2009 One Lap of America
Japanese Car wins 2009 One Lap of America
One thing struck me during today’s ceremony. Brock mentioned that this was the first year that a Japanese car manufacturer had won the overall One Lap of America. While we have been deprived of the real Japanese super cars over here in the states, it will be interesting to see if that title of first place sees a few more Japanese winners in there.
For anybody who got to see the Nissan Skyline GTR on the track during this event, not only was it some amazing driving, but it was a far superior car in every way. The car is stock, with the exception of an exhaust and controllable rear wing for down force. William Taylor, who owns the car had to be the nicest most approachable guy in this event. He also has a firm grasp on how to set this car up and is working to fabricate most of the real go-fast parts for the car.
03rd Place in class 20th overall
We have taken 3rd place in our class for midprice sedan, and hung onto 20th place overall. You start recounting all of the “what if’s” that would have pushed up higher or done better. The fact that we took a 17 year old driven car, rebuilt it in 4 months and were able to place in the top 20 is just awesome. Take into effect that we rotated 3 different drivers, this was our introduction to the car, and changed the rear end handling of the car after 2 days, and we are pretty proud that we made it all happen.
Although we had some points rivalries out there in words and web posts, it is hard to describe how tight nit a group you become after running this event. We sat with our competitors, helped each other along the way, and all became friends along this epic journey across America.
We also had something that nobody else had in this entire group. We had a network of enthusiasts, friends, and supporters keeping us alive through our travels. We sent out some calls for help and received them in force. Having people show up to almost every event from the same Mitsubishi family added such a level of nostalgia to this event for us that I am not sure we could ever repeat that. Granted most people who showed up, drove something else because their car was on jack stands. Just as we had a cheering squad for us at Autobahn when Mike passed the Mustang, we heard you when we went up and accepted out 3rd place trophy. Thank you.
2Dry Skid Pad
Coming down to points on the skid pad seems like a pretty tight race. We knew RJ and Scott were ahead of us in points, but we needed have at least two cars better than RJ for the skid pad if we had a chance of playing the points spread. The only thing we did have going for us, was that RJ came in dead last for the wet skid pad.
We were doing a rain dance, not so much for ourselves, but hoping the same combination for RJ would yield the same results. The rain came, in a constant misting, along with some rediculous winds that made it absolutely miserable out, so we need to work on mother nature requests in the future.
We had all three guys in the car while we were pulling up to the line, because it was cold out. They decided to run the entire field in reverse finishing order, so we were able to watch RJ go first. He ran a little wide and slid on one of his laps, giving us a clear hope of an opening. We sat there waiting for his number, but couldn’t hear it. The announcer had this ability to talk about absolutely nothing related to the event.
I ran some strong laps. Having Tim on the team, and somebody that knows how to setup a car has been invaluable. He gave me the Coal Trickle quote of “I’ve set her up with a set of matched tires, so she will stick in turn 4″. I knew he had gotten the car to oversteer with some tire pressure manipulation.
I had one shimmy on the way to the start, while setting the speed, but for the most part had a strong run on the inside. I knew I wanted that grove this time on the clockwise run, and was able to find that as well. We all misheard the numbers, which we thought we had a .959 or something similar. In the end we ran a .935 with 50 degrees cold damp track surface, so it went pretty well. RJ ran a .906, giving us a forty point gap in the overall. We needed somebody to squeeze in between the both of us, for a chance to pull out a second place win in the mid-priced sedan. We didn’t really know any of the points until the awards ceremony after wards.
0Final Day Balance
It is the final day for the One Lap of America, and we have our last event this morning, putting us back onto the skidpad at Tire Rack. While some of the leaders in this event have already been sorted, we still have the chance to move up in our class as there are only 10 points separating us and the Subaru WRX STi driven by RJ.
The good news is that we ranked 8th the last time we were on the skidpad and RJ ranked dead last in the field. The challenge is that we don’t have the same car we started with. Going from the first two days of top 10 in the entire event, a broken upper control arm forced us to change to a stock setup in the rear, throwing off our alignment goals. It has caused the car to have some powerful under-steer that has made it difficult to rotate in the turns without some artistic braking.
We are doing a rain dance this morning, although it is a dry skid pad day, to try and reproduce the first session where we did so well. Certainly making it this far with a 17 year old car, that we built in 4 months, each haven’t driven more than a few minutes before had, 3rd doesn’t sound bad. That being said, second always sounds better.
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