March 17, 2026/byCalvin Adams/inArchibalds News, Porsche News

What’s the Mount Cotton Porsche Experience?

The Mount Cotton Porsche Track Experience is a high‑performance driver training programme run by Porsche Cars Australia at the Mount Cotton Driver Training Facility in Queensland. It combines professional instruction, controlled environments, and a fleet of Porsche vehicles for an immersive motorsport‑inspired experience.

It is held at the Mt Cotton Driver Training Facility, which includes its own test circuit, skid pan, and off‑road track. The experience is designed to let participants explore the capabilities of Porsche vehicles in a safe, structured environment. You can join by registering your interest. Priority is given to existing Archibalds Porsche customers, but remaining spaces may be offered to others on the waiting list.

Whether you own a Porsche or not, signing up to our newsletter is a great way to stay in touch and hear about the latest news, events, offers, competitions, and updates from Archibalds Porsche. Find out about similar experiences from last year and information about the Mt Cotton Experience.

The following is a republished first-hand account from Archibalds Porsche customer, John Himmelmann. His story was originally featured in Spiel magazine, where he described his experience.

Porsche Experience White Porsche Splash.

Mt Cotton Porsche Experience

On the weekend of 4-5 October 2025, my wife Leilani and I took part in Levels 1–2 drivers training at Mt Cotton Porsche Experience in Brisbane, Australia. The trip was organised by Archibalds Porsche. There were 23 participants along with 3 Archibalds staff to guide us. Of the 23, six of us were Porsche Club members, including Andre Hopman, James Hopman, and Marc and Clara Stagg.

Archibalds call it an “experience,” and they are not kidding. It turns out that Archibalds’ idea of a weekend getaway involves giving you the keys to eleven different high-performance vehicles and saying, in effect, “Try not to launch yourself into a eucalyptus tree.”

We drove a ridiculous number of cars: the 718 Boxster, 718 Cayman, 718 Boxster GTS 4.0, 718 Cayman GTS 4.0, 911 Carrera, 911 Carrera GTS, 911 Carrera 4 GTS, Macan, Macan GTS, Cayenne S, and the Taycan GTS. All were virtually new with only 3-5000 kms on their odometers.

Actually, the Porsche Experience weekend started on Friday and went through Monday – those were the days we flew to and returned from Australia. The best part? We didn’t have to do anything. Our only real responsibility was “show up at the airport without forgetting our pants.” Everything else — flights, hotels, restaurant bookings, ground transportation — was handled by Archibalds’ elite logistics team: Natasha Williams and Desireé de Ruiter, who have the organizational skills of NASA mission control, only with better food.

Day 1

The weekend extravaganza started on Day 1 – the usual time something starts – with what is called Precision Driving. It’s driver’s ed on steroids. After dividing us into three groups, we each headed off to do various driving exercises. Throughout the day we rotated from one exercise to another until everyone had a crack at all of them. I’ll run through the excises in the order Leilani and I did them.

Skid Pan

This is a 300-metre-long figure-8 track that’s constantly being watered with a special mixture of water and diesel fuel — because apparently plain water just wasn’t flammable enough. But if your goal is to slide around like an out-of control penguin in a Fast & Furious movie, this is your place.

The idea is to teach you how to handle understeer and oversteer, which are fancy driving terms meaning “you’re not going where you thought you were going” and “you’re REALLY not going where you thought you were going.”

We got to try our hand driving four different Porsche models. Personally, I never mastered the whole “stay on the track” concept. Leilani actually did better – she under- and oversteered with much more precision, but did come away smelling more of diesel than I did.

High Speed ABS Emergency Braking and Accident Avoidance

This exercise involves mashing the accelerator like you’re trying to stomp a cockroach through the floor, rocketing from zero to over 100 km/h in what feels like three seconds, and then slamming on the brakes as if you’ve just seen your mother-in-law crossing the street.

Thanks to Porsche’s fancy ABS braking system, the car comes to a smooth, graceful stop. You don’t even spill your morning coffee, which is honestly a miracle, because normally I can’t even back out of my driveway without endangering a latte. I was impressed.

But wait—Porsche wasn’t done testing our survival instincts. Next, they had us do the same zero-to-warp-speed launch, except this time we were supposed to let go of the wheel and raise both hands in the air while standing on the brake pedal like it owed us money. This was to simulate what happens when you’re “not thinking clearly,” which is apparently German for “completely insane.” The car, miraculously, stopped without swerving. I’m pretty sure it also sighed quietly and thought, “Humans.”

Not content with the sheer insanity of blasting down a straight line at warp speed and then slamming the brakes like we were trying to stop a runaway elevator, the instructors (who were all actual professional race car drivers) decided it was time for the “accident avoidance” exercise — without braking. Because apparently, the only thing more fun than simulated danger is simulated danger with fewer safety options.

This time, you do the same full-throttle rocket launch, except now some bright orange rubber cones are in your way — pretending to be innocent bystanders or possibly expensive sports cars. The goal is to avoid them without touching the brakes.

So, at about the speed where your internal organs have migrated to the boot, you yank the wheel into a 90° right turn, followed immediately by an even more panicked 90° left turn, creating a sort of “drunken snake” manoeuvre. Then, once the car is facing roughly the same direction as reality again, you finally remember the brakes — assuming you still recall what those are or where they’re located.

As with Skid Pan, we drove four different Porsches, just to prove all are violently fast while being able to come to safe and controlled stops – even if our bodies were bashed and battered.

Archibalds Porsche mount cotton experience 2025 splash white

Archibalds Porsche mount cotton experience 2025 splash

Slalom and Handling

Next, we moved to the LVMA— which stands for Large Vehicle Manoeuvre Area. This is a 5.4-acre asphalt square, which, to put in perspective, is bigger than the USS George Washington aircraft carrier’s miserly 4.5-acre flight deck. That’s right — we were about to do donuts on something large enough to launch fighter jets.

To make things more exciting (and by “exciting” I mean “slippery and terrifying”), the whole thing is kept constantly soaked in water. Thankfully, they skip the diesel this time — apparently, the environmental folks drew the line at turning the place into the world’s largest Molotov cocktail.

A slalom course was set up to test our grasp of understeer, oversteer, braking, and the fine art of driving faster than common sense allows. The instructions were basically: slam the accelerator, stomp the brakes, and weave through cones like you’re fleeing from having to watch another episode of The Kardashians. And we’re timed to see who does it fastest.

Again, we got to drive four different Porsches, but the one that nearly rearranged my internal organs was the Taycan GTS — an all-electric car that apparently doubles as an astronaut training device to see how many G-forces they can withstand. I’d never driven an EV before, but I’d heard whispers about their “instant torque.” What I hadn’t realized is that “instant torque” means “the laws of physics no longer apply.”

When the instructor said “go,” I obediently floored it — and the Taycan responded by hurling me into the seat so hard I think my spine left a permanent impression. My cheeks flapped, my lips tried to migrate to the back of my head, and my hairline moved north like it was fleeing winter.

It was absolutely fantastic – except for the fact Leilani beat me by having a faster time over the four-car event.

Off-Roading

While we waited our turn to fling yet another Porsche around the slalom course like deathwish stunt drivers, the instructors decided to give us a change of pace — literally. They loaded us into a Cayenne S for an off-road ride-along on a “trail,” if you can call it that, with more crags, crevices and craters than Tommy Lee Jones’ face. (And that’s saying something — geologists could map plate tectonics on that man.)

The Cayenne, however, was totally unfazed. It had driving modes for every possible surface: snow, ice, gravel, mud, water, and — in case you ever feel truly reckless — “chip seal,” also known as New Zealand normal roads.

If you’re worried about plummeting off a cliff, don’t be. You can just set the cruise control to 3 km/h and let the car crawl down like a cautious mountain goat while you sit back, sip your latte, and admire the scenery.

It is a very impressive vehicle — especially when you consider its main job in the real world is hauling kids to soccer practice and occasionally hopping a curb at Pak n’ Save.

Closed Track Circuit Lapping

Hands down, this was my absolute favourite part of the entire training course — the moment we all got to pretend we were professional race car drivers instead of people who usually forget where we parked at the mall.

They turned us loose on a 2.4-kilometer closed-course racetrack, and once again handed each of us four different Porsches to play with. The goal was to practice entering and exiting corners, blasting down the straights, and grinning like lunatics the entire time.

This was it — the culmination of everything we’d learned so far: braking, cornering, accelerating, and, most importantly, not crashing. By the end, we were convinced we were ready for the 24 Hours Le Mans in France, or possibly the 24 Hours Nürburgring before our nerves gave out.

GT3RS

Then came the day’s grand finale — a ride-along in a Porsche 911 GT3RS, piloted by an instructor / professional race car driver. Up to that point, we all thought we were pretty hot stuff behind the wheel. But once the instructor took off, we realized we had merely been cosplaying as drivers. The GT3RS is not so much a car as it is a barely tamed rocket with cup holders, and the instructor handled it like he was casually running errands on the surface of the sun.

It was thrilling — and by “thrilling,” I mean my soul briefly left my body around turn three. For those glorious laps, we were invincible. We were one with the machine. We were speed.

911 GT3 2025 Silver front left wheel side of the car predominately in the frame.

Archibalds Porsche mount cotton experience 2025 line-up

Off to Dinner

Day 1 at Mt Cotton ended and we returned to our five-star hotel, which felt especially luxurious considering we had just spent the day ricocheting around racetracks like human pinballs. We cleaned up, dressed for dinner, and went to an Italian restaurant where we celebrated surviving Day 1 with pasta, wine, and the collective realization that we would all totally sign up for Levels 3 and 4… once our hands stopped shaking.

Before you can reach Levels 3 and 4 — which sound like something out of a video game where you unlock “Turbo Maniac Mode” — there’s Level 2, otherwise known as Day 2.

Day 2

For Level 2, aka Precision Plus Driving, we repeated the same exercises as Level 1, except now the instructors wanted us to go faster. Like, much faster. Never once did anyone say, “Take it easy,” or “Drive carefully.” These people were the complete opposite of your driver’s ed teacher. I loved it.

While we were expected to drive faster, the instructors decided to make the exercises extra confusing. The skid pan? Now clockwise — because why not spin the other way for variety. The slalom? Completely rearranged, like someone had let a caffeinated toddler set up the cones. And the closed road circuit? We drove it the other way around, complete with a surprise chicane that appeared out of nowhere, like New Zealand pot holes.

And the crazy part? Everyone actually got better. We were now sliding, braking, and cornering with something that almost resembled skill — and doing it at speeds that would have caused our insurance agents to break out in hives.

One difference on day 2 was we finally got to drive the Cayenne down the off-road course ourselves — a slow, craggy descent that still looked like Tommy Lee Jones’ face after a bad night. This time if we flipped over, it was our fault. Character building!

And once again, the grand finale was a ride in the Porsche 911 GT3RS, driven by a professional race car driver who reminded us what real driving looks like. While we thought we were fast, he casually demonstrated that we were basically the automotive equivalent of people jogging in place.

By the end of Day 2, we were absolutely convinced we were ready for Levels 3 and 4 — or at least ready to tell everyone at dinner parties that we were.

We returned to the hotel, changed out of our “I just survived a high-speed death trap” outfits, and in what can only be described as royal style, were whisked away by bus to a river cruise aboard a private 92-foot luxury motor yacht. Because nothing says “congratulations on not crashing” like floating down a river surrounded by champagne, fancy little canapés you can’t pronounce, and live music performed by people who actually look like they want to be there.

All in all, it was an unforgettable weekend filled with fast cars, expert coaching, and just the right amount of “wow, is this legal?” Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys high-performance driving, or just wants to temporarily feel like they’ve stolen the keys to Jerry Seinfield’s Porsche collection.

I must give a shout-out to Julian Clarke, and his fine article in August 2025 Spiel magazine where he describes his Mt Cotton Porsche Experience. It was his article that inspired Leilani and me to sign up. Thank you, Julian. Maybe we can meet up at the Level 3-4 Experience.

Credit to the Author

Written by John Himmelmann. Republished with permission.

Original Article date: January 2026, Issue 235, Spiel Magazine.

As the original event owners, we have substituted most of the original images with our own. You can find the original images and read more in Spiel Magazine, and you can explore other articles like this one here.

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What’s the Mount Cotton Porsche Experience?