Samuel Hubinette
Following a quite hectic November, with many fun events that had me and my wife Stina going nonstop, we flew over to Sweden, where we’re both from, to spend time with our families over the Christmas holiday. It was great to meet up with family and old friends, and spend Christmas together with our parents. In Sweden, we have some different Christmas traditions than those in America. We usually celebrate the holiday and open up our presents on Christmas Eve, and for dinner it’s usually a smorgasbord with all kinds of food—meat, but also fish, like salmon. So it’s a little different from an American Christmas, but of course the spirit is the same everywhere—cherishing the season and spending time with family.
I celebrated New Year’s even further up north in Sweden at my sister’s house. We drove up to her place thanks to help from a Chrysler dealer in Sweden that hooked me up with a Chrysler 300C! Man, Chrysler is everywhere! It was great to be able to represent in my homeland in a Mopar®-powered vehicle. They also had an SRT8® vehicle, but it was way down South in Sweden without winter tires, so we happily settled for the 300C. It was a diesel engine car and it ran great up there in the cold and snow.
I used the car for a lot more than transportation, though! I did some filming on the ice lakes in Sweden for my soon-to-be-released DVD, Drift Ya Later, which will hopefully be out before the first 2009 Formula Drift event in April. I shot some footage on the ice lakes near my hometown in Jokkmokk, where it all started. It was quite fun to drive again on the snowy and slippery ice that helped me develop the skills I would later use in drifting.
We drove another two-and-a-half hours north of the Arctic Circle to the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi. We spent three nights there and shot some awesome winter drifting scenes for the DVD. The name of the hotel is pretty self-explanatory—it’s a hotel made completely out of ice and snow! We slept on reindeer skins and in sleeping bags, and the hotel bar was made completely out of ice. Drinks at the bar are served out of ice glasses (you need to wear gloves, of course), and it’s always around 28 degrees inside the hotel. So it was definitely an unforgettable experience! We had a crew of 13 people involved in the shoot, and the Ice Hotel hooked us up with some freebies because we were filming onsite. The people were really friendly, with a lot of visitors flying in from England to experience the scene. I think the DVD is going to blow people away. We have some instruction on how to drift, and we also have some behind-the-scenes action with our NuFormz Racing Mopar Dodge Viper SRT10® team at the 2008 Formula Drift Las Vegas event.
After our visit to the Ice Hotel, it was time for the long flight back to Newport Coast, California. We used our frequent flier miles from traveling so much during the 2008 season for our return flight—but that means you don’t always get the best flights. We flew from Northern Sweden to Stockholm, and then from Stockholm to Frankfurt, Germany, where we had a layover for a few hours. From Frankfurt we flew to San Francisco where we had yet another hours-long layover, then home to Orange County. It was a long trip, 25 hours to get home, so you’re definitely sick of sitting on a plane and in the airports by the time it’s over. What a contrast, though, coming from the Arctic Circle and then two days later we’re home in Southern California where it’s 85 degrees. Both places have their beauty—the winter wonderland of Sweden and the sunny playground of SoCal.
It’s good to get that break and to recharge, but now I’m ready to hop back in a Mopar-powered drift car and get the 2009 season under way. We’re fired up for the New Year and for the chance to bring home a third Formula Drift title for Mopar. We have a new car, the Mopar Drift Dodge Challenger, which will present a fun challenge. But I know it’s going to be another successful season with Mopar power.