Ice Racing Championships

[Manfred M]

I spent a few hours at the local Speedway shooting cars and drivers participating at the local ice racing championships. Cars going on snow quickly turn the tricky parts of the track into ice. Snow is thrown everywhere and this really fools the camera's autofocus system...

I won't say I got a lot of good shots and this is one of my best ones.

[Shadowman]

Interesting shot, I would've thought the car was racing through the surf at first glance.

[NorthernFocus]

Well that's a good one.

Somehow I thought our neighbors to the north were above "sports" that involve grease, exhaust fumes, and ear-splitting noise. When I think of Canadian sports what comes to mind is hockey and nordic skiing

[xpatUSA]

I spent a few hours at the local Speedway shooting cars and drivers participating at the local ice racing championships. Cars going on snow quickly turn the tricky parts of the track into ice. Snow is thrown everywhere and this really fools the camera's autofocus system...

I won't say I got a lot of good shots and this is one of my best ones.

Excellent capture, Manfred!

[Manfred M]

Well that's a good one.

Somehow I thought our neighbors to the north were above "sports" that involve grease, exhaust fumes, and ear-splitting noise. When I think of Canadian sports what comes to mind is hockey and nordic skiing

When one lives less than 100 miles / 161 km from the USA border, some of those strange sports seem to drift north. It may not sound like a long way, but when one considers that over 95% of Canada's population lives that close to the USA, it's not a great wonder that there is so much influence from our Southern neighbour.

[Artshot]

Thats a great action shot.
I notice the passenger seat is empty.

[Manfred M]

Thats a great action shot.
I notice the passenger seat is empty.

And sometimes there was someone in the passenger seat. I noticed that at least one of the drivers was a woman.

[Wavelength]

Great images

[Rita]

I never like driving in the snow but this image makes it look like so much fun.

[DanK]

Great images. However, it gets me thinking about things entirely unrelated to photography. I grew up in the snow belt in upstate NY (Syracuse, which is the snowiest city with more than 50,000 people in the lower 48 states), so I spent a lot of time driving in snow. In those days, however, cars didn't do any thinking for you. One of the techniques for ice racing, which I had fun practicing with a Saab 900, was to yank the parking brake on as one started a sharp turn; this would throw the back wheels into a free skid, and you would just point the front wheels where you wanted to go and give it power. Now people are driving things like that Subaru in the second picture. I own a Subaru, and driving it on snow and ice is an entirely different experience--it has very sophisticated computerized control over all four wheels, and it handles snow and ice very well. Racing in one of those would be a whole different ball game, I suspect.

[Manfred M]

Great images. However, it gets me thinking about things entirely unrelated to photography. I grew up in the snow belt in upstate NY (Syracuse, which is the snowiest city with more than 50,000 people in the lower 48 states), so I spent a lot of time driving in snow. In those days, however, cars didn't do any thinking for you. One of the techniques for ice racing, which I had fun practicing with a Saab 900, was to yank the parking brake on as one started a sharp turn; this would throw the back wheels into a free skid, and you would just point the front wheels where you wanted to go and give it power. Now people are driving things like that Subaru in the second picture. I own a Subaru, and driving it on snow and ice is an entirely different experience--it has very sophisticated computerized control over all four wheels, and it handles snow and ice very well. Racing in one of those would be a whole different ball game, I suspect.

The majority of the cars participating in the race were Subaru, so that should tell us something....

As for the driving a standard rear-wheel drive on ice when I was in my late teens and early 20's, I remember the technique quite well. It only worked on cars with a hand brake, so that eliminated a lot of North American models because the parking brake was a simple foot-activated brake so the fine control necessary for that technique was not possible.

The comments you make about your Subaru apply equally to my Volvo AWD equipped with snow tires; driving on ice and snow is a lot easier these days. That being said, the laws of physics still apply and all the ABS and anti-skid controls only work when driving sensibly. It's still all to easy to lose control on an icy road.