Ice Racing

It is winter here, and cold.  Cold here means that tonight it is supposed to be a low of -12 F.  And it does get colder here than than.  So what is a car guy supposed to do?  Either work on the car in the garage, if you have heat there, or you could try ice racing.

Ice racing often means on an oval track, but since this blog is about muscle cars, lets take a look at drag racing on ice.  After all, what could be more fun than a sport where part of the safety gear helps you from freezing to death?

The first question someone from anywhere that doesn’t have winter like this is, ice racing?  The only ice I see racing is in my drink.  But here, it gets cold enough that the lakes freeze over, and there is enough ice on them to support a car.  It is not abnormal to have ice three feet thick here on a lake in the winter.  One foot of ice is roughly enough to hold up a car.

Then you clear the snow off the ice to create a drag strip and go.  Once again, this may raise questions, as most people know ice is slippery.  If not, guess what, it is.  So how do you get enough traction to be able to race on ice?

It involves studded tires.  While you may be thinking something like the little studs that used to be used on the roads before decent snow tires became available.  You would be wrong.  It is something more like this:

Ice Racing

 

That is a tire that is the middle of the process of having hundreds of sheet rock screws being run through it from the inside out to give more traction.

And they do get traction:

 

According to http://merrillicedrags.com/ their record for ET in the 1/8th mile is 5.431 and the MPH record is 141.6.  That is pretty awesome on pavement, let alone ice.

Seems like a fun way to keep entertained in the winter.  And if you are worried about your car rusting, don’t.  It isn’t any worse for your car as far as rust than being out in the rain.  It is the salt used on the roads that causes cars to rust around here, not the snow and ice.  As long as you keep the road salt off your car, no problem.

It is something I will have to try some day, it seems like a fun time to me.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *