Throughout the summer months, you’ll find the Southeast Gassers Association’s (SEGA) classic brand of racers and machinery dumping clutches and rowing gears up and down 1/8-mile tracks from Georgia to Ohio, the Carolinas to Kentucky, putting on shows unlike anything seen since the class’ heyday of the late 1960’s. But earlier this month, a quarter of competitors from the popular series tried their hand at something just a bit different: racing on ice.

Veteran SEGA racer Rod Burgener is a native of Merrill, Wisconsin, who nows calls North Carolina home. Merrill is, of course, home to the long-running Merrill Ice Draggers, a hearty group of gearheads in upper Wisconsin who have kept racing alive on the frozen-over Wisconsin River every winter for decades.

In Burgener’s case, you can take the man out of Merrill, but you can’t take the Merrill out of the man, and this offseason, he assembled a group of three (originally four) other SEGA regulars to join him for a trip to one of the nation’s northernmost — and coldest — points to let their American iron, four-speeds, and clutches rip on a solid 1/8-mile of ice.

Back in 2020, Burgener took his ’55 Chevy “The Undertaker,” originally built by one of the founding members of the Merrill Ice Draggers, up to race on the ice. In doing so, he piqued the interest of some of his SEGA counterparts, Shaun McLemore, Scott Butler, and Dennis “Opie” Shepherd. The group decided this winter they were going to make it happen, and began preparations to their cars.

The more common setup, often used by the quickest and fastest of ice racers in Merrill, is a 22-inch, low-sidewall-profile tire, outfitted with hundreds of screws for traction. Burgener says that, while such a tire would have been ideal, he couldn’t fathom the thought of putting the large wheel and tire combination on these very stringent, classically-styled Gassers.

Instead, he used a brand new set of Firestone Firehawk 275/60/15 road tires on his A/Gas 1963 Chevy II called “The Iceman Cometh,” with 2,250 1.5-inch, fast-cap screws carefully-patterned into each tire for traction. Burgener spent some 14-15 hours per tire driving the screws in; once complete, he used two inner tubes, with one cut down to just the center for a protectant “boot” to separate the tube from the screw heads. Using a fresh tire with maximum tread, he says these tires will easily last a couple of decades.

The other three racers, all of whom come from the Oak Ridge, Tennessee area, used ordinary drywall screws, and Burgener says that with this season’s warm, wet, and snowy conditions, they worked as well as his more expensive screws.

With everything ready — including gear changes to account for second and even third-gear launches on the ice, the gang, consisting of McLemore with his blue 1967 A/Gas Chevy II called “Fortunate Son,” Butler and his black A/Gas 1958 Morris Minor called “Little Varmint,” and Shepherd and his B/Gas 1964 Chevelle called “Gold Digger” — all headed north to Merrill. There, they competed in the event’s heads-up Modified class for full-bodied vehicles.

Burgener says the group all experimented with and struggled to find the right starting line gear and driving style to cope with the very limited traction on the Wisconsin River surface. In the end, Butler turned in the best performance of the bunch, figuring out early that a third-gear launch would get him out and charging. He topped a 100 mph trap speed out of his 800-plus horsepower car that generally runs high fives in the paved 1/8-mile. But his weekend ended on a sour note when he got sideways just off the line, ran up the embankment along the edge of the lane, and rolled his little Morris. Others incurred parts breakage that ended their outing, but much was learned for their next trip to Merrill.

In addition to the four racers and their family and crew, some 25-30 diehard SEGA fans drove or flew to Merrill to watch, joining the hundreds of locals who always flock to the river to watch the unique — and certainly seasonal — form of drag racing.

“Everyone had a blast. They are all going back next year,” Burgener says. “The breakage was part of making these four-speed Gassers work on the ice. We will definitely get it figured out. The Merrill Ice Draggers are without a doubt the best organization in the country when it comes to what they do. The ice is a massive equalizer, and it takes a long time to get a car to work on the ice.”