60 APRIL 2020 ~ CAR AND DRIVER
is it translatable to the modern era.” So now
just two car-and-skier pairs race at a time,
and staggered starts keep safe distances
between them. “Back then, they were crazy
and risky,” says Porsche. “We try only to
be crazy.” The best skijorers move up and
down the rope as the car goes around the
track, dropping back in the straightaways
because the cars can slow quicker than the skiers. When the driver
brakes and sets up for a turn, so does the skier, pivoting side to side
to scrub speed while making sure he’s pointed into the corner when
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skier gets at the exit of the turn, so many skiers will climb the rope as
the car brakes. You don’t want to swing too wide, especially if your
driver takes a line that puts the car toward the outside of the turn.
Other skiers appeared to strategize less and just held on for dear
life as they hit speeds upward of 60 mph. It might be safer today, but
it’s hardly sane. “It’s just ver y easy to convince people that racing on
ice with skiers in the back is a good idea,” Porsche says. Sure, but how
do you recruit the skiers? We lost
track of the number of times they
wiped out or we saw cars race past
dragging empty ropes. But only once
did we see a skijorer, who’d been
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into the back of his tow car and put
his hands on the trunk. And the only
skijorer to leave with one leg arrived
in that condition.
This was the second year for the GP Ice Race,
named not because it’s a Grand Prix but because
of organizing partners Greger and Porsche—
and probably because that arrangement is more
evocative than PG. The two see it as more than
a race. Porsche tells us they want the event to be
like a festival “ for people who like racetracks and
rallying and for people who don’t like motor-
sport at all.” To that end, music throbbed all
day and night (racing went past 10:00 p.m. the
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bars—including one constructed entirely from
snow with bottles simply shoved into the sur-
face and, naturally, a Jägermeister stand—and
the requisite Red Bull lounge with rooftop view-
ing deck. The atmosphere and Europe’s inexpli-
cable pop-music tastes set up sublime moments
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the track while Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”
blared from the speakers, or when the Four
Tops’ “Loco in Acapulco” played while specta-
tors drank beers pulled from a snowbank.
Porsche tells us that the organizers had a
meeting after last year’s event with Zell am
See’s mayor, police chief, and other civic lead-
ers, who told them they’d “never had an event
where people were so drunk but so happy and
nothing happened. Everyone was just drunk and
in love, so to say.”
After drawing some 8000 spectators last
year, Greger and Porsche already have a dif-
ferent venue lined up for the 2021 GP Ice
Race. Porsche told us prior to the event that
the current location can accommodate only
about 10,000 people, and the new one can hold
20,000. But more than 16,000 people came out
to watch the festivities this year, so it’s probably
already time to start looking for something even
bigger. Because like a Formula 1 car on studded
dualies, this thing has traction.Above: That’s not the
Type 64 that Porsche
built just before World
War II, but it is a
nice replica, no? The
Corvette (right) and
Lancia Stratos (below)
are real, though.