(dramatic music)
- Yes, your eyes do not deceive you,
that sign says Yas Marina, as in the Yas Marina F1 track
in Abu Dhabi.
Only this is Yas Marina carved into a frozen lake
near Arjeplog, which is the place manufacturers come
for winter testing.
This is the surreal and wonderful world
of Lapland Ice Driving.
Just next to Yas Marina is the Silverstone GP Circuit,
a few hundred yards away is the Nurburgring,
plus Paul Rickard, some practice tracks and drift circles.
In all there are over 30 miles of tracks and no barriers.
Heaven looks just like this.
(dramatic techno music)
So welcome to Yas Marina.
It's just awesome.
So it's currently minus 20 degrees fahrenheit.
We're on this frozen lake
and these guys have thirty miles plus of track
on these frozen lakes.
It is also the perfect place to test this Subaru
to the absolute limit and find out all about it.
(car revs, thumping music)
So I've got the diff wound back to the rear
and we've got different traction control modes
so there's a track mode, which is probably
the right thing to engage.
Forget track mode, we're fully off.
Okay so on those amazing rally roads we got some good hints
of what's great about this car.
And out here where I can actually let
the engine go a little bit, we definitely feel
just a bit of extra torque, a bit of extra response.
It's a tiny number, that five horsepower
but somehow the engine just feels a bit more dialed in
and it's the same with the chassis,
these bilstein dampers which work really well on the road.
Out here you don't need that so much
but you need body control, particularly when you're flicking
from one direction to the other.
I can flick one way, flick it the other, flick it the other,
and the reason it's so easy to do that
is because it's completely in control of its weight transfer
even in the quicker corners here,
there's a few third gear corners
where you can really go quick.
The control that the car has, but it comes out
of there beautiful, really good body control.
Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo.
What we can use on this frozen lake are the brakes,
okay so it's got these big six piston brakes,
this straight is huge, okay, how huge?
This is third gear, 80, fourth gear,
we're getting up towards 100, still no sign
of having to slow down, fifth gear, 110 on the ice,
and the brakes, you're not use them super hard
but they just have this feel, this level of feel
so I can get just to the point where the ABS is kicking in
and back off it a bit then go back on.
The whole car just gives you confidence,
every little thing about it.
(car revs loudly)
And that's really good out here.
The one question remaining:
Is this thing still a giant killer?
We need to find out.
God this is fun, I mean the best fun you can possibly have.
But we want to be objective so we need to test out
those giant killer credentials.
Fortunately, Lapland Ice Driving's fleet is blessed
with some real giants.
Can the type RA beat a Lamborghini round Yas Marina on ice?
Is the question I know we've all been asking
since it was launched and we saw that price tag.
Well, here you go.
(car revs loudly)