Our first driving event for the season is now in the books! And boy, did we have a good time! It gets cold here in the Midwest and we have to put our fun car away, but that just means we get some quality seat time driving the family station wagon!
We took out my 1997 Subaru Legacy Outback, the car is very much a stock car with a used set of Bridgestone Blizzak tires. The Gridlife Ice Battle event had two parts to it: morning AutoX style runs; and afternoon lapping on the 1/2 scale "GingerSnowMan" track.
First session AutoX style run had 4 timed laps per car. They alternated cars with street tires and bolted snow tires as much as possible to keep the consistency of the ice similar.
The wagon was in the AWD class for the 4 timed laps and we went out around 1:00 PM. The temps were creeping into the 20s and that softens the ice...so, the track kept getting more slippery as the day went, times got slower, but I did more drifting!! And who does not like drifting a family sized station wagon. Overall, we got 20th of 25 drivers.
For the second part of the event featured a Ginger-Snow-Man course setup. It's a 1/2 scale of the well-known Gingerman race track located Michigan. They sent out 5 cars at a time from the same class to do a warm up and 3 hot laps, 10/10 this was the most fun we had all day!
During the lapping one of my car buddies Lucas was following me in his 2002 WRX, we switched spots after another car went off track.
What’s not to like about a track day on a frozen river in Wisconsin, we saw wildlife (multiple deer and a wolf!), ate at a brat fry, bought some beer at a gas station, and were randomly offered complementary beef sticks by some guy at the local bar!
After all of the driving was done, we had to clean the snow out of the wheel!
Excited for the start of the 2022 season and more summer Gridlife events!
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