which is exaggerated in Switzerland on the one hand and handled too laxly on the other, then this is certainly a much better way than senseless speed reductions or the training for manual gearboxes, which has now been abandoned from February, and thus the possibility of taking the test with automatic transmission, but then being allowed to drive manual cars with three pedals without additional training (required by law).
Road safety comes with experience and this takes time and also some understanding of the technology. If it takes three to four times as long to drive route X due to snowy roads, then unnecessary accidents that prevent a sensible continuation of the journey are usually to blame. Of course, a four-wheel drive car with 300 hp accelerates sensationally on snow, but this advantage disappears immediately when braking and the vehicle behaves more like an old or youngtimer. Today, we can rely on all the electronic aids, but the effect of these "assistants" is very often overestimated due to a lack of understanding of the technology.
So the motto is apt: "Practice makes perfect." Stella shows how it's done and, after some initial difficulties, finished 36th overall out of 48 participants in the rear-wheel drive buggy and 27th out of the 34 vehicles in Era 3, which were built between 1965 and 1972. Keep up the good work!
