RICK @ the RACES ( 13/14/15 January 2012)
This past weekend I’d planned to attend the Challenge Sur Neige at Autodrome St Eustache, which would have been my first racing event of 2012 ( Sunday 15 January).
For those that don’t know, ‘neige’ is the french word for ‘snow’, and in the weeks leading up to the event, there had been very little of the stuff.
On ‘Friday 13th ‘ things changed, and the Montreal area of Quebec and Eastern Ontario was dealt a big storm that blanketed the ground with the required ‘white stuff’.
I’d been working that day and on my return home in the evening my driveway had about six inches of it. Things looked good for the weekends races !
Temperatures had plummeted to minus 20 centigrade in Cornwall (Ont), when I set off for St Eustache on Sunday morning. The roads in the city were still covered with hard packed snow, but once on to Hwy 401, (which had been cleared) I thought I’d be able to make normal progress. As I put my foot on the accelerator to increase the speed, I knew there was something wrong. Once up to 90 kph, the HHR started to ‘judder’ and shake.
I figured it was an ice build up on the wheel rims, so pulled off at the first exit to investigate. There was so much hard packed ice and snow under the vehicle it was impossible to see if my theory was correct, so continued a bit further in the hope the ice would fall off.
To cut a long story short, it didn’t , and after a few more miles of shaking, I decided to abort the trip.
So, it wasn’t a good start to my racing year. One of my fellow media guys, Sylvain Louwers, and a good friend of www.rickattheraces.com was there and has supplied us with his report and pictures . Thanks Sylvain !
Later in the week the HHR was taken into Cornwall’s, JIFFY AUTO SERVICE (one of the sponsors at the Cornwall Motor Speedway), where it was put on the ramps and the offending ice was removed from the rims. Thanks Guys ! …. Just a reminder to all race fans, that it’s a good thing to support the businesses that support racing .
AUTODROME ST EUSTACHE Special Collaboration by Sylvain Lauwers
January 15th was the coldest Sunday of 2012 so far, but it was also my first opportunity to go to the races this year: the Autodrome de St-Eustache, Qc was presenting its 2nd annual Snow Challenge. My friend Jamie Quan & I arrived at this track located Northwest of Montreal at 1h15 pm. Despite blue skies and a beautiful sun, my car’s outside temperature gauge was indicating a cold -16c. We entered the Autodrome just after the practices.
It took us only a few minutes to find familiar faces: Eastern Ontario DIRTcar racer Joey Ladouceur was with his friend Sébastien Chabot -today they swapped roles: Chabot is racing the #51 Toyota Corolla and Ladouceur is the pitcrew. With them was Guy Lalonde with his #50 enduro machine. All the little gang was accompanied by their wives and friends.
In the pits we noticed some good old mid-70s cars (Monte-Carlo, New-Yorker etc) built for ice and snow racing: they were guys from the Beauharnois, Qc area. From mid-January to mid-March they’re racing on a weekly basis on the St-Lawrence River nearby their place.
Over 60 4-cylinders cars fought together in 2 20-lap features. The 2011 Sportsman track Champion, Maxime Pelletier pleased the more than 250 race fans by winning his race behind the wheel of the #66 pink colored Ford Focus.
The 4×4 race was interesting since a ’93 Honda Civic hatchback was racing along SUV. Why? This is a wildly modified Honda that has a big turbo under its hood and has an AWD power train.
The driver of the Honda kept the race fans on their toes giving all what he had to give to get by his much heavier rivals but with 5 laps to go he got stuck in the front stretch’s snow bank and couldn’t finish the race.
34 cars registered for the free for all 34-lap feature: 1 lap for each car on the starting line. Jamie and I left as this feature was beginning, it was 3h35 pm and the sun was starting to go down and the temperature as well!
We had fun as well as all the racers, pit crews and race fans!
SYLVAIN LAUWERS