Road America is the last venue and though the week is an amazing adventure.

Introduction | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9

We made it to the hotel at around 1:30 after a total of about 650 miles of driving. We diverted from the route book and took a route that was longer but all highway. Most everyone we talked to said it would be quicker, but as it turned out it wasn’t at all. I think we added about an hour to the transit time. That hour was huge. I was head-bobbing the last hour so badly that every time I would wake up I would ask Dave if he was OK. I figured if he was half as tired as I was, he would need an occasional prodding to stay awake. The hotel was a bit of a dive, even though they charged us $65 a day. I would have paid a few hundred for any time in a real bed, so the five hours of sleep was worth the cost.

Day 7 of Competition - May 6, 2004
After another too short night, we arrive at Hallett Motor Racing Cicuit. Hallett is a nice track, with a road course that offers a whole bunch of different looks and feels, with decreasing radius turns, elevation changes, tight and open corners. Dave took instruction here a few years back, and also ran this track in previous One Laps.
The guys that run the track are really enthusiasts as well as business people. They put out a nice spread for us every year. We like going there because the track has a homey feel, where you have the impression that the owners are one big family. This year Kicker, the car stereo company, hooked us up with lunch. That is always cool when a company like that chips in for the drivers. The other thing Kicker did was bring three tour busses full of employees out to the track to see the event. There were a few hundred people in the stands, which added to the day immensely. Red Bull was also driving around with a truck full of drinks for the drivers, being dolled out by a pair of “Red Bull Representatives”.

His first run out, Dave was very happy with the handling of the car, and it looked from the stands that he was comfortable with the setup. There is a great place to watch the competitors go through one of the more difficult sections of the course, and on more than one occasion, we saw cars leave the track in some dramatic displays of flying sod. Nothing damaged beyond egos, which is a good thing. Most of the people in this event have their heart and souls in their car, and many are hyper extending their pocket books more than a little. Nobody wants to see a beautiful example of someone’s hard work get bent. A little landscaping now and then is ok. At any rate, Dave through that corner was controlled, and hit the apex properly on all his hot laps. His hands seemed quiet on the wheel so it appears that he had the car balanced well through that part of the track.
Results speak for themselves and Dave spoke volumes with a 20th place in the morning run. That was the best finish yet, and it was more than enough to get a first place in class. The car tires are still behaving the way Dave wants so we’ll leave them alone for the rest of the event assuming the weather holds out.

The afternoon run will be totally different as they are running the course backwards. This is one of the few tracks we run that is designed to be driven in both directions. There are run-out areas, curbing and tire walls to allow the course to be done safely either clockwise or counter clockwise. We just proved the tire walls work on this track. An A4 Audi just went over the wall at a pretty good clip. The same section of track that we were watching before, is now a downhill left-hander that after talking to Dave, sneeks up on the driver causing people to go too hot into the turn-in and also off-line. The car in the other direction is under compression, but run this way, the car is unloaded and therefore braking forces aren’t quite as strong as expected. The A4 had a fairly reasonable line, but overcooked the corner, found itself on the grass where there is no traction, and wasn’t able to make any adjustments before hitting the tires. When he hit, he jumped up about three feet and landed on the other side. The driver is fine, but the car is probably pretty messed up. There is fluid leaking from the front radiator, but the driver is ok, so that is what really matters. Hopefully Dave keeps it cool going into that turn and doesn’t end up in the same place.

The good doobie that he is, Dave kept the car going around the corner that took out the Audi even though he did lock up the fronts going into that turn on his last hot lap. He pulled off the binders quickly so he didn’t flat spot the tires, which is a good thing when we are looking at another 2000 miles remaining before we get home. I suppose we could try to melt them round again, but fortunately that won’t be necessary. In the end, Dave ended up with a second in class finish in the second event, behind Glen.

We headed North from Tulsa on a trip that will take us about 12 hours to cover 850 miles. To make that pace, we will have to average 71 miles per hour. That isn’t too bad as long as we keep our stops to an absolute minimum. We started off and at our first stop we were averaging 75 which is incredible since there were a huge number of truckers that were completely obnoxious. I lost count of the number of times a truck swung out in front of us and just sat there not doing anything.

We stopped for dinner at a Blimpie and took the subs on the road. We made fantastic time, and before we knew it we were in Illinois and on to Wisconsin. We turned on to this secondary road about 10 miles outside of our hotel, and like flies to stink, we were surrounded by Wisconsin’s finest. Initially we thought they were just making sure we weren’t going too fast, but once they pulled Dave and Ingo over, we knew they were not only going to reduce the amount of sleep we were able to get, but also just be obnoxious. Now mind you, it is 3:15 AM. Not exactly rush hour in Elkhart Lake Wisconsin. We were looking for the turn for the hotel, and Dave made a fairly quick left onto a side road. As soon as we did that, an officer pulled over Ingo, and a second pulled over Dave. The Mustang of George and Steve were left alone. I guess American muscle cars get preferential treatment when it comes to interpretation of the rules. Anyway, Dave had a discussion with the kind officer, who explained that he pulled us over for two reasons. The first was there was a report that three Porsches and a muscle car were spotted traveling at a high rate of speed in the previous county. Apparently other counties don’t have cruisers, just radar. These other counties must tag drivers with the radar, and call the authorities of Elkhart in hopes that those crazy drivers pass through a town with cruisers. Also, we were only traveling with one other Porsche, but Dave wisely chose not to mention that. The officer said the other reason he pulled us over was that we had continually shining yellow side marker lights, and that is ILLEGAL in Wisconsin. That almost prompted a “You’ve GOT to be Sh…ting me, right?”, but cooler heads prevailed and nobody whet to jail for telling an officer off.

The officer went back to his cruiser for a good long look over Dave’s background, and returned with a warning for amber running lights. Dave explained that he was a long way from home and wouldn’t be able to get that fixed for a while. The officer said not to worry about it and if he wanted, Dave could rip it up. Dave said “No thanks. I’ll keep it as a souvenir.”
Ingo was not so lucky. When Ingo spoke with the kind officer, they said he was driving recklessly and took an illegal left turn from a right hand lane. Actually Ingo was just following Dave, but Dave used his signal, and Ingo didn’t. They pinched him for a $150 fine. What is the moral of the story? There isn’t one. The Elkhart Lake Sheriffs were just being jerks.

Day 8 of Competition - May 7, 2004
Ok, we’re on to the last day of track competition. Road America is the last venue and though the week is an amazing adventure, it is a grind that has to end sometime. We all need to get back to our real jobs and get some rest.
Road America is a classic track that is very long, very fast, and demanding. At 4 miles in length it takes some significant time to get around the circuit. There are also so many corners that it is easy to get lost if you have never been there. There are three sections of this track that the drivers will see top speed of their cars. That puts some very large demands on the engines, but more so the brakes. Having good brakes at Road America is a must have. Fortunately Turbo Porsches have enormous brakes right from the factory and our car is no exception. Everyone here takes brakes very seriously since not doing that can cost more than a paint job.

There are also so many corners that it is easy to get lost if you have never been there..		Vintage Foreign class are Glen with 170 points, us with 125 and Dave Carr with 115.

Ingo and I walked half way around the track to a section that has some very nice technical corners. The first is turn five which is a left hander after a hill that falls away from the driver slightly at the top. This is construed as being slippery, but my understanding is that it is more the negative camber of the turn than a truly greasy track. Between turn five and six is a downhill section that gets the cars moving pretty well before taking the right hander of turn six. From our vantage point we can also see turns seven and what the track calls the carousel. I say all that because as we were watching Dave come around turn five and from what the car did, it appeared that when he hit the camber change, he realized he was going a bit fast, lifted the throttle which brought the nose of the car down, and sent the back end of the car around toward where the front should be. He slid sideways down the hill for a few feet and came to a stop in the middle of the track. He did a good job of getting the car turned around and headed back down the hill. Ingo and I breathed a collective sigh of relief and started our walk back to the pits.

We greeted Dave, who was talking with another driver, with “Nice show!” He gave us the “What?” “Did I do something?” We all got a good laugh over the whole thing, and when the results came out, Dave was still first in class and 25th overall despite doing part of his laps backwards. God bless horsepower.

At the end of the first run, the results for the standings in the Vintage Foreign class are Glen with 170 points, us with 125 and Dave Carr with 115. The second running of Road America was better since Dave kept the car pointed in the right direction the entire time and it seemed his speeds on the front straight were as fast as the previous run. We will see for sure when we get to Tire Rack tomorrow.

Day 9 of Competition - May 8, 2004
When we arrived at Tire Rack, we found that Dave had run an 18th overall in the second run at Road America. Dave said he left some more on the table, which shows that this car is without question capable of running with the top 15, possibly top 10. That finish has sealed up second place for us in the Vintage Foreign class.
The last event was the skid pad at Tire Rack, and we did a respectable 42nd at 0.888 Gs. This was second in class, as Glen in his 911 has one of the top 10 suspension setups in the field, and came in 8th overall with 0.991.

The One Lap organizers held an un-scored freestyle show for the top ten finishers where the top ten cars went back out on the skid pad and did anything they wanted to. It was very entertaining seeing just how many thousands of miles could be ripped of rear tires when they are smoked for minutes at a time. Most drivers power drifted their cars around the skid pad. That is particularly difficult in cars like the Dodge truck of Ron Adee, and the Corvette of Danny Corchoran because they have so much grip in the rear that it is hard to kick the rear out and keep it there. The other cars that are pretty hard to drift are the four wheel drive cars, but these guys are good and were able to make a smoky display despite how much traction they had. The two most impressive displays were by David Murray in the 911 GT3 and the Dodge Ram SRT-10. David was impressive because he drifted the GT3 around the skid pad in a perfect circle. There was no hint that he was fighting the car at all, he was just dancing it around the circle. He never over-rotated and the rear never caught causing him to have to start the drift again. He then did donuts with the car until the car literally disappeared in a cloud of tire smoke. The Dodge Ram got the tires smoking with the brakes on, and in a slow crawl, went around the skid pad at about five miles per hour. He burned the tires so badly that the tread ripped of both rear tires just before he ended. That little display cost him some paint on the fenders, because when the tires let go, the belts came up and slapped the fenders pretty hard. When he started, the tires were a low profile Pirelli. By the time he finished the tires had deformed from a sidewall height of about 2” to about 6”. The tires were completely destroyed. I guess being factory sponsored affords some flexibility in the financial area.

Some last thoughts
After the skid pad’s finish, we were able to come in 48th place overall based on all the results of the event. This is pretty good, considering the fact that we missed five events with the transmission failure. We are feeling good about our chances of a Vintage Foreign victory in the years to come. If we can keep the car together for the entire event, then we should be in good shape.
We left South Bend after the dinner and reception where we took our trophy, and David said a few words about our adventure. The ride home is 850 miles and 13 hours but it will be nice to decompress Sunday before going to work on Monday. We arrived back in Arlington around 5:30 AM on Sunday, and I made it back to my house in Tyngsboro around 6:10. Another One Lap of America completed without anything wrinkled. Ok moms, you can start breathing again. The End