Ultrace has quickly become one of our favorite events on the Speedhunting calendar, and if you’ve caught any previous coverage or been lucky enough to attend in person, you’ll surely know why.
Michał, Vladimir and Alen were all on the ground in Wrocław, Poland for the 2023 event, and that resulted in some extensive coverage on the site. A quick search of ‘Ultrace 2023′ on YouTube uncovers a number of very slickly-produced videos too, but now Ultrace have added to the mix with an official film directed by Christian Chrastev.
The 22-minute video – which you can watch by pressing the play button above – not only provides a nice overview of the event, but also very interesting insights from a number of overseas guests including Khyzyl Saleem, Wataru Kato and John Ludwick Jr.
It’s an inspiring and recommended watch, but if anything, Bleeds Through Passion just has us counting down the days till Club de Ultrace 2024 in late June.
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Wow! Is it summer in Poland right now? Really nice rides at this event! 2 months until spring in New Jersey. Breaking out new Ronals and paint on my MKIII Jetta.
Well, a lot of marketing dollars and good editing to essentially promote a bunch of aesthetically modified cars that serve no real purpose towards actual performance.
It's basically Hot Import Nights 2.0 -- no real driving happening, no real provable tuning with functional value, this is basically a bunch of people throwing mods at their cars to look bitchin' and cool without any real provable performance behind anything.
Hard pass for me. Very funny to see how its all marketed towards the culture or the idea of something. You have to laugh in a way. Thank God all these engineers slaved over suspension geometry and lap times so a bunch of kids can slam their cars to the floor and undo all that hard work. Very funny to anyone who actually drives for performance.
To be fair, looking for performance here is like looking for love in a brothel or practical clothes on Fashion Week. That's not the case and it never was, actually.
I get it: to some people tuning is all about...well, tuning - to make cars do the better job at what they were designed for. The only cosmetic changes should be practical at the same time, form should follow function etc.
But that's only one side of a way, way wider spectrum we could call "car culture" for better or for worse.
As you probably know, cars, just like everything that we create, own and use, are very often used as a statement since the way we own (and use) things can define who we are, especially now, in this very "digital" times. Mostly the way to express the passion is through visual enhancements as this is more affordable (and mostly legal) way to do so for most of folks around.
Is it the easy way out? Maybe.
Does it mean it's less time-, resources- and heart-consuming and therefore less relevant? Not at all.
Some people prefer to focus on the way the car handles, to breach the obstacles and go harder and faster every single lap - nothing wrong with that. Other prefer to make a car a real head-turner by making it look cool - again, as long as nobody's offended by it. The others prefer to do the impossible, to make something nobody has ever done before engineering-wise, regardless of what anyone think.
So why should we bark at each other's tree and say "my way or the highway", try to belittle anyone who dares think different, even though we think they're wrong and WE HAVE TO prove them wrong at all costs?
Fortunately, just like with music and anything that can be considered a hobby - there are so many other niches that one can stick to. I may not get today's mainstream music: would that mean I should laugh at people listening to it and try to convert them to classic rock? Hell no - let people enjoy things (I know these words used waaay too often recently) and let them widen their horizons on their own, not against their will.