CIRCUIT BERTRAND FABI, Sherbrooke, Quebec
BEAUHARNOIS , Quebec.
It was about four years ago when I got my first taste of Ice Racing and that was on the frozen St Lawrence Seaway at Beauharnois, between Valleyfield and Chateauguay, Quebec. Since then I've visited quite a few other ice tracks, but I still try to return at least once a year.
Probably the best ice racing I've ever seen was at the Circuit Bertrand Fabi in Sherbrooke, Quebec when the Andros Trophy cars payed a visit from Europe, a couple of years back. Since then, they have been absent. But this year the Geneva (Switzerland) based ISSR ice racing series have included Sherbrooke's annual Challenge Sur Glace on their schedule (rounds have
taken place in Sweden, Finland, Italy and France).
This past Sunday I had the opportunity to visit both tracks.
After an early start from my Maxville, Ontario home, I was in Sherbrooke, Quebec before 10-00am in good time to see the qualifying races for the cars (bikes and quads were also on the program).
My first task was to track- down ISSR media man Thierry Barrat. I'd been in regular contact via e-mail with Thierry prior to my visit and I had arranged to meet him there. When I found him, he was strapped into the passenger seat of the # 5 ISSR Mitsubishi ready to go out for the opening heat. These cars are required to have one passenger. We agreed to chat again after the race.
There were two qualifying races, with the Joncoux/Karam BMW taking the first and Stievenart/Stievenart Fiat taking the second.
I then went into the pit garage to catch up with Thierry. He'd flown in to Montreal from Europe on Thursday for the weekend races and would be flying back on Monday. We discussed the bodywork and bumper damage that all four of the ISSR Mitsubishi's sustained and he commented that this wasn't a situation they had to deal with in the European rounds ! The cars were shipped into Montreal from the port of LeHavre in France and were due to return for a regular race (not ice) after Sherbrooke. The trans-Atlantic journey takes ten days, he told me.
It was now time for me to leave, as I'd decided not to stay for the main event. I wanted to catch some of the Beauharnois racing on my way home. I arrived at Beauharnois to find the track had been relocated a short distance up the shore-line. Instead of watching the action from the relative luxury of the broadwalk (promenade) beside the bandstand I had to park my car and walk down to the ice.
Many of the spectators had driven down on to the ice to watch from the comfort of their cars, but I'm never too keen on doing that ! As normal, there were the usual divisions of four and eight cylinders . These were the opening races of the year for these guys .... the ice has only recently been thick enough for racing.
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