1968 season

The 1968 season was the third season of the Snowmobile World Championship. The Drivers' Championship was won by Frederick Hansen and the Constructors' Championship was won by Polaris. There were 12 teams and 24 drivers taking part to the championship.

Previous season (1967)

Next season (1969)

## Team changes

The AFC team was bought by Alouette and they now used Kohler engines instead of CCW engines. Polaris abandoned Kohler engines and started building and using their own engines for the 1968 season.

## Driver changes

* René Simard left Sno-Jet to join Alouette
* Adrian Chavez left AFC to join Johnson
* Agen Karlov left Ockelbo to join Larson
* George Wallace left Johnson to join Sno-Jet
* Claude Veilleux left Larson and the Championship, after having been sacked by his team to make way for Agen Karlov to come in
* Johan Peterson was the only new driver for 1968 and joined Ockelbo

## Report

##### Polaris

After a 1967 season ruined by the relatively poor performances of the Kohler engines, Polaris decided to develop their own exclusive engines for 1968. The result was great as Polaris won the constructor's title with a comfortable margin. The combination of an excellent sled and the aggressive driving style of Frederick Hansen allowed him to win the battle against reigning champion David Johnson. Ernest Smithson started to improve his driving style and won his first Grand Prix in Wisconsin. The middle of the season was a bit more difficult as both drivers collided together in Michigan and Minnesota.

##### Bombardier - Rotax

Bombardier's sled for the 1968 season was an improved version of the 1967 one and was pretty much on the same performance level as the Polaris. David Johnson drove greatly throughout the winter but Jules Favreau made a lot of costly mistakes, scoring only 22 points compared to Johnson's 86. For example, he ran directly into the back of Johnson as they were 1-2 in the closing laps of the Manitoba Grand Prix, taking them both out of the race. Favreau's poor performance arguably made them loose the title, thus he was sacked after the season.

##### Sno-Jet - Kohler

Following their competitive 1967 season, Sno-Jet arrived in 1968 with a disappointing package. However, mid-season upgrades were very efficient and they dominated the middle of the season, winning four races in a row. Great team work between Robert Smithson and George Wallace allowed them to be victorious over the two superior teams on many occasions. Had they had a competitive sled from the beginning of the season, they could have been a real threat to Polaris and Bombardier in the championship fight.

##### Evinrude - OMC

After two seasons towards the top of the championship, Evinrude were out-developed by other teams for the first time in 1968. The power of the new OMC engine was not on the level of the new Polaris, Rotax and Kohler engines. They did not win any races in the season and the pairing of Bob Larose and Martin Brochu could only score four podiums during the winter.

##### Arctic Cat - JLO

Despite having an improved chassis and a new version of the JLO engine, Arctic Cat were still not able to challenge for the title in 1968 even if they had one of the biggest budgets on the grid. Robert Maltais was the faster of the two drivers but was more error-prone. On the other hand, George Powell had a more calculated driving style and finished more races without incidents. They stepped on the podium two times each.

##### Alouette - Kohler

Alouette bought the AFC racing team at the end of the 1967 season after it had went bankrupt. They signed a engine deal with Kohler and designed a very promising chassis for the 1968 season. Adrian Chavez left the team to drive for Johnson, so Alouette recruited René Simard from Sno-Jet to partner Karl Magnussen. The team was off to a good start of the season as Simard won the Ontario Grand Prix ahead of David Johnson and Frederick Hansen. However, the performance dropped soon after that and the sled often had reliability problems. Simard scored two more podiums throughout the season, but Magnussen failed to reach his level and scored only 7 points.

##### Johnson - OMC

With the aim of boosting the team performances, OMC hired Adrian Chavez to drive for Johnson for two years in exchange of a seat at Evinrude after the end of that contract. The pace of the snowmobile was on the level of other midfield teams like Sno-Prince and Montgomery, but Chavez fast driving style enabled Johnson to secured three third places in the middle of the season. The team could have finished a few places higher in the Championship, but Patrick Smithson made a lot of costly mistakes and was generally among the slowest drivers of the field. He only scored two points while Chavez had scored 31.

##### Sno-Prince - CCW

After using the exact same snowmobile for two years, Sno-Prince arrived in 1968 with a brand new design. It turned out that this new chassis was too heavy and was not able to compete for race wins. On top of that, Philip Jones injured himself in Minnesota in a crash involving Martin Brochu and Robert Maltais and did not compete for the rest of the season. Clarence Mack was not very performant excepted in New York where he stepped on the podium for the second and last time of his career.

##### Montgomery - CCW

Samuel Montgomery invested a lot of money during the 1967-1968 inter-season to improve his racing team. However, that did not reflect properly on race results. The CCW engine was one of the least powerful on the grid and the reliability was terrible. Samuel Montgomery only finished two races, but Bernard Bouchard was able to score a decent tally of 14 points during the winter. At the end of the season, Samuel Montgomery put up the team for auction and all assets were bought by Dauphin, a small Canadian snowmobile manufacturer.

##### Ockelbo

At the end of 1967, Ockelbo did not renew Agen Karlov's contract and they replaced him with Swedish rookie Johan Peterson to partner Magnus Olufsen. Once again, the team had a lot of reliability problems with their engine and gearbox which greatly compromised their results.

##### AMF

AMF arrived in 1968 with a completely new design for their snowmobile. They massively reduced the weight of their chassis and improved their suspension mechanism. However, their engine was by far the least powerful on the grid and was blowing up frequently. The only high point of the season was Jack Orlen's third place in Michigan. Kenneth David failed to finished 10 out of 15 races during the season.

##### Larson - Briggs & Stratton

In hope of an improvement of their performance, Larson replaced Claude Veilleux by Ockelbo's Agen Karlov for 1968 to partner Albert Simard. They kept the same chassis as the two previous seasons, but came up with a slightly improved version of their manual gearbox and an upgraded Briggs & Stratton engine. The package was pretty reliable but very slow and both drivers had difficulties with the handling of the sled. Simard scored 8 points and Karlov scored none.