Ice Racing!
What do you do with 12+ inches of lake ice in the middle of winter? YOU DRIVE ON IT!!!!
Last weekend I drove up to Newfound Lake in New Hampshire with the BMW Car Club of Boston to take part in their winter driving event. It takes place…ON the ice! The event was setup like an autocross…aka you get several timed laps around a course and only one car is on the course at a time. You are really racing against yourself while learning to negotiate slippery conditions but at the end of the day they tally up the times and award trophies to drivers with the best times for each class (2WD/AWD drive train and all-season/snow/studded tire classes). I didn’t have fast enough times to get any trophies but I beat my previous time each additional run and finished in the middle of the pack for AWD+snow tires.
My friend Oleg took some video of me launching from the starting gate as well as looping around the course. It may not seem like I’m going fast but once you realize that the dark flat sections of the course are sheer ice with no turning traction you’ll understand that it isn’t as easy as it looks. The goal is to keep at least one tire on the inside of the track for traction and you’ll see that several times I loose that foothold. Many people ended up in snow banks throughout the day (watch for the tracks on the outer edges of the course) but I managed to stay on course. …and since I know you’ll ask, no one’s car was damaged during the day. The snow was so soft that it acted like a big cushion.
Here is the video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W-YcXnwNK2E
And here are some photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/chuyler1/IceRacing2008
…and as Doc Hudson says in “Cars” the movie, sometimes you gotta turn right if you want to go left!