Loved the pretech weekend! All I had to do was move the Ovlov and the tool trailer from the pit to the fairground this year and just the MR2 to tow up. I had help from Ian Lok this year to extricate them  from the snow in Tom's pit for the pretech weekend. It could have been much harder had we been there a few weeks earlier when the 4+ feet of snow fell. As it was there was only about 15" of frozen snow and the front of each parked vehicle had the snow and banks completely cleared by Tom so as to facilitate driving straight out of the parking spot. Thanks Ian for doing so much of the digging. I only had to tow up the MR2 which was nice. All vehicles passed tech no problem and were parked out by the front gates at the fairground to await the following weekend of racing. .

I went up the Friday (Jan. 22) before race day to set up SACamp in the usual location at the east end of the fairground by the baseball diamond.

There were quite a few ice racers there wrenching away on their beasts. I had planned on running the MR2 in stud class as usual and the Ovlov in street stud but heard that studs were cancelled for the weekend due to thin ice (4"). I had bought a new set of street stud (SS) tires that I was going to keep for a year and let harden up but  decided that I should mount them on the MR2 and run it in SS whilst the Ov would run in rubber to ice.

 I have always wondered how the MR2 would do in SS and there were 3 other MR2's running in SS as well so there would hopefully be lots of close competition.

I found Ackers glass and tire just off Hwy 35 behind Subway and they were able to dismount and mount the street stud tires in about 2 hours time so went back to the track and completely emptied the horse trailer and reorganized it so I could at least get in the back door !

I thought it was to be fairly mild all weekend and so had bolted on the slush tires on the Ov. Turns out that was a bad idea as the temps never got above -2C on Saturday (much colder in the morning) and about 0C Sunday and the Hakkapolita II's have very little grip on glare cold ice. I finally switched to Blizzaks for Sunday. As a result I posted poor times and finishes Saturday but sure put on a darn good show with many spins, near rollovers, almost getting

 stuck , driving the wrong way on the track etc etc much to the amusement of the bank pigeons. I once buried the front so far into the banks that the snow completely filled the sparkplug side of the engine bay resulting in the engine misfiring like mad sounding just like 5 o'clock Charlie on that M*A*S*H episode.

The MR2 went really well in SS although on Saturday there was not much grip on the glare, clean ice and with no studs protruding yet it was a bit slower than the others but by second race Sat. afternoon the drive wheel tire's studs were sticking out a bit and I had moved up to second place finish. Sunday I started 2nd and finished 2nd in the first race and started 2nd in the 2nd race and was having a great back and forth trade for 1st with the silver/greay MR2 of Graham Lobban when on the end of the straight on the 2nd lap Graham went too hot into the corner and slid wide so I was able to start to pass him on the inside but right up against

the side of his car when his car suddenly hooked up on some grip and my left front and his right front came into hard contact . Some piece of loose metal perhaps on his fender cut a hole in the side wall of the SS tire the size of my thumb and there ended what was shaping up to be an exciting race. I got a replacement SS tire mounted from Tirecraft in Concorde this week cause it looks like there may not be enough ice to run stud classes again this coming weekend therefore the MR2 will run SS again and the Ovlov will run rubber again..

The heater motor wouldn't run on the Ovlov so will have to see about installing a replacement cobbled version of a 12 volt fan from Princess Auto this Friday as this coming weekend is supposed to be a lot colder than last weekend and I will definitely need the defrost working. I'm afraid the "Silver Bullet" is more like a "Battleship Grey" this year as the chrome paint faded to a dull finish while it sat under the pines in Tom's pit all year.

The Rockcliffe wasn't that busy Friday night and apparently quite dead Saturday with only  Lee W. to keeping them open.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xex-nWX-3d0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb9TGc6TRdA