Thin ice

It gets mighty chilly in Arvidsjaur, Sweden. In January-February temperatures can get down as low as minus 15 degrees, with minus five or six degrees considered almost balmy. Shorts and t-shirts weather it isn’t, but then Arvidsjaur, some 900km north of Stockholm, doesn’t attract visitors from around the world to lounge around and work on their tans.

This relatively small township of just 5000 people is famous in automotive circles as a centre for ‘ice excellence’. Extreme winter testing is carried out here on frozen lakes, where traction is negligible and handling skills required to stay on course take on the status of magical powers. Where better then for Audi to conduct its advanced ice driving experience than in the frozen wilds of the Swedish ‘countryside’ – where only the moose can hear you scream.

The Audi ice pro driving experience follows on from the Audi ice driving experience held at Audi’s ice driving school in Seefeld, Austria, which is world renowned for honing driving skills on what is arguably the most challenging driving surface imaginable. To come to Sweden and take on this next program, participants need to have completed the Seefeld course to bed in the basics on which they’ll build once up in the arctic circle.

This is a serious, high-performance driving course that challenges all comers, taking the skills learned in Austria and elevating them to a completely new level says Mike Georgiou, one of the participants at this year’s program who has also completed the Seefeld course.

“It’s quite a leap from Austria to Sweden,” says Mike, who is no stranger to the Audi driving experiences, having also completed the Audi race experience at Phillip Island Grand Prix circuit in the R8 LMS race car.

“While Austria is great, it’s certainly more lifestyle focused, while Arvidsjaur takes things to a completely different level in terms of the driving,” he says. 

Indeed, while Austria is an exercise based program, taking participants through a series of car control exercises designed to build their knowledge of snow and ice driving, Sweden utilises  a series of much larger courses that enables the participants to be constantly in the cars – the new Audi S5 no less – and constantly on the ice. 

Over the course of three days, Mike completed nearly 500km on the ice – no small achievement, particularly considering the level of commitment and concentration required in this wickedly slippery environment.

“I’ve completed the Audi race experience, but I reckon Arvidsjaur was more of a mental drain” says Mike, who has owned a number of S and RS model Audi cars and is an unashamed, hardcore motoring enthusiast.

Audi Australia’s Chief Driving Instructor, Steve Pizzati says that the Arvidsjaur course provides a completely different environment in which to teach participants and take their driving to new heights.

“Given the geography of Arvidsjaur, we’re able to run a number of large courses and have people safely out on the ice at once completing the individual circuits pretty much all day,” he says.

As their skill levels progress, so too the speeds increase and it certainly requires an elevated level of concentration to take in the instruction and then apply it in a real world situation. It doesn’t get any trickier or more unforgiven than ice.”

“At the end of the course, we link the 'snake', the oval and the other courses together to form a circuit that’s 7.3 kilometres long – that’s longer than Bathurst (6.2km) – and the participants can put together all they’ve learned over the entire course.

Of course, all work and no play is certainly not the Audi way, and while Arvidsjaur is not a nightclubbing hotspot, the experiences on offer at day’s end are of the kind that stay with you forever. From the boutique accommodation to the finest local cuisine – think venison, salmon and even moose, prepared by expert chefs, even the remoteness of Arvidsjaur is no reason not to enjoy the finer things in life.

Few can claim to have enjoyed a cool drink in an ice bar actually made of ice, but certainly the standout ‘off track’ experience for most was the exquisite light show, supplied courtesy of the solar winds driving charged particles against Earth’s atmosphere to form what is know as the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.

This extraordinary spectacle defies accurate description, but leaves an indelible imprint in the mind, as the green and often pink lights play against the night sky.

“Being able to stand in the absolute darkness and see the northern lights would have to be the standout experience outside of the car,” says Mike Georgiou.

“Just seeing the lights is something that’s on a lot of people’s bucket lists, but to have done that after riding snowmobiles into the night was something else again.”

It’s all a part of the Audi philosophy of offering unique events that provide a mix of automotive and lifestyle elements to satisfy the motoring enthusiast in all of us as well as immersing the participants in places and pastimes that are very special.

After three days of intensive training on the ice, attitudes have changed, car control has reached new levels and speeds have climbed to highs that would have seemed inconceivable only days before.

“Being in the car by yourself and negotiating a 7.3km ice track at speed is intense but enormously satisfying,” says Georgiou.

“By the end of the trip, speeds are pushing 140km/h, which is no small feat on this sort of surface, even with quattro and studded tyres,” says Pizzati.

“There’s plenty of room for error on the ice, but go off into the soft snow and it’s not uncommon to need a tractor to pull you back onto the course,” he says. “Everyone had a ‘tractor pull’ card on their name tag that would be marked each time they needed to be retrieved from a snow drift. The Swedish instructors said they expected at least half a dozen tractor pulls a day while the eight-strong Australian contingent was there, but at the end of the three days, only two retrievals had been needed.” Game to Australia.

Intense certainly. Unique, without question. If you haven’t see the Swedish scenery flash past, while sideways on the ice, perhaps contemplating the night’s snowmobile ride or a chilled beverage in an ice bar – you haven’t lived. 

To take part in any of the Audi Driving Experiences, visit audidrivingexperience.com.au to register or get more information.