2010 One Lap of America – Evo X Race Summary
After 9 days of driving with over 4500 miles under our belts, we returned from a successful rookie year fielding my 2008 Mitsubishi Evolution X. With 1st place in the Mid-Priced Sedan class out of 10 cars and 7th overall out of 68 cars, it’s hard to imagine that we could have done any better for our first year out. Our strategy for this year was to shoot for a top 20 finish without risking the car since it’s also a daily driver. Since we didn’t previously drive any of the tracks before this event, we knew that our morning sessions would be about learning the course and that the afternoon session we hoped to improve more than the rest of the field on average. You know when the entry list includes Leh Keen in a well prepared Porsche GT2, last year’s 
champion GTR team, another GTR piloted by Catesby Jones and Jose Callado, and a well sorted out Corvette pilotted by Danny Popp and the team, you are going to be up against some stiff competition in the top 10. As the events progressed it was obvious those teams were a cut above the rest and we had our work cut out for us.
As Brock Yates Jr said to the rookie class this year, “it doesn’t matter how well you run, if you aren’t there on the last day, you don’t have a shot”. Prophetic words, or maybe just lots of experience being passed down to the next generation of one lappers. From day 1, the first goal was always just to finish and being there on the last day can be it’s own victory. Going into a race event like this you have to know up front that reliability & consistency is absolutely key when it comes to accumulating points for overall placement. While our teammates Tim and Steve in the VR4 were battling brake issues for a combo that needed some more track testing, the Girodisc 2 piece rotors and Raybestos ST43 pads that were provided by Tunersnation and Girodisc were absolutely flawless. While the race pads weren’t recommended for street driving, I didn’t want to compromise ultimate braking power and there was no way we wanted to swap pads every event. Luckily these are some long lasting pads as they wore less than 2mm for the entire week of driving and weren’t that hard to tolerate for the mostly highway driving between events. The pads always had ample stopping power and when mated to the Girodisc 2 piece rotors, the combination gave positive, direct feedback at the limit. Knowing that your car is going to haul down from 150mph to speeds that will allow you to survive corners that you have never seen before can make all the difference in the world with car confidence.
With the typical time attack format you are given some practice sessions on the road course before going for your best hot laps. With One Lap of America, you get a single scouting lap and then begin 3 hot laps from a standing start. When it comes to clicking off fast laps, having previous track experience on that particular road course can play a huge role as does having ample seat time with your current car setup. Our team unfortunately had neither as we were still tweaking suspension setups up to the day we left for South Bend. Neither one of us had any track time on the new setup and the first time Sean drove the Evo X at the limit was at Mid-America. Luckily we found that the car really shined in it’s ability to keep itself on the track despite being piloted by drivers that didn’t always know what to expect around the next corner. If we had to assign a number to it, we were able to consistently drive 8-9 tenths, where as most of the other drivers were attacking corners at 9-10 tenths from what we saw. Keeping the ASC off with a single button push meant that the annoying power cut feature was turned off while retaining the ABS assist to help turn the car when a bit over driven. The AYC (Active Yaw Control) setup on this Evo X mated to the BC Racing ER series suspension on 10k springs gives the car slight oversteer at the limits 
and predictable handling. The guys at Darkside Engineering were great when deciding the rough setup we should go with and they were pretty much right on as to where we should start the suspension tuning. We ended up keeping the suspension on middle of the road street friendly settings that were just stiff enough for the smooth tracks, excellent for bumpy tracks, and livable on the street. We found out quickly that the wet skidpad can be a handful if the rear end is too stiff and you have ASC turned off completely.
When you are at the track from 8 am until 3 pm and then have an 8 hour ahead of you before even thinking about sleep, the last thing you want to worry about is fixing the car or resolving an issue. This was a key reason we decided to detune the car down to 25 psi where it was likely only making around 500 crank HP. Spending that extra week on car preparation and maintenance goes a long way to making sure you finish an event like this as well. Missing even one event with a DNF is a huge hurdle to overcome and the #6 Subaru Sti that we were battling for the class win was a prime example. Their driving was excellent on the road courses but due to a 52nd result on the Wet Skid pad, they were forced into catch up mode through the first half of the events. We edged them out at the drag strip mid way through which helped us stay ahead and remain 1st in class.
We knew all things being equal, we would have had to crank up the boost and get more aggressive with the driving to hold them off for the second half which was a dangerous proposition being our first year out. As fate would have it, they literally drove the wheels off the car and the launches at the drag strip took their toll resulting in a snapped axle at the Gateway oval and a double DNF for the day. At that point, we decided that sticking with the same strategy we had from the beginning would be our best plan in order to hold onto the class win and still stay in the top 10 overall standing: be consistent, drive 8 tenths, and finish each event. If we had more experience with the road courses we were driving on and more seat time in the car, we could have 
pushed for a top 5 finish but the risk for failure and breaking the car was too great. Even if we did push harder, the cars at the top were very well-prepared with incredibly fast drivers and it would taken more than an extra tenth to catch them.
Next year we will definitely be pushing the car harder and hopefully drive a few of the tracks before the event starts. Based on the numbers, we’ll need to pick up the pace 2-3 sec a lap to stay competitive in class and 6-7 seconds per lap to even think about challenging the front runners. Next time around we plan on having all of the improvements track tested so that there won’t be any surprises and more seat time behind the wheel will be critical as well. The BC Racing ER series coilovers held up excellent for the events, although with all the rough public roads we tortured the car through, we found that some of the components started to loosen up and needed to be tightened down again. When going over the car after the event, the driver’s side rear swaybar nut was missing so that’s one more place we’ll have to watch like a hawk when tracking this car. Running through a checklist before each days events is likely a very good idea since even small problems can end up being a nightmare when at speed on these tracks.
The Yokohama AD08 tires were also impressive as they are some of the best street tire handling I’ve ever driven on. With about 7mm of starting tread depth, we found that the inside edges of the front tires wore about 2mm where as the rest of the tire wore about 1mm with the -2.5* front and -1.5* rear camber settings and close to zero toe. Finding a tire that performs any better would be hard to do but we’re looking forward to more testing this season 
at Watkins Glen to see what might work even better in wider sizes. Before the event we took a serious look at the Dunlop Direzza Star Spec’s as they had been run by our team mates in the VR4. We had initially wanted to use that tire, but as they did not have any sizes we could use on the 19″ wheels, we were forced to go with the more expensive Yokohama’s. Would the Direzza’s have worked as well as the Yokohama’s for this event? We would certainly welcome the chance to compare the two to find the best options for the money.
Gas mileage wise we were able to double check how accurate the in dash calculator really is. While at the track we were getting a horrid 6-7 MPG, on the highway we saw a much more eco friendly 27-30 MPG. After some refills I double checked the mileage based on replacing the fuel and miles traveled and it appears that it is only about 5% optimistic at worst. That means an indicated 28 MPG was about 27 MPG actual which isn’t too shabby considering 2 people and a fair amount of tools and gear in the car for the trip. We tried to make sure we were always topped off for all the road courses but were tight on time when we arrived at NJMP. Turns out that just under a half a tank WILL result in fuel starvation when pulling that long right hand sweeper at WOT that lasts a good 15 seconds. You can be assured that we’ll have a good anti-surge fuel system in place for next year!
We want to give a big shout out to all of our sponsors this year, but especially our main sponsors:
TunersNation
Garfield at TunersNation has been fantastic to work with. He was always on top of what we were looking for, was always willing to help in any way he could, and was sincerely looking to help us succeed. There is no doubt in our minds without his help, we wouldn’t have performed as well as we did. Be sure he will do what is needed to help you out for any of your parts needs.
GiroDisc
Johann and Martin at Girodisc have been providing great products for the Evo community. The 2 piece floating rotors they provided to us through Garfield are no different. Right out of the box, they are about as close to brake art as you can get. The quality was incredible and the functionality was even better. When you are throwing a 3600 lb car down a track at 140+ mph, the last thing you want to worry about is your brakes. The floating rotor designed kept them straight, true, and effective at all heat ranges and pedal pressures. Mated with the Raybestos ST43 pads and some well routed ducting, they didn’t show one sign of warping, gouging or runout issues. You beat the crap out of them and they just keep coming back for more. Sean was so impressed, he is looking to replace his brake setup on his Evo IX track/autocross car with the same rotor setup.
ThreeSpeed
Harry has been a long time supporter of the DSM and Galant VR4 communities and a long time friend to the Galant VR4 OLOA team. His scattershields are top notch and are run on some of the fastest 4G63 powered cars. His support of the team, both the EvoX and the Galant VR4, helped us be in a position to be successful in our One Lap of America campaign.
Darkside Engineering
The guys at Darkside Engineering worked with us when we were looking to upgrade our suspension to something that would give us the handling and durability we needed to run the One Lap. Their suggestion was the BC ER Series coilovers and we were very happy with the results. The ER series gave us the adjustability and flexibility we needed to get the car in shape in a short amount of time. Without Darkside’s help in the initial setup, the car would not have been as behaved as it was as we would have spent much of our time dialing in the basics instead of testing entry, mid-corner and exit states. For a mid-priced sportsman suspension, the BC ER series are extremely capable and definitely worth a look if you are looking to get into tracking days, autocrosses, or just make your car handle better.
Many thanks to our other sponsors and supporters:
All our friends and families!
Here are some in car videos of the Evo X in action. Eventually we’ll have a full set uploaded to our main site so be sure to check back later. We’ll try and answer any questions people may have here as well as post an update when major updates are done to the site. Next year we’ll probably run with an external dump tube, for now you’ll have to turn up the volume a bit to hear the car.
Chris Wirth at NJMP Lightning Raceway – Session 2 (complete with overcooked corner in 2nd hot lap)
Sean Caron at Nelson Ledges – Session 2
We had a great time meeting tons of new people and will definitely be back next year. Thanks to some great new sponsors that are going to make funding this trip much easier in the future, we will be raising money for a good charity for next year and have fun doing it! If you would like to get involved in our 2011 One Lap bid, please feel free to contact us through the RochesterDSM One Lap page for more details. Thanks for reading!
Chris Wirth and Sean Caron
#15 2010 One Lap of America
1st Place – Mid Priced Sedan
7th Place Overall
