Thursday 21 January 2010

The Showcar Must Go On

20 | 01 | 10
Our visit to Canada at the weekend turned out to be one of the most memorable trips for the Running Showcar team - and we have the video to prove it.

In the driver’s seat was our former third driver and current Toro Rosso pilot Sébastien Buemi, and the venues were the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and the Lac-à-l'Eau-Claire.

The Showrun on the frozen waters of the Olympic Basin had to be postponed because the ice wasn’t thick enough.

So how was it? "A bit cold but in the end, it is good to be back!” said Buemi.

The car itself had to be adapted to give the best possible (...make that some) grip on the ice.

It was fitted with Bridgestone Potenza F1 snow tyres and featured 420 tungsten studs on each of the front and 588 studs on each of the rear tyres, each one embedded in an aluminium casing. "There's only one set in the world so we had to be very careful with them because - obviously - it's the only set we've got,” explained Tony Burrows, our test team manager.

Séb was able to get his bearing on the Canadian Grand Prix track where he will return in June and the frozen lake track was set out in the same shape as the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve… but this time, rather than racing alongside drivers, Buemi was driving next to a team of sled dogs.

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