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

Thursday May 5, 2005 Day 6
Sam drove the transit from VIR the Carolina Rod shop, some 250 miles. We caravanned with George and Steve as we always do and I’m sure they were fighting over who followed Sam. These guys love Sam because he gets out front and hammers it on the highway, making the followers less likely to get a ticket.

I really needed the time to decompress and rest a little as the constant pressure of this years success was really weighing on me. My last run at VIR I made a mistake that could have ended the event for us and I was lucky to recover with only a 43rd placement overall. I held onto 11th place overall and still had a commanding lead in Vintage Foreign. So as I rehashed my goals for the 2005 One Lap (20th overall with a Vintage Foreign win), I realized that I didn’t need to keep going 100% to get there. So as hard as it is sometimes to dial it back, I decided that I needed to be a little more conservative to preserve what I already had.

This strategy got easier to adopt when we woke up Thursday to pouring rain. For those who have never tracked a high horsepower, rear engine, rear wheel drive car, the rain presents significant challenges. With aggressive driving, today would present many more opportunities to lose ground than gain ground. I took it very conservatively for the first run session, having adopted the class win preservation strategy.

Sure enough, my times were only good enough for 30th overall but I did beat Glen for the session class win and I was still 11th overall after the morning. We did lose some significant ground in overall points compared to those around me, and Roy Hopkins had an incredible 6th place in the morning run session. The afternoon run session was little different then the first, we were still able to beat out Glen for the class points but a 30th placement dropped us to 12th overall, 35 points behind the 11th place NSX-R and 45 points behind 10th place Roy in the M3.

I guess this is as good a time as any to mention the paddock buzz surrounding the two NSX entries. Apparently several people believe that these two teams are traveling with a support van. The One Lap has only three cardinal rules, and one of them is no support vehicle. Given the amount of times these guys have broken and instantly recovered, and their competitive standing, allot of people are naturally upset. Tonight we have 770 miles to drive as of this writing; we have tackled a little less than half of it.

At the last gas stop in South Carolina, there was a huge selection of fireworks in a building attached to the store. I picked up some firecrackers and when we stopped again for dinner I found the perfect opportunity to scare the shit out of George. He was lying under the Mustang checking the brakes for the 48th time this trip and I lit off a package. Boy was he pissed. Then and there he took a solemn vow to pay me back. I’m not looking forward to it. continue>