Below Zero Ice Driving is about to unveil a fleet of eight Porsche 911s for its busiest season yet. The cars shipped out to Sweden last week, with three mechanics, two support staff and a flurry of support vehicles packed with Porsche parts and a geodesic dome.
I’ve been promised a trip to the ice many times before, but this year it looks highly likely. The geodesic dome will serve as the hospitality unit on the lake, where new hostess Marine will ensure that Below Zero clients are well looked after. No press trip is scheduled for this year’s event, so a photographer will be needed to shoot the new features, making the trip in exchange for a session or two on the lakes. Look no further than yours truly to step up and fill that gap.
The courses have been just been cut into the frozen lake at Below Zero HQ near the Swedish ski resort of Åre. This year, the team will have ten miles of ice tracks at its disposal, and it is likely to need them Just four days are left open in the six-week season, and they look likely to disappear also.
Below Zero hosts everything from corporate events to driver training and special birthday experiences. The cars are bona-fide rally cars: three of this year’s eight car fleet have won rallies in recent times, hosting drivers including Travis Pastrana, Björn Waldegård, Carlos Sainz and Stig Blomqvist.
There’s some filming going on this year and talk of the Tuthill Porsche 997 R-GT car heading to Sweden for a bit of ice testing, but we’ll have to see how that pans out. If I had a bit more time, I wouldn’t mind driving the Cayenne up to Sweden and trying it out on full studs. Temperatures are hovering close to freezing here in the UK, but Sweden offers anywhere between -5 and -12 Celsius, a frozen lake and a dome full of beer. Tempting.
Congratulations to Carlos Sainz Junior for securing a Formula 1 drive next year with Scuderia Toro Rosso. The well-deserved drive comes following a championship-winning season in World Series by Renault, and a few days sliding the Tuthill Porsche Below Zero Ice Driving cars, which Junior’s dad and two-time World Rally Champion, Carlos Senior, decided would boost his son’s speed in tricky conditions.
“Carlos Jr. is fully focused on his racing career, so of course we are here mostly for fun,” said Carlos Sr. (below) at the Below Zero Ice Driving campus, “but the experience should still help him understand the feel of a car a bit when grip is reduced, such as when it is raining.”
Carlos Sainz Jr Porsche Ice Driving
Arriving straight from Rally Sweden, the Sainz family enjoyed Tuthill’s Below Zero Ice Driving on the frozen lakes around Åre, one of Scandinavia’s premier winter sports resorts. Carlos and his brother Antonio are popular faces in the Tuthill Porsche camp. Antonio runs rally Porsches in Spain which Carlos employs to great effect, and the cars feature many Tuthill Porsche rally parts.
While discussing the impending engine rebuild on my 1976 Porsche 911 Carrera 3.0 with Tuthill’s engine guru last Friday, another engine arrived from Spain with Antonio’s name on it. A great relationship exists between the rally families, and Tuthills are also gearing up for some WRC R-GT filming with Carlos Junior’s Red Bull sponsors this winter. Hopefully we’ll see some of that before Rallye Monte Carlo, where the 997 R-GT will be back to rallying action.
Following the warmer temperatures Sweden has experienced in the last few winters, Below Zero has a shortened season on the frozen lakes next year. The team has set just six weeks aside for ice driving in 2015, from the 14th of January to the start of March.
Almost 150 car days have already sold out, so the team is looking forward to its most successful season yet. Those interested in joining an increasingly prestigious list of participants (including Mr Adrian Newey!) should email Belo Zero. Tell them we sent you, of course.
“I don’t want this to read like some PR whitewash over an error on our part,” Richard Tuthill insists. “We had a fully engineered, production-based solution to take the Porsche 911 RGT into WRC on the FIA’s table in May. We’ve tested the car over 120 kilometres on gravel, absolutely flat out. This car is fantastic on gravel and should be racing in Wales. But it won’t be, and we all know why.”
I understand Richard’s frustration. Less than a week before Tuthill’s R-GT Porsche was due to take the start of Wales Rally GB, the FIA decided to reject the car’s gravel specification for the Oxfordshire team’s home event, despite all of the planned modifications being fully described in plans submitted to Switzerland almost six months ago. Having sucked up a truckload of R-GT red tape already this year, this was one step too far.
Earlier this week, the R-GT was taken to Walters Arena in Wales, home of many gravel test sessions and identical terrain to the Rally GB gravel stages. In-car footage from testing shows the R-GT Porsche’s incredible speed: the 911 pulls two gears higher than Tuthill historic cars on the same stages and easily hits the limiter in sixth on the longest stretches of gravel.
‘The car was born to be driven on gravel,” says Richard. “It is well balanced, amazingly easy to drive and with the wonderful 3.8-litre engine and sequential six-speed gearbox, it is very, very fast. We experimented with the setup up throughout the day and will continue to develop certain areas, but I could not have imagined it could be so good from the very first KM. It’s more than ready to hit the stages, be they gravel or snow.
“Combined with the car’s performance on asphalt, this confirms that it is an all-rounder and can be used across the world in all regional championships, where the regulations follow FIA guidance.”
Tuthill Porsche FIA Rally GB
Lengthy discussions at FIA headquarters in Geneva could not move its technical department to approve the car for use on this weekend’s Rally GB. It’s a blow to Team Tuthill, the rally organisers who have headlined so much promotion with the R-GT Porsche but mainly to the fans; hundreds of whom were looking forward to witnessing the return of a Porsche 911 to WRC gravel stages.
Richard explains the impasse. “Within existing R-GT regulations, there is scope to allow modification to the suspension uprights that are fitted to the chosen base model. However, this only allows the fitment of gravel brakes. In the case of the 997 RGT, the upright is too big to fit within a 15 inch gravel wheel, regardless of the size of caliper and disc fitted. Understandably the FIA needs to review how this issue can be resolved and, not surprisingly, it is unwilling to allow complete freedom for modification on safety grounds.
“We found a solution from Porsche factory parts, which we tested to great effect. That solution, developed by our chief engineer who is one of the most experienced motorsport engineers in the world with thirty years of Le Mans, WRC and Dakar behind him, was still not enough to convince the FIA. While we fully accept that any new category will raise technical challenges that need open discussion and thinking to get around, I cannot hide my frustration at the way this decision has been made, given we started this enquiry in May.”
FIA Leadership through F1 Motorsport Crisis
Lately it seems that the FIA has given up on the ‘sport’ side of motorsport in the vested financial interests of its commercial manufacturer partners. With F1 in crisis and the governing body standing by motionless, will the FIA ever draw back those curtains of red tape and start listening to fans who only care about racing? Or does the inactivity reflect a lack of leadership as the FIA president works his connections to land a plum job at the UN: a theory I read on one of the leading F1 blogs last week? So much for a bright future.
I never met Björn Waldegård, but we spoke on the phone once. It was a memorable experience: everything you wish from your heroes.
“Luck plays a part in all of life,” Björn told me. “Not a great percentage, but it is there. Luck is not just your good luck, sometimes it is other people’s bad luck. How you prepare can lead to your luck.” Making one’s luck is the mark of a champion: the first-ever World Rally Champion.
Björn Waldegård and Porsche
Born into a farming family, Björn began winning rallies in his privately-run Volkswagen at the age of 19. Noting his ability, the Swedish Volkswagen importers put him in a professionally-built VW rally car, which he used to claim a few podiums.
Things hotted up when a Porsche 911 was purchased. Björn took second place on the 1967 Gulf London Rally and performed well elsewhere. 1968 brought a win on the Swedish Rally, almost half an hour ahead of second place. Monte Carlo brought a top ten finish: the following year, Björn won the race, and then won in Sweden again.
When the ST arrived at the start of 1970, Waldegård exploited its potential, repeating his wins from the previous year and adding the Alpine Rally. The list continues: let’s just say that he knew the 911.
Swedish Sixth Sense
More than the secret of 911 speed, Björn had a sixth sense of how much life was in a car. “A car is like a fuel tank,” he said. “You use its life up through the length of a rally. The perfect rally car falls apart as soon as you cross the finish line: nothing is left.”
Francis Tuthill once told me exactly the same thing about sitting next to Björn on a pre-Safari test in Morocco. “He has two sets of instruments: one set on the dashboard and one set in his head. His internal gauges clock up how much of the car he has used, where he can push and where he should hold off.” Francis co-drove for Björn on a rally one year – it may have been the Eifel Rally – and, while setting pace notes, Bjorn told Francis to mark one corner as “caution: keep to the inside”.
“I didn’t see it like that: it looked a fast corner to me,” said Francis. “But you always pay attention to Björn, so I did put it down on the notes. In the heat of the event I neglected to call it, but Björn was a wily old fox. Remembering the bend, he slowed down anyway and sure enough there was a group of cars off, stuck in the ditch on the outside. The road had frozen overnight and failed to thaw: he spotted it would on the recce. That was just what he was like: incredible intelligence and ability. Driving slowly was part of his secret.”
Laid Back, Straight Talking Björn
We have family in Sweden, so I have travelled all over that country. The Swedish are easy-going, straight talking people, and Björn was a perfect example. “I’m just a simple Swedish farmer”, is how he described himself to me, but we all know he was much more.
“When I retired, I thought my driving was over,” Björn told me. “But the energy of rally fans kept it alive. Soon historic rallies began to come up and my phone was ringing. But it was not manufacturers taking millions of pounds in promotional value from winning a rally, it was just rally fans, doing it for the passion. The events were no slower – Safari now is still just as fast as it was in 1970, and the roads are just as deadly. But when you know you are racing for passion, it is a very satisfying way to use a talent.”
Waldegård: Make Your Mark
We were working together on the Race4Change team, so I asked Björn about strategy: how would he approach the impending Safari? “Same as any Safari,” he said. “We will start by looking at the others: how ready they are, how hard they will start, how much confidence they have. Then we settle in and choose when to lay down our mark. And then we will see who is ready to rally.”
Lessons learned on Safari always transfer to life. Bjorn won the 2011 Safari in a Porsche 911: in total he won six Safari Rallies and the hearts and minds of rally fans everywhere. After an hour on the phone with him, I had a different perspective on my work. He was a great competitor and a true Porsche hero. I will miss typing his name, seeing more new pictures of that face and wondering what he is thinking.
RIP Björn Waldegård. Here’s to fast, flowing stages and the memories of genius.
So much for more time for Ferdinand after last weekend: this week has been even madder than last. Much activity has centred on the WRC debut of the Tuthill Porsche 997 RGT car.
Originally intended to debut on the Ulster Rally, the schedule did not allow for transport to the first test to Germany on the following Monday: Germany is too far away at 53 mph in the race truck. So it is straight off to Germany today, to arrive on Sunday. There follows a week of full on activity with testing, recce, shakedown and then the rally proper.
I had a look through the WRC event paperwork with Richard this morning and it’s amazing what they give the teams to get their heads around, even before the co-driver paperwork. Speaking of which, Stèphane Prévot is co-driving with Richard next weekend, and that is another delight.
Stephane started with Bruno Thiry in European rallying before moving to WRC in 1993. He then partnered Francois Duval, Stèphane Sarrazin and now runs with Subaru/Hyundai WRC pilot, Chris Atkinson. The pair are not racing again until Australia, so Prévot can partner with Tuthill. Stèphane is well known to the team, as he often sits alongside Glenn Jannssens, Tuthill’s Belgian Historic championship winner.
An unbelievable amount of work has gone into the 997 development and launch, so opportunities to really enjoy that achievement have been few and far between. Richard took the car out to bed in new brakes last night and said that the nicest surprise was the smile that appeared on his face half way around our local test route. “The 997 GT3 might look big, but it doesn’t feel big once you get moving,” said Richard. “Our aim in Germany is just to enjoy being back in a WRC paddock, with what we think is the coolest car.
“We’ll be looking for reliability as it’s not an easy car to service and we still need to understand the best approach to that side of things. It is so exciting and there is a huge amount of interest in what we’re doing. I’ve got to shut that excitement out, find some space and just focus on the road.” The enormity of a Porsche 911 in full-on FIA WRC rallying makes me nervous just standing next to the machine, so I am super excited for the team.
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