Firing up the frozen desert

As the last snow melts on Lebanon's mountain tops and with the ski season firmly over, ice racing is probably not the kind of driving experience you are gearing up for. But Lebanon's coldest winter in more than a decade certainly proved advantageous when our team went to the Arctic Circle for some extreme driving on ice, with Lebanon's mountain roads and abundant snowfall having provided a degree of preparation for extreme driving in minus twenty degrees Celsius.  The ice circuit in Sweden's Lapland came about by chance some fifteen years ago, when a research team from Bosch accidentally arrived at a dot on the map called Arjeplog and found the perfect environment for testing equipment in sub-zero conditions. Bosch was soon joined by German car manufacturers for the same reason, creating replica racing tracks like Formula 1's Hockenheim, Indianapolis, the Euro Speedway and the Spa Francorchamps. No brakes, all