Race cars zoom down the track. Car tyres crunch as they swirl up snow. Ice crystals glisten in the sun. Surrounded by mountain peaks, eager spectators line the track while light refracts in the windscreens. The race cars purr with energy and yet nothing can be heard except the futuristic hum of electric drives…. Has a new era begun?
We were there while the sports cars chased each other across the ice for the second year in a row at the GP Ice Race 2020.
Milestones for eMobility
At the beginning of 2020, the focus was on the Audi e-tron as the central means of transport at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Just one week later, eMobility will make its debut at the GP Ice Race. The racing festival, first held in 1937, saw its revival in 2019 and is now approaching the starting line as a traditional event that places value on new ideas. In this spirit, electric cars also competed for the first time in 2020 and were enthusiastically received by the fans – even those with petrol in their blood. This shows that eMobility also has its place in racing.
Instead of offering rides to spectators in high-powered combustion cars like last year, this year the brand new Porsche Taycan Turbo S was used for this purpose as Porsche’s first purely electric car, and a modified VW eGolf was even allowed to prove its mettle. One of the many highlights at the event was professional skier Benedikt Mayr being pulled around the race track by Formula E driver Daniel Abt.
We are convinced that approaches to sustainability must holistic, and it must therefore also be a firm feature at social leisure events. The GP Ice Race proves that racing and sustainability can indeed be combined. And this is without having to forgo any of the fun or the experience, quite the contrary.
But the GP Ice Race 2020 was only the starting signal. In the future, classic cars will naturally join new electric cars to form an eclectic mix.