Ever since the motor was invented, people have wanted to race each other. In almost all of the world it was on tarmac roads, but in places like Sweden it was on the stony paths which make up majority of their roads. The professional racing like World Rallying Championship and Formula One owe their origins to these founders of tarmac and gravel motor racing. In places like Canada and the Alpine areas of France the automobile racings were not possible because of the cold snowy weather which covered any road in ice, so they started racing on the iced over lakes and rivers and the sport of ice racing was invented. The reason why, in these areas of the world, why they did not start motor racing on the roads was because they were too dangerous, as racing on ice is extremely tricky. When you get it wrong you are going to hit something and when that something is a large immovable tree it's going to hurt a lot. So by moving their racing onto iced over lakes, where the wind tends to sweep the snow off the lake and pile it up round the sides, this means that when a mistake is made, the motors tend to slide off and hit a pile of snow which is a lot softer than a tree.

Ice racing has mainly remained an amateur sport, but there is a warm professional series called the Andros Trophy in France. In this professional series they use custom built ice racing motors, but in the world of amateur racing this luxury can rarely be afforded. There are some rules of the sport to try and make sure everyone is competing on an even playing field. They are four kinds of motorcars, and they are all limited to a maximum engine size of 3000cc. Class1 is for all rear wheel drive and short wheelbase motorcars, class2 is for front engine motorcars with front wheel drive and short wheelbase, class3 is for front engine motorcars with front wheel drive and a long wheelbase, and class4 is for four-wheel-drive motorcars. There are two types of races that these catalogues of vehicles can run in. There are rubber to ice races and metal to ice races. Rubber to ice tyres are standard road tyres with no stance, and metal to ice tyres are rubber tyres with tungsten steel studs in them that seriously enhance grip on the ice.

Any type of vehicle from saloon to small 4×4's are allowed to race in these ice races, they can have either a manual or automatic gearboxs. They do need to be slightly modified for safety reasons and for the rubber to ice races all that needs to be done is any plastic fittings around the outside of the vehicle need to be removed, and the bumpers modified so they will not hook together. Also, the back of the vehicle is painted with patches of high visibility paint, as visibility can be extremely low when ice racing. With the exception of a race helmet, these are the only modifications required to race in rubber to ice races. To race in the metal to ice races your vehicle must be fitted with a roll cage and a 4 point racing harness, this is because the studded tyres produce a lot more grip and therefore the speeds involved are higher.

Although not a requirement, it is advised that you fit a high quality wiper blade. There are many types of replacement wiper blades on the market that would meet this requirement. The best replacement wiper blades to fit are flat wiper blades made from silicone, and this is because silicon wiper blades will work happily in temperatures as low as -60° C, whilst normal rubber wiper blades will be unusable at that temperature when ice racing takes place. The flat wiper blades are advisedbecause of their frameless design; this means that ice and snow cannot build up on the frame stopping it from working properly.