Day 3 – Wednesday 23 February 2011
Another beautiful day in Sweden, another chance to drive around a frozen lake in a Mazda MX-5. Brilliant. We’re starting 4th on the grid and I’ve been volunteered to do the first 25-minute stint. The race is 4-hours in total but there’s an hour’s break in the middle for the cars and drivers to refuel (obviously refuelling on the lake itself is not allowed). The start procedure is simply a rolling start but due to terrible visibility we have to line-up single file behind the safety car, meaning my ambition to get in amongst the top 3 in the first sequence of corners looks nigh-on impossible.
Even so I’m pretty excited. I know the cars around us probably have quicker driver line-ups, but our pitstops are slick and, hopefully, our strategy of a solid and consistent pace will jump us up the order. Excitement turns to trepidation on the warm-up lap. Visibility really is zero. You catch the odd glimpse of MX-5 in the middle of the corners as the rooster tail of snow and ice is being dumped towards the outside of the track. However, down the fleeting straights and at corner entry you’re running on memory/instinct and by spotting marshall’s posts some way in the distance.
The green flag waves at the start of the quickest point of the track, so there’s no easing our way in. Just flat in 3rd, aim left, lift, aim right and pray that somewhere beyond the white haze is track and not snowbank. The lead car, predictably, is gone: The combination of a quick driver and perfect visibility giving a huge advantage. I stick with the Russians for half a lap but realise I’m just slowing myself down and potentially putting our entire race at risk trying to pick up a place at this point. So I settle back into a clearer spot and try to hook up some quick laps.
It’s so tough. One corner leads into the next so you’re flicking to car from lock-to-lock all the time, trying to keep the nose of the car hooked into the apex so the rear wheels don’t bog down in deeper snow at the outside of the track. Seems to be working, though. I’m pegging the fast Ruskies, shave a full 2-seconds from my quali time, and staying out a little longer than the top 3 (plus a big spin for the Russians that requires a tow truck) puts us into 2nd and then 1st. I hand over in the lead – through no heroics at all, but it still feels good.
Incredibly we maintain the position. The others are spinning, mucking up pitstops and generally conspiring to hand us a decent lead. An hour and a half in and we’re 20seconds or so up on the next car and looking strong. Unfortunately traffic and some blinding laps by Russia, Australia and the combined might of Hungary/Slovenia starts to shuffle us backwards. Two hours in – the half way point – we hold a solid 5th. Mixing up the driver order and strategy could be decisive, so we draw up a plan that puts our quickest boys in clear air. Mazda UK MD Jeremy Thomson restarts the race, followed by Autocar’s Jamie Corstophine, Mazda’s top designer Ikuo ‘Speedy’ Maeda, David Hooper, Joe Clifford and then I’ll do the last 30-minutes and try to hoover-up some places. No pressure. 
Fifth becomes 20th and last when Jeremy is punted into a snowbank and we do an early pitstop. But Jamie gradually hauls us back up to 6th. Speedy Maeda should be a safe and quick pair of hands, so we’re feeling buoyed if a little bruised that our early promise is fading. Watching our Japanese ace stick it in a snowbank our hopes of a podium are in tatters. Now it’s just about pride, overtaking as many people as possible and having fun. Before my final stint Mazda UK’s PR boss and team manager Graeme Fudge is clear, ‘you’ve got nothing to lose, so just go mad.’ Amen, my friend, amen.
Wow, the track is so different now. Corners have been shaved back a good 5 yards, the outside track just a sticky bog of deep snow and on the fastest line ruts and bumps have been cut into the surface. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in a car – bouncing from corner to corner, bottoming out, being thrown onto the lockstops when you least expect it. I battle as hard as I can and overtake what feels like dozens of cars… But it’s all to no avail. I take the line battered, bruised, knackered and with one final sideways flourish. It’s only good enough for 9th. The offs have cost us dear, but I think a top 5 finish was our maximum potential. Gutted. But what a great couple of days. It doesn’t get any better than this. Thanks Mazda – for building a rear-drive sportscar with an lsd that mere mortals can afford, for taking 20 of them to Sweden and for letting me hoon around for two days on a frozen lake. Won’t be forgetting this one in a hurry.
Day 2 – Tuesday 22 February 2011
So what does it feel like to drive an MX-5 on skinny little snow tyres with 200 studs biting into a frozen lake? I’m not sure I can think of a word that quite does it justice…
Fun? Too flippant. Amazing? Too wishy-washy. So maybe the noise that was pinging around my brain during practice and qualifying might give you a flavour: It goes a bit like this: ‘Yeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaafooooooo…. [Ed intervenes for family modesty!].
Yes, it’s just as much fun as you’d hope. Grip levels aren’t actually as high as I thought they might be in the slowest corners, but in the quicker sections when you can get the studs really biting into the surface it’s pretty amazing. No understeer, loads of controllable oversteer and just about every rally fantasy you’ve ever had played out in an almost serene way. The engine is screaming towards the red line, the car is fully sideways but your inputs – after a few laps – are slow motion and measured.
How CAR’s Mazda MX-5 ice race has shaped up so far
It didn’t start well. Free Practice and I’m first out (it seemed like a good idea over dinner). I’m only meant to have 20 minutes in the car and the lap times are somewhere around 5 minutes, so there’s little chance of learning the 45-odd corners. Even so I seem to be doing ok. Two cars come past and seem to be flying, so I stick with them for a bit but the snow spray is literally blinding.
So I back off, find some room and start to have fun. The problem is that mentally you think that because you’re sideways you’re going about as fast as is possible… until an expert comes hooning past a gear higher and pinned to the line you’re struggling to find. It seems that more commitment to the throttle means more drive, meaning you can go in faster and hold the car sideways at speeds that seem very wrong.
The inevitable meeting of MX-5 and snow bank…
A bit more commitment and I slide gracefully into a snow bank and have to wait to be towed out. My best lap is something like a 5:08 and the Russians (who seem to have brought an ice racing champ with them. Seriously) have banged-in a 4:50. That’s 18-seconds quicker than me over 4.9km! I want to kill myself…
The rest of UK team are doing okay, but we’re way off the pace. In fact we’re languishing in 14th and 15th out of 20 runners after Free Practice. Lunch is quiet, all of us feeling slightly perplexed. I decide that the next session MUST be different. Try harder, stay on the power on the fleeting straights; generally just stop being so timid. I’m first out again and my team-mates know not of my glorious (and potentially disastrous) plan.
Ice driving the brave way
It only bloody works. I’m using third gear much more, getting right up to the redline on the quicker sections, reeling in other cars and overtaking them cleanly (mostly). And it seems I’m having too much fun. The guys on the ‘pit wall’ (ice bank) keep waving a board at me, but it doesn’t say ‘IN’… should I stop? Ok, just one more lap…. Seems I’ve had a bit more than my fair share when I do get a clear message and get back to the pits. However, the lap times are encouraging – a best of a 4:49. Getting on for 20 seconds faster than before and good enough for P2. I punch the air embarrassingly.
The times stay steady for some time but eventually we’re knocked down to 3rd and then 4th. The bloody Aussies are in P1. You can imagine how gracious they are in their minor victory… But tomorrow is a new day and we’re right in the thick of it. The rolling start should be absolute chaos. For more updates you can follow me on Twitter @JethroBovingdon.
Day 1 – Monday 21 February 2011
When your alarm goes off at 4.45am and you don’t reach for the snooze button you know you’re in for a good day. This morning I was so excited I actually woke up before the alarm, cancelled it, jumped in the shower and was bright-eyed and ready to go a 5am.
Why? Well, because today I’ve flown from Heathrow to Stockholm and then on to Östersund in the middle of Sweden. And tomorrow we’re heading another 45-minutes north to a frozen lake where there are 20 MX-5s with skinny studded tyres waiting for us…
Ice-racing in the Mazda MX-5
So what’s the point of all this? Hmmm, not really sure. Journalists (and the odd ringer) have gathered from all over the world to compete in two two-hour ice races in a fleet of similarly prepped MX-5 racers. Perhaps it’s just to ram home the point that the MX-5 is without rivals, is still an awful lot of fun and – should you have a spare set of studded tyres – pretty bloody good in the snow, too. Perhaps they’ve got a surplus PR budget (unlikely in 2011!), perhaps…. oh I don’t care. This is going to be a riot.
Obviously I’m on Team GB (the car’s livery is pictured). To be honest I don’t know how we’ll fare but tomorrow we have a good chunk of practice time and then a qualifying shoot-out.
The course looks almost impossible to remember (see diagram), the weather is perfect (-10deg and snowing, the picture is from my hotel room) and I expect that pristine fleet of MX-5s won’t be pristine for very long. Stay tuned and I’ll post pics, times and incident reports tomorrow. You can also follow me on Twitter @JethroBovingdon or on @CarMagazineNews