As Clint reported, our ice racing season started this past Sunday. I found it interesting to see how my dry-weather track experience would help me on the ice. Overall, the body of technique is more or less the same. Basic concepts of The Line and car control apply on any surface, in any car, and I certainly made good use of both during the races.

The Line
All of my track experience regarding finding the best line really paid off. The key to driving any stretch of pavement (or ice, in this case) is figuring out which line to take. For most corners, I found that the traditional line worked best, which wasn’t that surprising. What amazed me was how far down the straights I could feel the affects of different lines. Because turning is such a long process on the ice, if your car is not pointing exactly where you want it to be at track out, you need to lift off the power for a LONG time in order to rotate the car sufficiently. This problem could be compounded by a lack of traction at the track out point, making rotation even more difficult.

Most competitors recommended looking for traction, and taking whatever line coincides with the highest areas of traction. I actually found that this was not the best approach, at least not for the course we ran on Sunday. As a general rule, and certainly as the day wore on, there was more traction on the outside of the corners, and less at the apex. But, if I took a rimshot, I would yield the inside line to one of my competitors and they would get by me. So I actually found the best approach was to go slower through the inside, making sure to hit the apex and close off any daylight for the other racers.

Racing Mindset
The biggest shock to me was getting into the racing mindset. At SCDA track days, there is no problem getting passed, and I always try and get out of the way of faster, higher horsepower cars. This of course is exactly the opposite of what you want to do during a race, so it took a few laps to adjust to ignoring whoever was on my tail.

Overall, probably the most important thing to do while ice racing is damage control. By that I mean both controlling your car so it doesn’t hit a competitor, and so that you don’t fly off of the course and get stuck. This involves assessing your entry speed and changing conditions of each corner, and entering damage control mode as soon as you realize that you are going too hot. I had a few instances where, early on, I realized I was carrying way too much speed into the corner. I then immediately began to scrub speed and do what I could to keep my car on the track, even if it meant a very slow exit speed. Any exit speed is better than getting stuck in a snow bank, which would give you no exit speed at all. This skill is absolutely critical, as the longer you take to realize you are too hot, the less time and distance you have to fix your mistake and the more likely you are to leave the track.