Snow Drifts and Sacred Porsches at Aspen’s Inaugural F.A.T. Ice RaceThe winter sun is cresting the Rockies just as it has every day for millennia, casting crisp, clear light across Aspen Valley in Colorado. This time, though, the snow-dappled landscape is ringing with the wailing of vintage and modern race engines. The cars, most of them outrageously valuable, some of them outright priceless, rip around a sinuous ice course spraying fresh powder as they slide through corners. This is the inaugural North American edition of F.A.T. Ice Race, a winter driving event previously held in Austria, and the brainchild of Ferdi Porsche. Yes, that Porsche — he’s the great-grandson of the company’s founder. F.A.T., short for Française Allemand Transit, is a now-defunct French logistics firm that sponsored some of the most glamourous races in Europe during the golden era of motorsports. It’s no wonder Ferdi has rosy associations with the name, and eventually co-opted the counterintuitively attractive acronym by attaching it to his event (which was previously called the GP Ice Race). Ice racing looms large in the Porsche family, and a 21st birthday ice-driving trip to Finland from Ferdi’s father sparked the inspiration to relaunch a version of these historic events in 2019. Our correspondent Basem Wasef flew to Aspen to partake in the first edition in the States, and got up close and personal with the rare cars, heralded drivers…and the snow being shot from under the tires. | 