First real competition event for this build: Ice racing.
Benefits of living as far north as I do, these events happen relatively nearby. There is no better way to very quickly and safely learn how a vehicle handles at, and well beyond, the limit than to go slide it around on a frozen lake for the day. There's nothing to hit, and everything happens in slow motion. I've been very successful at these events in AWD cars, but this would be a bit of a switch for me.
So I slapped some 225/45r17 studded winter tires on all four corners and headed up. This is probably the only time I'll be doing this type of event with this car (I'm building a rally car to cover loose surface events) but it's an extremely valuable experience, and a ton of fun. It's essentially a time trials event, but held on a course that is plowed into a frozen lake:
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The car did pretty well all things considered. The relatively light weight makes it easier to change direction, and the rear weight bias gives it better acceleration traction than a lot of the other rwd cars. It has way more power than it could ever need on ice, I never even used the top half of the rev band. The diff was very predictible, though perhaps a little too aggressive
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However a good drift car the Fiero is not. The rear weight bias also means it's fairly unforgiving at the limit, and the severe lack of steering angle means that even when under control, there were tight turns that I simply could not take the fast, sideways line around, because the front wheels couldn't turn far enough - exactly what drifters install modified steering geometry to combat, but in the Fiero even with relatively narrow, low offset wheels, the limitation is the inside of the wheel hitting the upper control arm. So I was stuck driving around a few places 'grip style', slowing down and waiting for the lateral grip to be able to take the corner normally.
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I spun a lot, at least for the first few sessions. By the end of the first day I had started to figure out how to make the car do what I wanted, and by the end of the second day, I was one of the fastest RWD cars out there, and keeping a few of the Subarus with non-studded tires honest as well. The platform continues to prove itself to be pretty capable, I'm happy.
Over all, a very successful event. I feel very confident to be able to push the car hard now on a circuit where the margins for error are smaller. Hopefully I'll have a report from a circuit event within the next few weeks.
Here's an onboard of a few laps around the ice track
https://fb.watch/xR-xMKepy1/
