Please note: this ice report (Jan 24th 2009) is being written after having completed the second weekend of racing therefore I shall keep it brief.

Once again this year I am grateful to have my sponsors on board: Brooklin Conrete Quality Products, The SACtionizer and  University Werks Landscape Construction. Please in turn support these businesses!

The tow up for the pre tech weekend (one weekend before the racing season starts) was totally uneventful and one of the cleanest hauls in memory, I didn't have to visit the car wash!

First race weekend and I got nicely set up Friday by around 5:30pm having arrived around 3:15 with the tool trailer in tow. The track looked awesome with a reported 16" of ice laid down  it was the most I had heard of in my 14 years of racing here. Standing in my pits, the water truck parked on the track was noticeably higher than the ground I was standing on!  

Metal:
I am running the same 1989 Toyota MR2 from last year but with some engine modifications. I had had no opportunity to test the engine build that Pickering Toyota did this past fall on the MR2 or to break it in. I was hoping to get out on Lake Scugog (Port Perry) before the season opener but with all the snow the ice was never thick enough to drive a vehicle on it. I thought it a good idea to up the ponies in the

MR2 for this year as I never could keep up on the straight last year and having won the championship I would think the competition would up the ante somewhat so I was just planning on staying ahead of the game. I had the head shaved 25 thousands, port and polished and the cams changed to .272's, advanced the timing and upped the fuel mix a notch. In retrospect, I'm not sure any of this was the best thing to do. The first practice for the season on Saturday I soon discovered there was a slight problem - the power band started up around 6500rpm and the rev limiter is set at 8000rpm. With the car coming on full around 7000rpm that only allowed a 1000rpm window to do the dance. I've been told that adjustable cam gears will help to solve this although there may be other problems as the power should start around 3500rpm with these cams. The MR2, as an ice racer, requires lots of weight transfer to maneuver at all and so it was very difficult to get it to turn considering once I lifted there was not enough power to spin the rear wheels and hold a drift if I let the revs drop below 6500rpm. I even ran into the far snowbank just entering the track from mock grid because I could not throttle correct the understeer. This was an extremely cold day as well with temp at -29C so the ice was very hard and the studs were not getting much bite. As a result, practice consisted of a series of slides off line, understeer/oversteer, overshooting corners and in general never really being able to maintain any semblance of drivability. I was very disappointed. 

Come qualifying time I had little confidence in the car or myself finding a way to drive it. As the qualifier started the large amount of ice "dust" thrown into the air by the churning studs of the Menard tires combined with the really cold temps immediately created a very dense fog of ice crystals around the track that would not dissipate and was so thick that it would, at times, totally obscure even the intense glare of a 55 watt rearward facing fog light mounted on the car a length in front of me. Racing in this thick cloud of ice and snow crystals it was impossible, about 75% of the time, to even see the snow banks that mark the track and so guessing where the corners were became the only way to negotiate them.

About halfway through the second lap of qualifying I seriously considered pulling off and stopping in the infield but it was only seconds after that, as I exited the last turn of that second lap, drifting out onto the straight, the cloud cleared and I noticed I was heading straight for a deep pile of snow that had been knocked down from the bank by someone on a previous lap. Menards simply float on top of any depth of snow so I knew I was going to loose any traction I had as soon as I hit it. I was already committed and had the back end hanging out and so when I hit the snow the back end slid out and slapped the snow bank (just past the track entrance) at about 90kmh which spun the front of the car back around and it nosedived, what felt like, halfway through the bank.

Still with lots of momentum the car bounced out of the bank and continued to spin clockwise a total of about 225 degrees so that once stopped I now faced oncoming traffic at about a 45 degree angle with the back corner of the car jammed into the bank and me sitting right on the racing line. I couldn't see anything in front of me as the snow bank hit had raised an explosion of snow up in the air and covered the windshield of my car. I remember thinking " I'm gonna get hit".

In the time it took to think those four words, from out of nowhere, I heard what sounded like a high speed angry bee accelerating very rapidly towards me complete with doppler effect and then that sound was instantly annihilated by a big bang and a jarring sideways force as the head-on impact rotated my car clockwise beneath me.

My head struck the padding on the side "halo" bar to my left and then I looked out the passenger window as the red MR2 of Graham Lobban rolled slowly into view alongside

my car then watched in horror as he was rear ended immediately and so hard by Tom Prentice's white Mustang that the front of Tom's car lifted up a foot or more and then rapidly the two cars disappeared from view as they plowed on down the track. At the time of impact I figure cars were traveling at about 90 kph .

Watching that second impact happen right outside my side window scared the crap out of me whereas my accident didn't because I could not see. Later that day Graham told me he never saw me, couldn't because of the snow explosion from my impact and the ice dust in the air. Tom told me later that he had seen me and swerved to miss me but couldn't see Graham.

My car started back up and so I turned it around to face the proper direction. I could see Graham's red MR2 now stopped well down the track nearing the start/finish line and Tom's Mustang up into the opposite inside snowbank.

The qualifier was restarted after lunch and since we could see no mechanical damage to the car I re-gridded. Unfortunately that incident took out all  my competition and since there was only me left in RWD it also meant I now had no class either. I'm guess I'm going to have to get that as a sticker on my car now "I Got No Class". Actually, Tom said he would draw on his stable of Stangs and have another one ready for next weekend but Graham insisted he was done for the season. I knew Ian Lok was to come up on Sunday and is to return next weekend and if so we would have the 3 cars required to form a class.

Qualifying was uneventful although somewhat disappointing as I still had the problem of no power until 6500 rpm. I slowly worked on increasing speed and basically took it easy as visibility was also still an issue. I also ran in the 2 metal races Saturday afternoon and then decided to get my refund for Sunday as there was little to be gained by continuing.

Street Stud:

I instead focused on the Ovlov or what is now to be known as the "Tin Man" competing in the Street Stud RWD class SS1. I had the crazy idea for the chrome paint job one night in December as I was drifting off to sleep. I have always said a well "seasoned" ice racer winds up looking like a wrinkled aluminum can - that's when the light bulb went on. I probably could have convinced Coors LIte to sponsor me - "The Silver Bullet"? Anyway had loads of fun in SS1 however I will say the cold temps and resulting hard ice did nothing for grip with the tiny street studs. The car started no problem Saturday but ran really rough and started to backfire as I drove down the pits. So I thought who better to ask about it than the Volvo guys frmp North Bay. Erik asked to look under the hood and immediately suggested that the "BackFire Checkvalve" watcha macallit thingy may be suspect and then he pulled off the hose and stuck his thumb in the end. Instantly the car started to purr.

"Just you stay under the hood there Erik while I run my races!" Erik didn't like the idea of being like the boy with his thumb in the dyke so I rummaged around back at my pit and James McGlade handed me a waded up piece of a Tim Horton's wax paper muffin wrap and I stuffed that in end of the hose and SACtaped it down - Still  there as far as I know and the Tin Man doesn't seem to mind inhaling a few Timmy crumbs once in a while.

Sunday afternoon I loaded up the MR2 prepared for the tow home for cosmetic repair work to the front end.