The road racing calendar in Canada is only six months long. Each year, Demaras Racing looks for off season activity to keep the party going, including everything from K1 Speed kart racing, to HIP Motorsports sim racing, and even Race Lab events in the snow.
Each year the idea of CASC Ice Racing comes up, but the weekly journey to Minden would just be too far for the Demaras Racing team.
On Saturday, dramatic video emerged from the Kahnawake Ice Racing Series from a Mohawk community near Montreal. During the Ice Racing event, two cars break through the ice, and plunge into the icy St. Lawrence River. A 5,000 lb Chevy Caprice quickly became submerged, and only by sheer luck did drivers Patrick Renaud and Vincent Noel escape.
Many ice racing series compete on solid ground, flooded and frozen like an outdoor ice rink. But the Kahnawake series competitors are aware of the risks of competing on a frozen body of water, yet they compete anyway. The ice track was measured at 16″ thick at one end, and 14″ thick at the other end (far more than the 10″ thick minimum). Whether it was the weight of the big cars, or a thin patch of ice, race officials may never know.
Racers returned to the scene of the incident on Sunday to raise the sunken cars, although one can only suspect that the damage to the race cars would be too severe to salvage them.