Ice Race

"That's it , it's all over, see you at the Ice Race Banquet"

Those were the words that greeted everyone that managed to slog their way to the track Sunday morning through 14" of snow.
I don't remember there ever being a race cancelled because of too much snow but there ya go! The season was cancelled and no raindate scheduled because they said it was too hard to organize and get more insurance?!

So we all lined up to get our track fees refunded then tried to extricate our racers from the mountains of drifted snow (see video below). Tom tried to clear a plowed trail through the pits but had to dodge several vehicles that had entered the pits before he got there and had become stuck. It all looked like quite a mess. Even getting ones tow trailer out of the deep snow was tough. Some, like Andy Hughes, just turned around and went home. There was no way that the track could be plowed with Tom's small pickup truck plow, we would have needed a full size highway plow and of course all of those were totally busy clearing the highways. So most of the day Sunday was spent shovelling snow, hitching up, loading up, cleaning up, saying goodbye and trailering home on fairly icy and snow covered roads.

At about 2pm after finishing a last beer and pizza at the rockcliffe, Terry Dalton, myself and Dan Bucknam decided that it would be good to form a convoy for the trip home in case anything happened to one of us under bad driving conditions. I was towing my tool trailer, Dan was flat towing his Honda Civic and Terry was flat towing his Toyota Corolla. Not 1/2 a km on the highway and Dan's towed Civic began to fishtail out of control threatening to drag him off the icy road. We all pulled off and checked it out but couldn't figure the problem so decided to carry on at a slower speed. But the problem persisted. Once again we lined up on the side of Hwy#35. I noticed that there was a couple of hundred pounds of tires, jack stands and a solid steel home-made bumper in the trunk of the Civic that I suggested just maybe was contributing to the tail happiness. While Terry and I dodged cars on Hwy 35 moving stuff from the trunk of the Civic to the back of the tow vehicle, Dan set about tightening up the considerable slop in the tow bar linkage. Apparently this all helped a bit but the car still wanted to fishtail on the slippery roads at anything over about 60kmh. I finally lost track of the those two and kept on going. I tried to contact them from time to time by cell phone but never an answer. I figured that they would be alright and that they were probably leaving Dan's car at a gas station as Dan had indicated that he might do just that if the problem continued.

As it turns out Dan had pulled off for a third time not 10 minutes after the second stop and did it so fast that it took Terry (who was following) by suprise. The conditions were so slippery that Terry quickly decided he would not be able to stop in time and that his only alternative was to stuff himself in the snowbank just missing the back end of Dan's parked vehicles! (That's Dan's back end of his parked vehicles to the left side of the photo.) Well, fortunately there was no obstacle like a guardrail in his path and he blasted right through the snowbank Astro van, towed Corolla and all right into the ditch!!! There was no damage to either vehicle so after unhitching and muscling the towed Corolla out of the way they shovelled as much snow as possible from around the van. A guy was clearing driveways across the highway with a huge articulated front-end loader. After signaling him the guy continued to dig out another driveway and then stopped to ask them if they wanted some help.

The first tow strap broke but the chain held and the van was pulled clear of the banked snow where it had been beached. They got hitched up again and Dan went a 1/2 km to the next gas station where he left his ice racer. These pics are from Terry Dalton.

That's how the weekend ended.

Ready to roll again.

How it started is a completely different story. It looked like we would have a mild day on Saturday according to the Friday weather forecasts. I figured it might be a good weekend for the locked diff Ovlov. So I went up early to prepare a set of old road worn Blizzak WS15's that used to be run on my wife's BMW 635. I had managed to borrow my tire sponsors (Tire Craft) tire regroover tool. After picking up a 6 pack I went to the Minden House B&B where I was staying and proceeded to spend 2 hours removing every other sipe in each tread block of the old pair of Blizzaks. What I wound up with looked like a paddle wheel but with plenty of lateral block edges still intact. I put them on the car Sat morning and tractionized them. I had no idea if they would work or not but they sure looked mean!
Morning practice put an end to my worries - awesome!!!!!!! just simply amazing grip! They had so much forward grip that they lacked a compensating lateral grab for the speeds you could attain so you had to be real careful through some of the slippery sections of the corners. Anyhow, I went on to dominate the racing all day in both qualifying and both class one and 11. I got three wins and a SACond (Tom beat me in one race) out four races on Saturday. I passed everybody including some 4 wheel drive guys who looked very suprised. I even lapped Terry Dalton. Ya know, I was really looking forward to Sunday's racing :-(

Terry Dalton has claimed the class one championship (it's unofficial and according to Tony McGrath's calculations at the time of this printing but probably correct). My congratulations go to Terry (#SACsty), great racing with you and great to be your friend and sorry about the crunched rear corner on Sat., you almost made it without any major wrinkles. SACEWE!!!

Michael Wack showed up at the track (debuts in the video - scroll to bottom) and made for pretty good ballast in the Ovlov during one of the mind blowing hair raising rips around the circuit. I think he really enjoyed himself. Mike used to ice race an Audi Quattro a couple of years ago that he would drive up to the track, remove the lights, race, reinstall the lights and drive back home when done racing! That's the way they used to do it before people started driving into each other. He wound up bunking down at the Minden B&B as well Sat. nite because of the bad snow storm and added a lot of laughs to the evening's events, just a very funny guy!

Dave Flugal and son Jordan showed up for the last weekend with a locked diff Hinda Civic sedan. He was having trouble getting grip so I looked at his tire setup. Untractionized Blizzak MZ02's on the front and worn out Blizzy's on the rear. Hmmm. I suggested that he should put an old tractionized (but with still well defined tread blocks) Blizzak WS 15 on the outside front (to get grip in the snow) and a tractionized MZ02 he had on the back on the front inside (to get grab on the polished stuff) and to put the new untractionized MZ02's on the back. (He wouldn't tractionize the new MZ02's because he had "borrowed" them and couldn't). He agreed, went out in the next race and went from like 14th to 1st place and led for the 1st half of the 15 lap race. He finished third because of a mistake that let Victor Del Col and Bryan Rashleigh past. It was a very fast and very close exciting race, perhaps one of the best on Saturday.

I kept meeting Candace Calder (SAC#122) on track travelling in the opposite direction in Remi Klichta's old Pony. She said that they were having trouble with some ballast issues. She came up for the last and only one weekend as well.

Mark Yealland (Mark races a Nissan 200ZX Turbo) walked up to me Sunday morning as I was clearing out snow from around the Ovlov and handed me a CD containing around 200 ice racing pics from earlier in the season. I have picked a handful and posted them to the SAC Ice Race Photo Gallery and thank you Mark for some great shots.

Don't forget the Annual Ice Race Awards Banquet!!! Its on April 5th at the Annandale Golf and Country Club on Church street in Pickering just south of the 401. Exit either Westney Road or Brock Road and go south to Bayley then go across to Church and turn north. Carol Raitt has the banquet tickets for sale: 905-831-8400.

Results:

Didn't get them but I checked and I got a 1, 2, 1, 1 on Saturday's races.

Track Conditions/ Weather:

Track was very great for locked diff cars becaquse of the snow that would stick to the ice on the outside edge of the line but if you had an open diff you could not take advantage of this. Weather was mild on Sat. but began to snow heavily by 3PM making visibilty an issue for my last race after a stud race.

Sunday saw 14" of snow on the ground and blowing and drifting conditions everywhere, racing was cancelled for the season.

Racing:

Saturday:

Excellent for the Ov see report above. Blew past the filed and won the 15 lappers with like a 3/4 ap over the second place of Terry Dalton in one race. Lapped Terry in another race. Won three out of the four races and got a SACond in the other. Unbelievably fast and great grip. Just wished we had had a normal (at least three out of six as mild weekends) winter and I would have been set.

Sunday:

Racing cancelled

Highlite(s):

Blowing past the "Larry & Terry show" through the outside of the kink turn going so fast that I scared both them and myself and making it stick in the next corner and for the race. I couldn't believe the launch I got through the outside of the kink, it felt like I had a rocket strapped to the roof of the Ov! Terry Dalton & Larry Kovaks have battled each other door handle to door handle most of the season and usually putting on the show right in front of me. Ah, sweet justice.

Videos:

Click for large

	Michael Wack first to conquer Minden Alps on Sunday Feb 23, 2003 click pic for a WMV video
	Click pic for a WMV video of snowed out conditions.

Pics

	Stud race Tony McGrath (VW) and Doug Martin (Subaru)
	This was what happened to Larry Kovak's rental Cressida the weekend before this (photo - Terry Dalton). Basically this car T-Boned a Subaru exiting the track on the cooldown lap. The driver of the Cressida appeared not to have noticed the checkered had been shown. See 5th weekend report for details.
	Loads more new pics at SAC Ice Race Photo Gallery

Scoty@rogers.com

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