Our week-long adventure wrapped up where it started, back at the Tire Rack in South Bend. The final competitive event was the dry skid pad. The wet skid pad had not been very kind to us, but the temperature was up, so now there were no excuses! I wanted to at least beat the magazine skid pad results for the Fiesta ST, since those would have been done on the stock summer tires and I had the sticky Bridgestones. I found online that Car and Driver had managed 0.90 G when they tested the Fiesta ST, so my goal was to beat that...and the little Fiesta did not disappoint - 0.962 G!
On Friday May 12 we rolled into Gingerman, the only track I had made a point of pre-driving before One Lap. Actually, it had been on my list for a while, but One Lap gave me an excuse to set a date in the name of "research" 😜. For some reason this was the only picture we got of the Killer Rabbit; we parked next to them at Gingerman. It really was a cool Rabbit, and we learned that there were some clever tricks underneath, just nothing in the way of power adders (yet). Apparently Joshua Paashaus from NLS had used an Audi TT transmission to convert it from FWD to AWD, using a rear axle from a Golf R32.
With the mid-30's finishes in the rain at Dominion we had jumped up into the high 40's overall, so were all but assured of the top-50 finish that we thought might be possible on Day 2. We were now in a very close race with one of the HHR SSs in the overall standings and our times at Gingerman would be incredibly close. In the morning, my total time was 5:39.667, which was a little under 0.3 seconds faster, and one position (5 points) better. I barely dropped any time in the afternoon, but the HHR got about a second faster, so they got us by one position. We left Gingerman trailing them by 10 points.
You could tell from the atmosphere in the paddock that some people were sensing the adventure was almost over...plus with the short transit that evening back to South Bend, nobody felt rushed. We walked around and chatted with a few other teams and took a closer look at some of the cars. There were a few talented autocrossers in the One Lap this year, including Chris in the VTAK MR2 and Matt in the Lazy Dog Corvette. It was another beautiful day. Overall, the weather for this One Lap had been better for any of our previous One Laps, and much better than 2016, which looked like it had been rainy for the first 3 or 4 days based on pictures from the event.
We wrapped up so early that Brock opened up the track for fun laps. This gave Chris a chance to see the track and led to our one mechanical issue all week. A few laps in, while shifting up from 3rd to 4th, the car suddenly lost power and the intake noise changed. I recognized the sound from popping intercooler hoses off in my MR2 years ago. In the MR2 with the MAF ahead of the turbo, this mean the engine stalled. The Fiesta kept running, so we drove it to the paddock, found the offending hose, and re-attached it. We couldn't believe how lucky we had been that it hadn't happened during one of the timed runs or transits!
That evening back at the Waterford Estates Lodge, Chris and I met Andy and Ann Hollis. Andy had driven an Econo car - the One Lap CRX - to 4th overall in 2014, but they were driving a bone stock GT-R this year. He writes for Grassroots Motorsports, and his articles on tire testing are generally the first thing I read when I get a new edition. Plus, he and Ann had been helping out as crew members for local autocrosser-turned-pro-driver and all around nice guy, Tom O'Gorman...so I had been wanting to talk with Andy, but the opportunity hadn't presented itself until now. We chatted about - what else - tires, One Lap cars, and TOMO. They were meeting up with Tom for the next weekend in Canada, which turned out to be an exciting one; it started with being collected in an accident on Saturday morning with no spare parts for repairs, but ended with a win on Sunday morning - check out that story here!
The morning of May 11 started with smiles as we pointed our little rig out of the 55+ community. Hopefully our sticker-clad, trailer-towing car didn't break any homeowner association rules...
On the way to the track, a few sprinkles began to fall...but there were some green/yellow/red blobs on the radar that were clearly heading our way. As the morning session got started, the rain really started coming down. Chris had done a track day at Dominion before One Lap, but he hadn't been on the track in the rain and we weren't sure how the Fiesta would manage on worn RE-71Rs in the ~55F temps.
It turns out we didn't need to worry - the track still had quite a bit of grip in the wet, Chris knew the track, 55F was enough for the RE-71Rs, and the combination of front wheel drive (and a little help from modern stability control here and there) help him go after it! In fact, he caught up to the last car in the run group in the morning session on his third lap, around 5:15 in the video:
Between the road course events there was supposed to be a banked oval track event at the same site. Unfortunately it just wasn't safe to run the event in the heavy rain, so it was cancelled. It was too bad, because it's always fun to try something different with the car...plus, I had been reading about front wheel drive oval racing (which apparently is a thing), and I had some ideas for how to set up the car.
Chris went out for the afternoon session when the rain was a little lighter, and got even faster:
We finished 34th in the overall in both the morning and afternoon sessions - our best finishes all week - which helped us quite a bit in the overall standings. I can't recall, but I think this was where we finally cracked into the top 50, and we had closed the gap on several more cars in front of us in the overall as well. With good results at Gingerman and the skid pad, there was a chance for the mid-40's.
Since the oval event had been cancelled, the afternoon session got started a little early, which was great since we had our longest transit that night; 750 miles to South Haven, Michigan. The route book took us west on some state routes, avoiding I-95 and DC traffic that GPS recommended. Even in the age of smart phones and GPS, the route book was handy to have - we drove through some areas with no coverage, it has tips and reminders for the route, and it keeps most people to the same routes in case of break-downs or other issues. So a big thank you to Brock for continuing to put these together.
We live in a great country. You're never in one place for long on the One Lap, but you drive through many different types of terrain in all types of weather, watching sunrises and sunsets over countryside or cities, and meeting people on the road, at the destinations, and on the One Lap with different accents and personalities...it gives you a little taste of how BIG and varied the USA is. This was very true in the 2004 One Lap when Chris and I drove his 1987 MR2 all the way out to Sears Point/Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California...a 1300-mile transit from Pikes Peak, Colorado. We covered a total distance of ~6000 miles in a week in that little car in 2004. Anyhow, the route took us off the interstate for the last part of the drive to the Kershaw, SC area and it was a beautiful, hilly area. Also a bit nerve-racking at night when you consider how many animals are probably lurking in the woods next to the road, waiting for their chance to jump out and crack someone's windshield or mangle an intercooler. We were lucky and didn't have any high-speed encounters with local wildlife. Some other One Lappers did, but nothing that disabled their cars. Chris had been to CMP once before, so it probably would have been best to have him drive both sessions. However, splitting the sessions kept the track driving pretty even, and it was a fun, relatively safe track that we both wanted to see. In a nod to our new, competitive strategy, though, we decided he would do the morning session when an experienced driver would have the best chance of scoring several positions above normal, since most of the competitors would not have seen the track.
At this point we had a pretty healthy lead over the Killer Rabbit in Economy car, but we were hovering around 52 or 53rd place overall and were hoping to crack into the top 50. Our main competition at this point were the Dubler HHRs, a BMW 335, an E90 M3, a C5 and a C6 Corvette, and the Toyota Avalon. This was not your grandpa's Toyota Avalon - it had a big splitter hanging off the front, was lowered on some nice coilovers with Motion Control adjustable dampers, and had front brakes the size of proverbial dinner plates. And although it's a 3500-lb car, from the factory the V6 makes something like 260hp; it turned in a 13.9 at the ET challenge. They pipped us by 2 seconds and one position in the morning and 2 seconds and one position in the afternoon at CMP. For in-class scoring, first place gets 5 times the number of entrants, then each position below that gets 5 fewer points. The overall worked the same way, all the way up to 340 points for the win. So the Avalon had put 10 points on us in the overall standings at CMP that we would have to get back at Dominion and Gingerman if possible.
Who enters an Avalon in One Lap? All types of cars are entered for One Lap, so an Avalon is not the most unusual thing you'll see. But, this Avalon and the FR-S/86 next to it were entered by a couple teams of Toyota employees based out of Georgetown, Kentucky. It was fun chatting with them about the cars and Toyota, especially since Chris and I had done all previous One Laps in MR2s, and we were all kind of from the Cincinnati area. They were the cars that passed me on the way to South Bend on the first day. Back to CMP...it is a lot of fun and I'd like to return sometime for a full day. Turn 5, 6, 7 is a sort of carousel/slingshot onto the back straight that I'm sure is very rewarding when you nail it. The back straight is not really a straight...there is a fast turn that requires a little braking, turn 8, then turn 9 is flat for probably everyone, then there's turn 10, the kink. It's fast, and flat out for some cars, but there's a bump near the inner curb, and it can upset the car if you grab too much of the curb. Chris had encouraged me that the kink was flat out in the Fiesta, and I even thought I was flat on my last lap...but the video evidence says otherwise. Around 2:40 you can see me navigate the carousel on my second flying lap with the Fiesta doing its lovely tail-happy thing that is extremely rare in a front-driver...one of the reasons I like that car. Then at ~5:15 is the proof that I didn't stay flat through the kink on my last lap...a little blow-off noise as a gave a quick lift before turning.
Our transit Wednesday night was the shortest one of the trip, only 360 miles / ~5 1/2 hours to the Richmond, Virginia area. We would stay at Chris's parent's house near Richmond for the night and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Our Carbotech brake pads were working well on the street and the track, but the pedal was getting a little squishy, so we took advantage of the early evening to bleed the brakes. We had already rotated the tires from front to back earlier in the day at CMP since the front left outside shoulder was showing only a faint remnant of a tread pattern. Performance Alignment had done a great job with the alignment, but this car is tough on front tires.
Cooler temps and thunderstorms were in the forecast for Thursday!
My wife and I are blessed to have parents who are healthy, active, and enjoy spending time with our kids. While I was touring the states east of the Mississippi with Chris, my wife's mom, "GG", was at our house in Cincy visiting and helping out with the normal work/school week routine. Since her home is a little west of Ocala, Florida she had offered it as a place for us to stay on our transit from Atlanta to Sebring. We took her up on the offer while planning the trip - who doesn't want to save $100 on a hotel - but after a few days on the road, and thinking about the ~700 mile transit after Sebring, we started to check our math during the drive: Detouring to GG's house would add something like 50 minutes to the total transit time between Atlanta and Sebring. It was about 3 hours north of Sebring, so we would have to get up around 4am in order to get to Sebring in time to ride bikes around the track. Weather forecast for Sebring was sunny with a high of ~92F, so it was going to be a hot one, then we'd have to drive 700 miles after the afternoon session...probably arriving at our next hotel by midnight or so...that would be a long day! Instead we found a hotel for < $100 on the route and within 30 minutes of Sebring and decided it was worth it. Sebring is a historic track that has hosted sports car racing since 1950. It's a former air base, so the circuit is fast and flat. It's also known for being bumpy - some of the pavement is original! It was pretty special to be able to ride a bike around on the same pavement that had hosted so many legendary races and drivers. The driver that comes to mind first for me is Phil Hill, the only American to win a Formula 1 driver's title. If you want to read an excellent book about Phil Hill and life as an F1 driver in the 1950's and 1960's, I highly recommend "The Limit: Life and Death on the 1961 Grand Prix Circuit" by Michael Cannell. It's well-written, and pretty shocking to consider the fatality rate in motorsports in the era when the development of tire/rubber and engine/power technologies far out-paced any development, or even thought, about safety. We were glad to see there were some open garage spots when we arrived. A few days before we started our One Lap in cloudy, rainy, 45F weather, but it was 90F and hot in Sebring.
<\begin typical racing driver "everyone else has more power" excuse-making> The long straights at Sebring showcased horsepower - 5th gear was required in 3 different places. With the MP215 tune, which basically increases the overboost available in 3rd gear and up, we were making about 215 HP / 235 ft-lbs torque. At 1.6L we had the smallest displacement of any of the One Lap entries. Even with the turbo, 215 HP was not a lot in this company. By this time we had figured out the Killer Rabbit must have a nearly-stock engine...their ET at the drag was longer than ours. Otherwise, there were maybe 3 or 4 other cars that we out-powered: the Griswold wagon, a basically stock 2009 Civic Si, and a 2005 Acura. The TDI Jetta was not stock and probably made more torque, but maybe similar power. The FR-S was supercharged and the 01 Miata and 03 MR2 both had Honda/Acura V6 swaps. So...Sebring would be about trying not to lose too many positions in the overall rather than jumping up a few. <\end typical racing driver "everyone else has more power" excuse-making> The GT-Rs and other big turbo cars sounded like aircraft going down the front straight. The Corn Fed Subaru was in our run group:
The Fiesta didn't sound quite as impressive, but got around the track pretty well:
After that it was the usual routine: hitch up, pack up, hit the road. We made a stop at Grassroots Motorsports headquarters near Daytona Beach for pizza, then continued up I-95 toward South Carolina.
Some people might think it's crazy to drive ~8 - 10 hours a day just for a few laps on a track. Some people also think it's crazy to spend a whole day standing around in the parking lot for about 3 or 4 minutes of cone-dodging at < 60 mph. But like autocross, One Lap is about people, cars, stories, the challenge, and the experience. Also like autocross, there is not much time to learn the track before you attempt to get after it. A bicycle ride or track walk in the morning can help:
Yikes - this is steep! (And there's a hill before this, so it's blind)
Each venue typically has a morning event and an afternoon event. For the skid pad we lined up in numerical order and for the autocross it was somewhat numerical. The first road course event is somewhat self-sorted - the idea is to avoid needing to let someone by or complete a pass during the time trial since this will slow both cars down. After the first road course event, cars are basically sorted by their finishing order with some discussion between the drivers in each 6- or 7-car run group on who has been there before, who is driving, etc. so they can sort out a good run order. Once your group goes out, everyone does a reconnaissance lap as they work their way around to the start-finish line. This is your chance (in addition to any bicycle or walking laps you did in the morning) to see the track and think about the line, braking points, how camber or elevation might help or hurt, and which corners would be really bad/expensive/dangerous to mess up. After everyone lines up at start-finish, cars are sent out one by one with at least 10 seconds between them. Elapsed time for the time trial is based on three flying laps from a standing start, then there's a cool-down lap at the end before you come off track. As someone who has been working on their autocross skills over the last few years, I really enjoy the challenge of trying to balance putting down a quick time with not crashing/breaking the car or making a time-costly mistake...all in 3 laps, usually on a track I've never seen before. It's about pushing, trying to stay just below 100%, and making the best of the inevitable mistakes. Unlike autocross, you don't have several minutes of downtime between each lap to think about what you're going to fix on the next lap. Instead, you usually have one or two straights where you're blasting down the track at 100+mph with your foot to the floor, waiting to up-shift into 5th. This 15 to 20 seconds is your time to relax, check gauges, clear your head, reflect on how the last lap went, and think about a few things you can change on the next lap to find some time. So it's kind of like an extreme form of autocrossing! Road Atlanta was a big, fast track, and in Brock's words it "deserved some respect". My morning session was pretty tentative, but clean, and I got a little faster each lap. I got a little faster for my overall time in the afternoon, despite messing up turn 5 on my final lap...we knew there was a lot of time to the gained there and it wasn't necessary to slow down much...but that's easier said than done!
Somewhere between Memphis and Atlanta Chris started to get competitive. Our finish positions at the wet skid pad and ET challenge weren't great, but we were in the top 40 at the autocross and mid-40's at the Memphis road course events. Although we were sitting somewhere in the high 50's overall, it might be possible to get into the top 50. We had never managed to finish above 60th in previous One Laps, so a top 50 finish would be great. We typically split driving duties at each track so we would both get a chance to see as much as possible. But if we wanted to optimize finishing position, it would make more sense for the same driver to do the morning and afternoon session. We each had some different favorites in mind so it turned out neither of us felt like we were giving up much to change to the new plan. So, I would drive both events at Road Atlanta and Gingerman and Chris would do both events at Sebring and Dominion. After I finished the afternoon session we hitched up, packed up, and hit the road again. The Fiesta's mileage had improved slightly from the first day and we were now averaging about 23 - 24 mpg, but this was a common sight:
For some reason we both woke up before 6am...we were not taking full advantage of our sleeping time yet. We could have slept in until 7am and still arrived at the track in time to check it out and unpack.
One reason I had decided to bring the trailer was so we could easily carry a pair of bikes. It would give us a chance to see the tracks before we drove them, some of which were around 3 miles long, and would pretty much be our only exercise the whole week. By the time we arrived at Memphis we had been towing the bikes almost 900 miles and hadn't touched them yet - it was about time to get some use out of them! It was a beautiful morning and using the bikes we were able to do about 3 laps of the track before it was closed for the start of the morning session - a great way to start the day, and we at least had a partial mental picture of what the track would look like.
Chris and I split the morning and afternoon sessions. Memphis uses the drag strip as the main straight for the road course, and turn 1 is a gentle right-hander at the end of the strip. The first time Chris drove the Fiesta down the front straight was easily the fastest that car had ever gone - you entered the staging area of the strip doing ~50 mph in 3rd gear, up through 4th, then into 5th where you spend another 10 seconds or so at WOT. Even after riding the bikes around the track in the morning, it was a bit intimidating to turn into Turn 1 at about 100 mph after a quick down-shift into 4th. Chris put down a nice, clean run in the morning:
Before Chris got in the car, I passed on this little nugget of wisdom from one of the autocross schools I had been to: "It's always better to brake too early than to brake too late. If you brake too early, you're still on line, and you might even be able to get on the gas earlier." Great advice - I wish I had taken it myself! Skip ahead to ~2:15 to see me completely ignore my own advice:
Not only were there two road course events at Memphis, but also a drag race elapsed time (ET) challenge and bracket drag. Chris did both of the drag race events since I did the autocross and would do both skidpads.
Does 3 seconds sound like a long time? No, right? Actually, 3 seconds is not-even-able-to-keep-both-cars-in-the-same-frame-for-the-video long 😜. Chris actually put down a great run. I had been to the track once before and only managed a 14.9 after several attempts...he did it on his first pass down the track.
Now, the top 5 cars in the ET challenge were all between 10.9 and 11.1...so 14.9 in this crowd was pretty slow...54th out of 64. But, we would have a chance in the bracket drag, which was a bit of a wildcard for everyone since there were few drag racing specialists on the One Lap. Chris managed to win his first round, but went out on the second round. The winner was a Mazdaspeed Miata driven by a couple of guys doing their first One Lap, but who obviously knew a thing or two about bracket drags. Where do you eat dinner when you're traveling through the northern Alabama countryside? The "New INA" buffet, naturally.
