If you like the Ice Driver movie on our home page, you’ll love the High Definition version we’ve just uploaded onto our YouTube channel. Shot in 2009 on the then ground-breaking Canon 5D Mk2 by Neill Watson,it shows Andy McKenna in the BMW M3 Powered Compact at speedon our private frozen lake facility. Click Full Screen for the HD version

Our base in the UK is in North Yorkshire, where we’ve actually had more snow than in Sweden this month! So take a look at this video as a display of driver skill. Saltburn Bank is well known locally as being hard work in winter. It’s a 40% incline with three hairpin bends that stop any momentum you might have managed to generate. So in snow and ice, it takes driving skill like this to make it up.
So the question is why, when are all the drivers sliding about, even a Discovery 3, is a bus driver able to make it without a problem?

Two things. Traction and driver skill. The bus has a big overhang and the engine in the rear, so think of it as a long wheelbase Porsche 911. But that’s nothing without the skill and experience of the driver who balanced the power in the hairpins, using just enough to get around without spinning the inside rear wheel. Take a look at the racing line he takes too and we’d say that’s one guy we’d like to see at Ice Driver. We assume he got a round of applause from his passengers…..

Back in the summer, Andy McKenna was working on the launch of the new Ford Focus RS. 300 Bhp in a front wheel drive car sounds like an awful lot to ask and we were both sceptical about the car’s ability to put the power down without ripping front tyres apart or understeering like crazy, but we’re pleased to say we were proved wrong! McKenna spent a whole week in the launch cars and was very impressed, both with the lovely five cylinder engine and with the tricks Ford played with the front suspension geometry to nail the front and create a great handling car. This video shows Andy at work in the Focus, guiding guests around the Prestwold test track. Our own Ford Focus is Group N rally car with a Quaife limited slip differential, so it’s more hard core than this, but Andy loved the Focus RS.
If only Mr Ford would loan us some for Ice Driver, it would make a truly great car driving on studs on the frozen lake!

Time to dispell lots of myths, all in one hit. Next time someone tells you front wheel drive is boring, show then this. Our Ice Driver Ford Focus sometimes gets overlooked, but this shows you what front wheel drive is all about.

Also, we’re big believers in the fact that if you can drive, you can drive. Not difference between rally drivers and race drivers, if you’ve got it, good driving will show through. Nor should age be any impediment, never ever stop driving and learning new techniques and polishing your skills.

And to prove all of the above the points, this superb clip of Rangotti in a Renault Clio Cup car on You Tube is superb. We’ve just worked out the he was around sixty years old when this was shot….



So next time everyone’s praising Loeb (rightly so, because he’s good too…) remember that he’s not the first fast French Feller