As a Canadian, I feel that popular stories of the sport of drifting often overlook the contributions of my countryfolk. Sliding around a parking lot in the snow has been a much-loved pastime for my compatriots for years, as this Retro Review from MotorWeek proves.
Covering ice racing in 1989, the shoot took correspondent Craig Singhaus and the crew of MotorWeek north of the border to Minden, Ontario, about three hours northeast of Toronto – and just down the road from my family’s cottage!
The racing, as Len Arminio, one of the race’s organizers, pointed out was one of the least expensive forms of motorsport you could participate in. All you had to do was take a 10 to 15-year-old car, make sure it ran, and drive it as fast as you dared around a “ruptured kidney” shaped ice track.
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“Most people would throw [these cars] away,” says Arminio. “What else do you do with a ’77 Chevette?”
Couldn’t agree more. The racing appears to be mostly focused on fun, and it sees multiple cars drifting around the corners together, just like in tandem drifting. There did appear to be more crashes but less danger than I presume real drifters were facing on the touges of Japan back in the day, though.
Singhaus, a southerner, has trouble with ice racing, which is fair enough – I’m sure I wouldn’t fare much better on my first try. I will say, though, that one of the first places my dad took me when I got my license was a snowy parking lot to practice handbrake turns. Not only was it a bunch of fun, it was also a good way to get comfortable with driving in low-grip conditions and I assume a number of Americans from northern states had similar experiences.
The best news of all is that ice racing like this still happens these days. A buddy of mine used to race a 2004 Volvo on the snow until it broke too bad to be worth fixing and he loved it.