2010 One Lap of America
Is Motor Trend Ending the Print Coverage?
The 2009 One Lap of America was an epic ride, cumulating into printed media coverage in a magazine distributed around the world. I realize the world might not get the same epic experience after reading about the One Lap of America as I did making the journty. After experiencing the trip and then reading somebody else’s perspective on the same experience, helped to memorialize the effect of “yes, that did just happen”.
2009 was also the first year that Motor Trend provided coverage of the One Lap of America. With Brock Yates being the editor for Car and Driver in the past, coverage remained exclusive up until 2009 when Motor Trend took over.
Last year the article about One Lap of America came out in August. After receiving my October 2010 edition of Motor Trend without any mention of the race, it appears that we will not have any published coverage of this event.
Motor Trend’s coverage for 2010 appears to be an exclusively online publishing focus. While I understand this model more than anybody, marking the end of the print coverage is a substantial blow to the event coverage.
0Max Effort at the DSM Shootout
There was a time where the DSM shootout also consisted of a full scale autocross, to offset those who wanted to do more than go straight. That event returned somewhat this year in the form of the Max Effort venue, a combination of drag race and the autocross. While a tamer more controlled version to what we did on One Lap of America, it sounded like the perfect setup for a prepped One Lap car.
It has been a few years since I myself have been to the DSM Shootout. I almost went this year, but managed to talk myself out. Luckily Chris Wirth went down to represent the One Lap team this year. Not only did he go down, but he secured a First Place in the street tire class of the new Max Effort event.
Credit: Jarrod Barnett @ Buschur Racing
Chris is good at driving, and apparently tuning his car, but he falls short on the marketing side of things. For some reason he neglected to take one picture of the car on this trip, so we are stuck playing a game of “Where’s Wirth?” on the internet, as we scour the forums in search of proof. Here we can see him lurking through the parking lot, somehow still wearing some of the One Lap stickers on the car. If anybody finds any more pictures let us know.
0A little bit of history at the Glen
When I first got into cars it was always my goal to race on a real race track. It took me until I hit my mid 30′s to accomplish that goal but the moment I drove onto the track I knew my next goal was to be an instructor. That took a few more years but I reached that goal and have since moved my sights even higher with the One Lap of America race.
As my goals for racing grow with my experiences their still remains a big part of me that loves sharing my passion for racing and my knowledge of Watkins Glen. There is something that comes over me when I get into a students car. My voice gets loud and my tone gets stern…”brake..lift..gas..gas..gas!” I love being the cheerleader in the car and nothing makes me happier then to help somebody do what they thought they could never do. When given the oppertunity to take on the worst student in the bunch I jump at the chance. I want the student who can’t drive a strait line. I want the guy nobody can handle and I have a smile a mile wide when I help that student pass their first Porsche, and then their second…and third!
I have also had the pleasure to help some really good friends and family enjoy the thrill of the Glen. They have all since moved on to solo driving and are making their way to being instructors themselves. Its fun to hear their stories about epic battles and out braking the GT3′s into the corners. I get a little teary eyed when they say “I could hear you yelling in my ear…wait..wait..wait..wait…NOW!..gas..gas..gas!” . I can’t really put it into words but I guess I am a closet teacher because I never would have guessed in a million years that I would enjoy teaching people how to drive as much as I enjoy driving itself.
This past spring I had the pleasure of instructing Mark Holdren. Mark is retired now but his claim to fame is that he was a VP of marketing at our local Genesse Brewing Company. The Brewery has a rich history of supporting Motorsports and I have no doubt that Mark was at the heart of that. Mark also has the pleasure of dating my Mother in Law so he is family to me. Mark drives a neat Mini Cooper Clubman which is nothing more then a Frenchy powered go-cart.
Being Mark’s first time on a race track we started slow and worked through the basics. ”Brake, lift, gas…move on to the next turn” . Once we got the rhythm down we were able to pick up the pace. This is were my voice gets louder and the fun begins. We worked on driving the right line and not letting other peoples bad driving mess us up. We worked on braking deeper and later then your brain thinks it supposed to. Fighting that “pucker” effect until it was just a distant memory. We worked on getting on the gas early to balance the chassis and making sure we had our foot to the floor before the apex of the turn. In some cases we learned that the little Mini has more grip then we gave it credit for and in some cases more Hp too.
At the end of the two days Mark walked away knowing he had done “it”. Not only did he get to drive around the famed Watkins Glen race track but he got to really drive the track. He experienced what it is to push yourself and your machine to its limits. He got to experience one of the greatest race tracks on the planet not from a chair in his living room but from behind the wheel. The way Milliken and his Cornell buddies designed it. A track that rewards patience and punishes the early entry. A track that when driven right has a rhythm to it and rewards the driver who can maintain the most momentum.
Mark was over the house last weekend to help celebrate my wife’s Birthday. He had just come back from watching some of the F1 qualifying and practice runs and he said it was a whole new experience for him after having driven the track. His eye was sharper now and it was easy to spot the drivers who were attacking the Glen and the ones who were just trying to survive. At one point he was able to see a driver heading into turn 1 with a little to much heat. He said to himself “you’re not going to make it!” and sure enough they didn’t. ”slow in fast out” still hold true even with the pro’s
When the gifts for my wife had run out a final gift was revealed. Mark had commissioned a good friend and local artiest, Richard Burandt, to paint a picture of me at Watkins Glen. It was Mark’s way of saying thank you for helping him reach one of his goals. To say I was “floored” would be too mild. I’ve had pictures taken of me and stories told but nothing matches the permanence of paint on canvas. Nothing matches the time and effort it takes to sit down and paint a picture. It makes me feel like I’ve made it. I’ve gotten to a place where all the work and effort has been captured in a medium that is meant to last. Almost like I am part of history. Maybe that’s a bit to corny but to anyone who’s spent a day in the hot sun challenging themselves to master the art of driving can tell you it can be a surreal, even romantic experience. Movies, books, magazines, TV shows have all been dedicated to capturing this spirit. It’s what makes racing addictive and its why I am hopelessly hooked.
“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”
-Ernest Hemmingway
I want to thank Mark Holdren and Richard Burandt for their thoughtfulness and the wonderful painting. I will cherish it.
-painting by Richard Burandt (http://richardburandt.com/)
0The 24 Hours of Autobahn
I had the pleasure to recently attend an AMS organized event at the Autobahn Country Club that ran the South Course for a six 30 minute session day. I drove there friday night which took about 10 hours thanks to a fatal accident closing down the main entry from the east to the Chicago area. There were literally hundreds of cars and trucks sitting on the highway and nobody really knew how long it would be. So I moved a few construction barrels out of the way and did a U-turn hoping I could challenge my Garmin Navigator to find a way around the mess.
Turns out Central Ave was a pretty good shortcut to another on ramp except that it was closed for construction. This sent me north of the highway into a “financially challenged” area of the city where you actually would really need an SUV to navigate these rough roads… and a bulletproof vest probably wouldn’t be a bad idea either! Luckily I made it to my hotel in time to have 4 hrs of sleep before heading to the track in the morning.
After arriving at Autobahn I had enough time to unload the car and get the car teched. Already it was pushing 80* F and the sun was bearing down with no relief in sight. After the drivers meeting to make sure everyone was on the same page, they sent the Intermediate and Advanced group out for some parade laps to get a feel for the course. Then I decided to follow some of the lines that the more seasoned drivers knew for this road course and ended up driving the car so hard that the brakes boiled about 20 minutes into the session. Luckily I was able to slow the car down with my feet out the door and bring the car into the pits for inspection. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Girodisc 2 piece rotors and Raybestos ST43 pads were so good at stopping It might have ended much more dangerously.
Luckily just a quick re-bleed of the Racing Blue brake fluid seemed to have brought them back to life and the second session was fine assuming I got some cooldown laps after doing 4-5 hot laps. Plans are to get another set of ducts to cool the rotors directly in addition to the ducts that cool the caliper area, swap to higher rated brake fluid, and swap in some titanium shims. By session 3 I started to feel more comfortable again but still decided to stick with learning the proper line and not really going for absolute best lap times. One thing that reared it’s ugly head again was the fuel sloshing around in the tank during longer G corners. The Evo X just does not like running below half tank or less on road courses and I was forced to let a race prepped BMW go by when it just wouldn’t hold the turns when powering out.
Session 4 was interesting in that I rounded the corner to the back straight and spotted a red waving flag. This can’t be good! I scanned the area and noticed a white Evo planted up on the tirewalls, apprently his brake line(s) ruptured at ~120 mph and he was unable to stop. It also turns out that 3 laps before I lost my oil cap after not screwing it down all the way and getting distracted by onlookers in the pits. Apparently Pep Boys sells an oil cap that has a threaded end but they had to look it up as a 2009 since the 2008 just failed to list it!
Hopefully I’ll have time to run another track day at Road America with AMS as I had a great time and got another track under my belt reasonably well. Basically this was “The 24 Hours of Autobahn” for me since I drove ~20 hours round trip, 1 hour extra to reach the open house at AMS. and spent about 3 hrs total out on the track. It turns out that 24 hours of driving in 3 days really takes it’s toll and felt worse than the One Lap trip since there was no co-driver to share the overload of driving!
Session 3 video (available in 720p):
I started to have fun with the car and avoided abusing the brakes too much knowing I had to drive home after this event!
Session 4 video (available in 720p):
This video has a few laps with a passenger along for the ride, then as we round the turn to the back straight I noticed a red flag waving and spotted a white Evo up on the tire wall.
0Street Survival from One Lap
What do you do to occupy your time in the painfully slow months following One Lap of America? Teach teens how to drive of course. This past weekend Sean and Stephen decided to offer some instruction seat time with the Street Survival program, put on through the Genesee Valley BMW Club. We did have a Street Survival sticker on the One Lap cars this year, as it is a Tire Rack supported event, carried out nationwide.
If you are not familiar with this program, here is the premise. You take teenage drivers, who are just getting, or about to get their license and teach them how to deal with emergency situations on the road. While some of them have only just started driving, there is a high rate of accidents among teenage drivers, which this program focuses on reducing. You do this by setting up a series of simulations using cones in a large parking lot, so the teens can learn how the car will react when they need it to. By learning proper braking techniques and learning how to react when the car looses traction, they gain a huge advantage on the road, where you can’t really practice for such events.
Homework
The day before class, I took at look at the student instructor pairings and found out my student was driving a 2001 Subaru Forester. It happens to be the same car that my neighbor has, so I asked to take it for a test drive to make sure I knew how the car would handle. Besides determining that my neighbor needs new brakes on every corner of the car, it helped me to know what sort of expectations to see out of the car itself. After stepping out of a 400+ horsepower One Lap car, it was pretty easy to handle because everything was in slow motion. It also pivots real easy if you want it to, so I knew focusing on braking and turning at the same time would be a big advantage in this car.
Instructing
Volunteering for this event was an easy one, because it has to be the most fun and rewarding driving schools on the planet for an instructor. I was leery on what to expect in regards to results the first time out, but now I know why this program is such a success. It grabs the drivers before they have been corrupted with years of bad habits, and they listen without the burden of all of those expectations. Sean was already a veteran of instructing the program and still had a yellow shirt to prove it. I can say with confidence that I will use my yellow shirt again with pride.
Media Coverage
Despite an overcast and foggy day, there were a few news crews that came out to document the class. You can catch up on the articles and video clips through their websites.
http://rochesterhomepage.net/fulltext/?nxd_id=184805
Instructing the instructors was none other than Stu Sacks, a veteran One Lapper who gave us our advice the first year we entered the event.