After another breakfast with no less then four different sorts of smoked salmon I head on towards Storforshei, close to Mo-I-Rana and home of the Arctic Circle Raceway (ACR) that I had become aware of in Evo's KTM story a few months back. In fact, Evo's article more or less gave me the idea for the whole trip. I figured that if they could do the trip to and on the ACR in a X-Bow, I should definitely be able to do it in a GT3 with heating, windshield and roof so I had to top it off by including the Northcape in my route...
I had tried to call ACR in advance to make sure there was a chance for some laps on the track but was not really able to find someone willing to talk to me in English and my personal knowledge of Norwegian unfortunately does not go beyond the word Nordkapp. I had found out that supposedly ther was a bike club from Oslo running it's private practising day so no cars allowed but I decided to go there anyway and hope someone would be crazy enough to let me have a go. Before getting there however I needed to do some 400km that includes a first for me and the GT3: going on a ferry. Actually the E6 I am taking includes a few kilometres where the official route runs via the ferry; avoiding it would mean a very very long deroute via Sweden so I decide to go for it and hope the GT3's rather low ride height ends up being compatible with the ferry's potentially very steep driveway. The ferryman is a nice guy and greets me with the words 'This is a very low car'. I can confirm that but am relieved to hear that I shouldn't encounter any problems as it's low tide right now and I can enter the ship almost level.
Some twenty minutes later our float is over and we get back onto better known surface. Rain is back but the scenery continues to be highly impressive.
About 100 kilometres before the ACR I cross the arctic circle to the south; in contrast to the Finnish version this one here seems to host hoards of tourists and a veritable visitor's centre. After the obligatory pics I am ready to go, some kilometres before the Storforshei appears some major roadwork that once again is quite a challenge for the car's ground clearance and costs a lot of time. Eventually all works fine though and at around 5 pm I arrive at one of my personal highlights on this trip: Arctic Circle Raceway.
As far as my research goes it is the northernmost permanent racetrack known to mankind, it was built in 1995 for big money to promote development of this rather remote area of Mo I Rana and these days it's only very rarely used if at all, mostly for bike practising events. A pity, as the track has quite some thrill on offer: The 3,75 kilometre lap is from 11 to 15 metres wide and features a height differential of 31 metres; it is being driven counter-clockwise. As Evo pointed out back in their X-Bow story, you could drive a 24 hours race here under natural light as the midnight sun never totally sets during summer.
Unfortunately I don't have that much time but I am lucky as the guys running their bike training today are having a rain-induced break and let me have the track for 5 laps. It is soaking wet, about 12 degrees centigrade and the grip level is rather low. That would be perfect for showing off a bit but my new-found friend Roger, the co-organizer of the event and joining me in the car is not totally confident in my drifting abilities and I don't want to put our young relationship to a serious test so go rather gently but grin all over as I realize I finally made it to and onto this what I think pretty exotic racetrack. Roger, if you read this: MANY THANKS again, you made my day!
It is actually quite surreal: Few days ago I had started this trip from Austria with basically no preparation other than making sure I knew which way to go north and here I am now, on the ACR, Northcape some thousand kilometres back already...
It really is a pity I don't have more time to spend here but my time budget is tight and so I say goodbye to me biker friends and head further south direction Oslo. After some 250 more kilometres I stop at a rather tweedy place I don't even know the name of. I am sure this is the first GT3 to stop here and very likely it will be the last. It reminds me of an American road house and apart from the room that has already seen better days and the breakfast buffet that includes mildew on the bread I am happy as it is the only place that has rooms left at 9 pm.
Arctic Circle Raceway: http://www.acr.no
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