The weather outside of the office window: oddly warm for western Kentucky, gray, windy, soggy and disgusting. The ground sounds saturated even before you step foot into the yard. Lawns are still draining off excess rainfall. And the trees and early flowers are starting to show early signs of life. Winter has flirted with BangShift Mid-West, but so far into 2020 it hasn’t stuck around for a spell. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other places in the world that haven’t forgotten what the season is truly about: snow. Go into the Alps of Italy, to Livigno, and you’ll find plenty of the stuff, enough that they can carve a race track out of it.

There is a gentle beauty to watching a skilled driver perform their craft on snow and ice. The transistions are smoother, the drifts are silky, the traction low so that the engine doesn’t need to go to full violence for action. If regular rally racing is metal music, complete with moshing, injuries and violence, then winter rally is more like ballet with a much improved soundtrack.