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Old 13th February 2007, 14:00   #1
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Ice Racing - First event of the 2007 season

This past Saturday I attended AMEC Ice Racing in Wells, New York and it was a blast. Very little traction and you have to take some corners veeery slooowly to hold a reasonable line. Here are a couple pics from the event, and you can read more about it in Clint's article in our blog.

The first picture is of a scratch-built Class A car that's rather like a sprint car. The second picture is Clint's Protege leading a Saab. The third is an Open car hanging it out.






It was fun and I learned a lot. I can't wait for some of the two day events in a couple weeks.

-Chris
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Old 13th February 2007, 14:07   #2
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wow, man....indeed looks like a lot of fun. Racing combined with constant drifting!
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Old 13th February 2007, 14:15   #3
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What are the changes you need to make to your driving style. I'm sure you cant just throw the car around when approaching a turn.

How about tyres? which do you have to use spikes or normal snow?

Whats with the blue tape on the headlamps.

Last edited by Vid6639 : 13th February 2007 at 14:19.
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Old 13th February 2007, 14:41   #4
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Changes to the driving style that I noted involved entering corners as slowly as possible -- much slower than I would have thought reasonable no matter how fast I was going on the straights. On corner entry, lift throttle would cause the rear to step out at sometimes dramatic angles, but very little power could be applied to correct it, and it was almost better not to try (instant understeer on the slightest bit of throttle). I was always trying to stay gear or two "too high" because with 127hp, wheelspin was a constant problem in every gear, and lift-throttle with a lot of engine revs would cause boatloads of understeer. Drifting off-line into the snow slows you down a lot and should be avoided.

Tires are street-legal unstudded, but all of the insane classes use a specialty studded racing tire. Unstudded is cheaper and very popular.

EDIT: Headlights are taped to prevent plastic/glass from being left on the ice if there is a collision.

Last edited by Multiades : 13th February 2007 at 14:52.
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Old 13th February 2007, 20:16   #5
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Must have been loads of fun drifting in all that snow .

what were the speeds clocked by the experts on the straights and the turns?
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Old 14th February 2007, 00:20   #6
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The guys in the most extreme class (A, which is pretty much scratch-built cars) were probably over 100mph (160kph) on the straights, and who knows how fast in the turns.

It's not drifting in the snow like you might think. Traction is so low that it's all you can do just to get the car to turn. On packed snow I have oodles of grip to change direction and drift at will, here I was just hanging on by the very edge all the time.

-Chris
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