The life of a motoring journalist is (or certainly used to be) pretty varied. One minute you can be behind the wheel of a Toyota Yaris and the next, you’re skidding a Nissan Navara around densely-packed jungle terrain. Best job in the world? It’s probably up there.
And as someone who has been lucky enough to call this a profession for over 14 years now, I’ve seen some pretty special automotive spectacles, from thousands of bikers tearing up the garden of a stately home to cajoling a Rolls-Royce Cullinan up the side of a mountain.
That said, witnessing 10,000 people cheering as a century’s worth of automotive history is thrashed around a frozen race track left me well and truly scratching my head.
To get to the bottom of the slightly mad but utterly brilliant GP Ice Race, you first have to dig out the history books. Way back in 1937, perhaps due to a mild case of altitude sickness, a hardy bunch of mountain dwelling, skijöring enthusiasts (I shall get to that later) thought it would be way more fun to use their motorcycles, rather than the traditional horses, to throw their skiing mates around an icy oval.
Fast forward 83 years and the same event still runs in Zell am See, Austria, where I stood scratching my head in disbelief. But after a few decades of similar ski-based commitment from Porsche fans, the venue, an old airport (don’t worry, you can still chopper in) is packed full of profligate petrol heads, ready to watch not only a prince’s ransom worth of classic cars slide and skid around the short track, but also gawp at the latest and greatest in high end motoring tech do battle – from fully-fledged rally machines to electric vehicle concepts. The winner is the fastest over two short laps of the scarily slippery and utterly demanding GP Ice Race track.
With the races split into several disciplines, it’s the perfect excuse for collectors and classic car enthusiasts to trailer over unique and special vehicles. A quick walk around the site, which felt a built like a frosty Goodwood Festival of Speed, and I saw everything from privately owned 80s Mercedes-Benz to dedicated one-offs from the likes of Bentley and Volkswagen, which were designed to promote the latest tech to the baying crowds.
Admittedly, it is bizarre but slightly beguiling to see classic 911s (worth more than my house) sliding around the rink, rapidly followed by the latest battery powered Porsche Taycan, which was wheeled out – complete with fearless skier in tow- to entertain the crowds between races.
This year, Volkswagen pulled the cover of its latest in electric tech, which took the form of a wide-bodied golf that shares most its important mechanic with the company’s Festival of Speed winning ID-R. Although not quite matching the rasping back end of a race specced (ish) Trabant in terms of entertaining sounds, it silently destroyed the track alongside even the most visceral of vintage sports cars.
But back to the origins of the GP Ice Race for a moment. Skijöring (if you haven’t worked it out already) essentially involves attaching a knotted rope to the back of your powerful machine, finding someone daft enough to grab hold of it, and then speeding around the ice circuit as quick as you can while your best mate does their upmost to stay upright on a pair of skis. And these guys didn’t ease up on the throttle for the sake of keeping their ski partner’s bones in one piece.
Sounds mad, right? Rewind to the St. Moritz Winter Olympics in 1928 and riderless horses pulled skiers on the race track at maximum speed. This was long before healthy and safety was a thing but Skijöring rapidly garnered cult following and it wasn’t long before the horses were replaced with horsepower. Lots of horsepower. In 1938, the first motorised Renntandems glide across the ice in Zell am See. Soon after, the first ice races for motorcycles of all classes and automobiles take place.
But tody, things have taken on a much more premium flavour, with most of the stuff thrashed around the ice as part of a frosty moving museum to motoring. Things we never thought we would see sliding around an icy oval: a Red Bull Camry NASCAR, an Audi Sport Quattro S1, a Porsche 550 Spyder, an Audi DTM car and an Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 that’s worth more than most healthy National Lottery rollovers.
It’s an utterly banzai but addictive concoction of money, vintage machinery, skiing lunacy and stunning scenery. Brief bouts of hypothermia were suffered and our snapper's index finger almost fell off a few times while capturing this event, but it’s another classic to tick off the list and one I often mentally revisit when it’s cold outside and there’s the comfort of a roaring fire to enjoy.
All imagery courtesy of Lewis Harrison-Pinder & Flat-Out Creative
Keyword: Merry Driftmas: chilling at the GP Ice Race