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>> This is race day. >> It's our 50th anniversary of the Merrill Ice Drags, the fastest eighth mile on ice. >> The track? >> Lake Alexandar, Merrill, Wisconsin. >> For years, this lake's frozen surface has been home to a white-hot tradition.
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>> I think it was '64 was the first actual race, and then they incorporated in '77 to make it Merrill Ice Draggers Incorporated.
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Just a bunch of good old boys setting around in the northwoods of Wisconsin, middle of winter. What the heck else do you do? So they come out and they plowed some lanes and they started running.
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>> On this January day, dozens of drivers haul their cars onto the ice to test their machines and their mettle. Each car comes under the eyes of Bill Bunnell, president of the Merrill Ice Draggers. >> We just check safety items, carb springs, drive shaft lube, fire extinguisher. On all of our money classes, we have class rules that the cars have to meet. It's a whole different ball game. I have to really tear into the cars and take a look to see. >> And there are all kinds of cars. >> I got a '65 Nova. It's big block in it. >> It's a '79 Camaro. It's all home built. I bought it about, oh, 12, 13 years ago for a couple hundred bucks. I decided to cut it all apart, build a frame and a cage and put a big engine in it, and see what we can do. >> On ice, it'll reach 140-plus miles an hour in the eighth mile. >> Some rides are understated, like Linda Krebsbach's 2014 Malibu sedan. >> My brothers raced for 10 years, and I've always been a girl that liked fast cars. And so I tried it and it was fun. So it was the best $20 I spent last week. I'm gonna do it again! >> We've got a class for everybody. We've got, actually, 15 different classes from rubber-tired two-wheel drive to the soccer mom van to the full-blown rails. >> Preparations can be intense. Some crews drive screws through their tires hoping for extra traction on the track.
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When the prep ends the show begins. >> I know I get a big rush out of the competition. Some years there's more competition than others. But it's exhilarating. >> Not all the excitement comes behind the wheel. >> The people probably, just, you know, talking to people you don't get to see that often. That's what I like. The racing's, you know, it's fun and everything, but we can race in the summer too. >> What really got me hooked was, I was spectating the first year I come out here, and one of the rails took off from the line, and it was one of the fast cars, and about halfway down he hit the nitrous and backfired, which made me really look, and when the nitrous kicked in, he lifted the front tires off the ice about a foot and a half. And that was halfway down the track, on ice, I'm like 'Wow! I was just-- I was hooked. That was it. That's all it took. >> Bill Bunnell has stayed hooked for years now. But there's one thing the president of this club hasn't done. >> I have never been in a car drag racing. I drag race on asphalt, I've been in racing figure-8, off-road. I've never run a car down here yet. I've been president of the club, I think this is my fourth year. And I've been involved with the club probably five or six. And yeah, I've never been down the track except for in the plow truck.
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[announcer talks over loudspeaker]
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