NASCAR Whelen Euro Sequence Will Race on Ice in 2023

Lately, NASCAR-sanctioned inventory automotive racing collection have ventured out to new distinctive occasion venues. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum hosted the Busch Mild Conflict season-opening exhibition race on a quarter-mile bullring contained in the legendary stadium in February and is scheduled to take action once more subsequent February. Additionally, in 2023, the Cup Sequence is slated to run a points-paying spherical on a road circuit in Chicago. Subsequent week, NASCAR’s European-based championship is taking its drivers onto a wholly new racing floor for inventory automotive racing: Ice.

The NASCAR Whelen Euro Sequence revealed its 2023 schedule right now. Two non-championship races will bookend the season’s six points-paying rounds. An all-star race will likely be held at Automotodrom Grobnik in Croatia on a yet-to-be-determined date. The opposite non-points race would be the season opener in the beginning of March in Rovaniemi, Finland. Nonetheless, there isn’t a race monitor in Rovaniemi.

The occasion in Rovaniemi will happen atop a frozen lake. There has by no means been a NASCAR-sanctioned race on ice. Rovaniemi yearly hosts the Arctic Lapland Rally. The long-lasting 56-year-old occasion was held twice in 2021. The primary was the standard rally, and the second was a alternative World Rally Championship spherical to compensate for Rally Sweden’s cancellation. That was the one time the Arctic Rally was a WRC spherical. Although, Lapland attracts the very best drivers within the nation. Six World Rally Champions have received the occasion. F1 drivers Mika Häkkinen, Kimi Räikkönen, and Valtteri Bottas have competed within the Arctic Rally.

The NASCAR Euro Sequence ready for this occasion with an ice take a look at earlier this 12 months in Val Thorens, France. The collection trialed the specially-designed studded tires that may see motion in Finland. Jerome Galpin, the NASCAR Whelen Euro Sequence President and CEO, was the motive force on the wheel throughout the take a look at. Afterward, he stated:

“That was tremendous enjoyable! To be trustworthy, we didn’t count on this primary take a look at on ice to go so nicely. The EuroNASCAR automotive has an incredible stability, so it is rather straightforward to swing round on the ice. It’s in all probability among the many most versatile race automobiles ever constructed, capable of race on each monitor and each floor, in each situation. The extent of efficiency can be fairly spectacular: with solely at some point of testing, we had been capable of set one of many quickest occasions across the monitor for a rear-wheel drive automotive.”

I actually can’t wait to see inventory automobiles beating and banging on ice subsequent March! The NASCAR Whelen Euro Sequence visits Rovaniemi, Finland on March 4-5, 2023. And sure, the collection streams its races stay on YouTube.