(Photo Credit: Greg Rourke) – No doubt you’ve probably heard of the Merrill Ice Drags, a truly awesome grassroots event put on by a bunch of lunatic speed freaks in Wisconsin. Neither Chad or I have ever been so when BangShift ace photo contributor Greg Rourke said he wanted to go shoot the most recent running of the ice drags we were excited to see his stuff. We feared for his digits and limbs with temps diving well below zero, but he was dressed like an Eskimo and apparently made it through unscathed.
Our favorite part of this 40 year long tradition is the fact that so much awesomely weird home built stuff shows up. Below is just a small sampling of the vehicles competing on the ice. A 440ci Chrysler powered Honda Civic? Sure! A bunch of center steer altered type buggy-type vehicles? Sure! Vintage muscle cars? You bet!
Greg wanted to give special thanks to Tim Gritzmacher and Jesse Kloth who gave him the run of the place to shoot photos. The guys told Greg that car counts have been hurting as of late, probably a sign of the economy as counts in other genres of racing have certainly been pinched the same way. As far as the racing goes, Greg reports lots of guys were hitting the tree hard. They run on a .500 sportsman-style tree and lots of reaction times in the .500s range were popping up, which means that the driver and the car were working pretty good! Lots of cars ran in multiple classes to maximize the amount of runs they got and according to Greg, several of the vehicles are capable of stout 10-second time slips on asphalt in the quarter mile. These loons run the 1/8th mile on ice.
Thanks for freezing your ass of to get these photos, Greg!
LINK: 
chevelle on ice
Chrysler powered Honda
Nova on ice
Wow, that track is poorly prepped. Where’s the VHT?
Track prep was snow plows, shovels, and a rotary broom on a Bobcat.
They live for winter in cheese country. Spent some time up there one fall and while I was dreading winter that was all they could talk about. They know how to have fun in the snow.
Your camera doesn’t have a video record option? Would have been nice to see a few launches/passes. I mean you went all the way out there, apparently had a modern digital camera with you… Didn’t think of it or what?