For people interested in seeing an ice race, a three-hour street-tire, endurance ice car race is scheduled today at New Meadows River in West Bath off Route 1. The race starts at 11 a.m. For more information, people can call Skip Foster at 371-2747 or Bob Koenig at 721-9755.
Frozen fun
In ice car racing, stripped-down junk cars that look like hell are par for the course.
CASCO – No words were necessary.
The grin on Martin Krauter’s face said it all Feb. 25 at the first nighttime car race on the ice at Sebago Lake’s Kettle Cove.
The Raymond man’s No. 82 black Honda lost its brakes on the third lap of the street-stock, studded-tire feature of the Hardwater Auto Racing Challenge at Windham Rotary’s Ice Fishing DerbyFest 2005.
During Krauter’s 30-minute rush around the shorter-than-normal, third-of-a-mile oval track on top of 12-inches of ice, his car’s front bumper fell off, part of the car’s rear suspension ripped out and the muffler came unhitched.
But he finished the race, taking third place and winning $125, said his son Ben Krauter, 23, of Raymond.
Martin Krauter said he believed that a 12-foot chain on the ice track decimated his car. That chain wasn’t found and removed until the last race of the night was under way.
Krauter’s son, who races in the screw-tire class, had some bad luck also.
He blew the engine in his gutted 1987 Honda CRX during the five-minute practice run for screw-tire cars.
Cars in this class have tires bristling with screws. Ben Krauter said he made his car’s four tires five years ago, using 1½-inch screws, with 400 screws to a tire.
“It takes three to four hours to make a tire,” he said. He bolted the screws onto the tires to prevent them from coming out and shredding the rubber.
Screw-tire cars are sent around the ice track first, “to chew the track up so the studded snow tires have something to grip on,” said Serena Knight of Raymond. She came to watch the Krauters.
Chris Kasserman of Brunswick, who wasn’t racing that night, said screw tires require a minimum of 12 inches of ice, because “they will chew up 3 inches of it in the races.”
Some of the racers drove their cars to the impromptu raceway, but most carted them on flatbed trailers. These were cars that looked like they’d been sitting in junkyards for years.
“Ice racing is about having fun with junk,” one racer said.
Many cars had no windows, no headlights or taillights, no mufflers, no interior other than a driver’s seat with a four- to five-point safety harness and the required fire extinguisher.
“They’re loud, noisy cars that look like hell. Basically, anything you can get together. It makes me feel like I’m in a junkyard with all these beat-up cars,” Knight said.
Bumpers, doors and trunks, and at least one battery, were held in place by duct tape or bungee cords.
Knight said that these cars are gutted to make them lighter.
“The heavier the car, the more it slides. Headlights are too heavy,” she said.
So, too, were speedometers.
“I don’t have a speedometer. I prefer it that way. Frankly, I don’t want to know,” Ben Krauter said matter-of-factly.
On larger tracks, he said ice car speeds can reach 130 mph.
60 mph or more
But on the Sebago Lake track, Kasserman said she expected screw-tire car speeds to be between 60 and 80 mph; slower for the cars with studded snow tires.
That night’s race was a first, Kasserman said. Ice car races are usually held in the daytime. The Windham Rotarians ran the race with help from the New Meadows Ice Racing Association of Brunswick. Incidentally, New Meadows racers took four out of the top five places in the screw-studded tire race, and all three top places in the street-studded tire race.
“This is the first time it’s been done under the lights, so it’s something new, something different,” Kasserman said.
Fans thought so, too. A crowd of several hundred gathered on land near the raceway, while snowmobilers grouped on the lake’s ice.
It was difficult to see the screw-tire cars because they were kicking up clouds of ice and snow in the single-digit temperatures.
Drivers also had a tough time racing in and out of brightly lighted areas and dark shadows. Whiteouts cause by other racers also wreaked havoc.
Piled snow was used to create walls inside and outside of the track. And while some cars spun out and got mired atop snow walls or punched completely through them, all of them managed to stay on top of the ice. None went into the icy water.
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