ICE BREAKER

The world record for the longest continuous vehicle drift on ice stands at 3.87 miles. Can evo beat it - and in an electric car to boot? We take to a frozen Swedish lake in a Skoda Enyaq iV VRS to find out

- RICHARD MEADEN

SKIDDING AROUND IN CARS IS SOMETHING WE do rather a lot of here at evo. It's not big and it's not clever, but as anyone who has done it knows, it's bloody good fun. So, when Skoda UK called to see if we fancied heading to northern Sweden for a crack at beating the existing record for the longest continuous vehicle drift on ice, we packed some thermals and headed north.

There are several different records for drifting. The outright distance record of 374.17km (232.5 miles) was set by Johan Schwartz driving a BMW M5 (for eight hours!), while the EV distance record of 43.646km (27.1 miles) was set by Wei Pengda in a Zhiji L7. Both records were set on wet steering pads. The fastest drift is held by Masato Kawabata in a 1380bhp rear-wheel-drive Nissan R35 GT-R, who achieved 30 degrees of slip angle on a bone-dry Dubai runway at 189.5mph. There's even a record for the fastest vehicle drift while steering with a foot...

The record we're attempting to beat was set in China in 2022 by Wang Dongjiang, who slid his Subaru WRX for 6.231km (3.87 miles). Until now no one has attempted the ice drift record in an EV, so as we'll be using Skoda's Enyaq iV VRS electric SUV, all being well we'll be claiming an outright record and establishing a new EV record in the process.

It goes without saying that it's easier to make any car slide on ice, but it's much harder to stop it sliding too, with mistakes taking longer to correct and more likely to end in a spin or the car straightening up. To comply with Guinness World Records rules the ice can only be cleared of snow and not treated or improved in any way. As we're using a frozen lake and not a frozen steering pad, the surface will be rougher and more variable, but in common with all ice-record surfaces it will deteriorate during the course of the record attempt.