BUCKET LIST: Porsche Ice Experience, Finland

With the motorsport world on hold and travel bans in place for Australia, you might be forgiven for contemplating a future escape.

Speedcafe.com has worked to develop a list of dream places, events and experiences for fans of motorsport and motoring for you to tick off your Bucket List.

PORSCHE ICE EXPERIENCE: Finland

For real driving enthusiasts, the thought of completing an ice driving experience is at the top of their personal bucket list.

Images of high-performance luxury vehicles sideways on a perfectly manicured course of snow and ice simply does something for the senses.

There are a few ice experiences around the world, including the Southern Hemisphere Proving Ground ice driving experience near Queenstown, New Zealand, but today we are looking at the long-standing Porsche Ice Experience in Finland.

Before the current Coronavirus Pandemic started to grip the world earlier this year, more than 100 Australian Porsche owners and enthusiasts had already managed to escape to Europe just in time to tackle the 2020 Porsche Ice Experience programme.

The groups joined a team of experienced instructors (1 per five cars) and learned the basics as well as a range of techniques for driving on ice and snow.

While the hardcore learnings might never be put into use on the local streets of Brisbane or Hervey Bay, they had a lot of bloody fun in a fleet of the latest model Porsches.

The Porsche Ice Experience is a five-day event which involves three days of actually driving and an off-day which includes a cool snowmobile trip.

The trip includes four nights accommodation at the Hotel Levi Panorama which is the only ski-in ski-out hotel in Levitunturi’s Koutalae, which is a 15-minute drive from Kittilä Airport.

Guests have a daily breakfast in a specially-presented Porsche Lounge and are supplied the majority of remaining meals during their stay.

Clothing provided includes shoes, scarf, overalls, balaclava, gloves and a helmet, which helps cut down on excess luggage.

All local transfers are included from the airport to the hotel and to the ice experience facility.

There are a couple of ways to guaranteeing a spot on the Finland tour.

The first is to win either the Pro or Pro-Am titles in the Porsche PAYCE Carrera Cup Australia Championship where you not only pick up a nice trophy and TAG watch but flights and an invitation to Finland.

If you don’t think your driving skills are up to that of recent young champions the likes of Matt Campbell or Jaxon Evans or that of an older head like David Wall, then you will need to go to plan B.

The second option is to ring Porsche Australia, book an AUD 8500 trip and get yourself to Finland – usually on a fixed date sometime in February. (dates for 2021 will be set when possible due to COVID-19).

If you have someone that wants to make the trip with you, but doesn’t want to be involved in the driving component (hard to imagine), then that will set them back $AUD2450.

For many, the trip might be financially out of reach, but the commercial option is somewhat cheaper than the AUD 400,000 budget you would need to do a Carrera Cup season – and then you will be spending much more than AUD 8500 if someone sticks you in the fence!.

CLICK HERE for a gallery of the Porsche Ice Experience

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