Autobahn Performance who setup the suspension and balanced the car perfectly.

One Lap of America April 30 to May 7, 2005
Article provided by David Goodman.

Introduction | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8

Saturday April 30, 2005 Day One
Sam and I were out the door this morning at 7:30 AM. We got to the track, unpacked the car and disconnected the front and rear sway bars. The prevailing thought on that is that the best traction on the skidpad is achieved when the left and right tires on both the front and rear of the car operate completely independently of each other.

As I rolled out to grid for the wet skidpad I noticed the Pantera that was in the Vintage Foreign class had finally arrived. The car looked mean and definitely had a reputation to go with it. Everyone was wondering how this thing would do.

The skidpad went OK I guess, I had a very hard time modulating the accelerator and keeping a steady slip angle around the circle. One of the practice exercises for next year will definitely be on the skidpad. I ended up with a middle of the pack .773 Gs which landed me at 42nd position, Glen Clarke, who won this event last year with a 1 G performance came in 30th with a .800 result. No surprises here, the skidpad is certainly not my best event, leaving the Tire Rack Sam and I are in 2nd place behind Glen and Lou in the Vintage Foreign class.

Sam is turning out to be an excellent co-driver. He has the appropriate sense of urgency and seems to know by instinct where to put things in the car and where things are at any given time. As we rolled out of the Tire Rack parking lot on our way to Indianapolis Raceway Park, I started to ask him where my sunglasses were and before I could finish my sentence he was handing them to me.

The ride to IRP was only 150 miles but it took us all of 3.5 hours to get there because of all the lights on rt 38. We arrived at the track at 1 PM, the designated start time for the first run session and they were already calling car 20. We quickly put in 5 gallons of 110 octane race gas, unloaded the car and setup for the grid.

In my run group we were lined up with car 23 (a black Corvette) up front, me second in car 20, Drew Duncan in car 21, then I am not sure of the order but behind Drew was an Altima GTR, that crazy S2K ultralight, and a Blue Dayton Coupe replica car number 15. I ran the warm up lap without incident and lined up behind the Vette at the Start/Finish line. The Vette takes off, and as I’m sitting and waiting for the green flag the guy in the Daytona blows by the start finish line and keeps on driving. “what the bleep was that I yelled to the flagman”, he just shrugged and said “don’t worry about it we can sort it out later.” As you may or may not know, the run session begins from a standing start and you have to wait for the green flag to go. He gives me the green flag and I’m off. The car ran great with slight oversteer at first but settled down nicely. I felt I was really hooking up nicely and on my second lap I caught up and passed the Daytona.

Back in the paddock I was looking forward to the results because this first track session determines the grid order for the rest of the event, and the earlier you run, the earlier you can leave for the next venue. As my first bonehead move of the 2005 One Lap, I changed out of my racing suit and Sam and I packed up the car. We happily continued this activity until someone strolled by and said, “where are you going? There is still another event”. I felt a little dumb for a few minutes but no harm done. Sam and I unpacked the car and before long the results were posted. I took one look at the sheet and knew immediately something was wrong.

Glen Clarke has posted a respectable 24th overall, the turkey in the Daytona was listed as 51st and I finally found us listed as 68th. I was really dumbfounded at this point. My first thought was that there was no way I could have done so poorly, and I certainly did better than the dude in the Daytona. I was steamed. I went to go talk to Brock, and he directed me to the timing people along the front straight. I was polite but after a few minutes of vehemently pleading my case they were all done with me. I retreated after they promised to look into it. Still bent a little, Sam and I returned to the paddock where I dug out the Robic lap timer and Sam immersed himself into the users manual.

By the next run session Sam was an expert on the device and he timed my second session perfectly giving me a view of each lap as well as my overall time. My overall time for my second run session was 5 minutes 46 seconds. I compared it to the morning sessions and that time would have been 11th overall. Now you can’t say that that is where I was in the morning, because everyone gets better in the afternoon after seeing the track, but it is certainly an argument for a timing mistake in the morning.

As of this moment Sam and I are sailing down I 70 on our way to BeaveRun, I will send out another update tomorrow. continue>