Winter Festival of Speed ice racers rely on pre-race prep

Just before practice on the first day of the Winter Festival of Speed, Hiroki Currie was stalking around his converted stock car.
"I'm always stressed (before a race)," he said. "You put so much time in... and you never know if anything's going to go wrong."
Ice racers are a unique set of competitors, many rally veterans looking for a new challenge and all racing not high-calibre sports cars but old Chevrolet Chevelles and Chrysler Neons stripped bare and coated in sponsor decals.
"You take a stock car right off the road... they're usually about $500-$1000 for a good running one," said racer Mike Thorn. "Then sort out the bugs the person was selling the car for in the first place."
According to Thorn, Neons take about two weeks to prepare, but he started only a week before the race.

"As of right now we've got to weld in a new steering column," Thorn said. "There's always tinkering, but I'd challenge you to find anyone that's welding in their steering column right now. It's something I haven't done in 15 years of racing."
Thorn, a veteran of the roadway, first started racing in 2008, bridging the gap between restoring vehicles and selling them to racers to getting on the track himself.
Between misbehaving cars and mischevious weather, Thorn said ice racers have to expect the unexpected, as all the attendees to this year's event have done after it was postponed due to cold weather.
"Being a racer of any sort is rolling with the punches," Thorn said. "You're trying to overcome adversity. You have 99.5 per cent of your time that's working or failing at something, which makes the little time of winning so good."
Local racer Peter Siefert says the odometer on his Neon read 170,000 km when he bought it for $150. It's the car's second season, so it was ready to go for race day.
"Besides safety equipment and preparing for the race, (I did) absolutely nothing."
Siefert said his pre-race ritual is caffeine.
"I have about three cups of coffee with six sugars in it, get the adrenaline going," he said.
Thorn said some racers can be high-wired, others can be calm. "Depends on the person. I have a nap," he said.
"Once I get belted in and my helmet on and ready to go, I usually have a two, three, four, five minute nap. That's when I race the best."