Sunday, May 16, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap, 2010 Team EvoX, Equipment Review, Project Update

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:

Deatschwerks

Karpus Investment Management

Street Tuned Motorsports

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

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Thursday, May 13, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

Videos from One Lap with Race-Keeper

Capturing video on One Lap is challenging. I remember Sean coming over after the first session of Road America to tell me that his camera stopped after a minute of recording, after the battery died. I chuckled, and said “welcome to my entire 2009 Season of trying to make video work”. There is no time to get cameras clear, batteries charged, or things setup. This year, it seemed like time was even shorter.

However, this year I cheated. Thanks to Hugh over at Wilson Performance, we not only made capturing video on the trip easy, we completely overshot the requirements for sharing a few laps around the track. Wilson Performance let us take their Race-Keeper system on the entire weeklong trip around the country. They are a distributer for the systems, so if you are considering getting a system, let me know and I will put you in touch with them.

Let me be clear in saying, we completely under-utilized the Race-Keeper system. With little time to set it up, I slapped two cameras on the car and hit the button. 8 days later, I have a pile of videos to go through, and I am only now appreciating how little we used this system.

We also under-utilized the system, because we are in a 1992 car and this thing will capture all of the information from OBDII, which is any car made after 1996. The GPS was enough to map the track for us and give us a speedometer readout, but the possibility of logging everything from braking and acceleration makes this thing pretty powerful.

I only ran into two instances where I didn’t get the video. One was the first session at Road America, because we didn’t have a dedicated power source. We kept turning off the power to the car, which reset the system that was plugged into the cigarette lighter. I wired up a permanent power source between sessions. The other one was when we forgot to stop recording and we filled up a memory card before we got to the grid the second time. If I trusted the system, you can actually set it up to record when the car starts moving and have it automatically stop. I didn’t have enough time with it yet to use that, so I reverted to the “push the big red” button method.

I am working to bribe Hugh to let me take the system to Watkins Glen in two weeks with the Niagara Region PCA Drivers Education course, but it may conflict with the Wilson Performance race schedule. Then I could run the system in the Evo X to really show the cool features.

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Sunday, May 9, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

The Endurance Race for Cars

One Lap of America is very much, and will always be an endurance race. The mechanical wear and tear on these cars is more than any other event. It was an amazingly harsh year for cars as there was a lot of shifts of power among some of the fastest cars, as they could not stand up to the physical demands.

The list of teams that broke something is too long to list. We saw our friends throw belts, loose power steering, have their air-bags deployed and continued on.  Some of the mechanical issues however were bigger than a quick repair job.

Find comfort in the fact that we were not the only ones breaking.  We were just prepared to fix our car no matter what, in order to finish this race.

the GTR
After having some major ignition issues at Road America, the GTR team decided they would back out of the event, after they were unable to get it sorted by Mid-America.

Talking with Will Taylor, they can’t get the spark they need in the motor to keep it running at the level they wanted to run. When you are shooting for the podium and the car isn’t going to cooperate, you start planning for next year. Here is a shot of the

spark plug that the car ingested at Road America.

Steven Rankins and Jon Krolewicz rented a car, went back to South Bend and grabbed the Subaru to drive, to at least enjoy the rest of the event.

the Evo X

The White Evo X of Paul Seto and Barry Stewart threw something as simple as a serpentine belt because the idler pulley separated, loosing the chance to run at Road America.  While it was one of the smaller drama incidents, it acted as a sharp reminder that even the Evo is not immune to removal from this event with a minor slip up.  I think there will be a spare belt and pulley in the parts bin for Chris and Sean next year.

the Cadillac

Photo Credit - Motor Trend

At Road America we were reminded that we were not on a Sunday drive across the country, but we were in fact racing.  Unfortunately the Cadillac CTS V of Howard LaFever ended up going off track and rolling after grabbing the gravel and flipping into a fence.  Howard walked away with some cuts and bruises, but is otherwise alright.  He returned later in a Chrysler Crossfire to finish the event.

the Sti

We watched the car of Michael Lattos and Erik Van Cleef launch at Gateway and knew something was wrong as there was a lot of noise and smoke, but not a lot of motion.  The result was a broken axle, which tore up the bearing and lead to the wheel dragging behind the car within half a lap.


Photo Credit - Motor Trend

Z06 Blows a Motor

Brock sent out a Tweet that Dan Cochran was out of the running due to a blown motor in his Corvette Z06.  The irony being that this was Dan’s 20th One Lap event, with a sticker on the back of the car stating “20 and done”.

the Mustang

We made it to Nelson Ledges and it felt like the last hurdle in an epic journey of survival.  The track was cold and was about the least forgiving track surface we have ever been on.  Into the afternoon runs, I had a pause moment where I could take some photos, and I grabbed pictures of the Mustang snaking it’s way down the back curves after blowing the motor.  The result was a large crack in the block and piston wrist pin that was deposited on the track, ending the season for them. I repeatedly heard Tim chanting “I am not going to break at Nelson Ledges”, mentally willing the car to take the torture of that track. We survived with a smacked exhaust as the car bottoms out the track.  That will need some attention now that we are home.

the Ultima GTR

After battling electrical issues the entire trip, the car’s alternator finally took a dump. Running the car on batteries, up to the last event, the car wouldn’t run around the whole loop, leaving the Dubler team running out there to push it to a finish to at least eliminate the DNF on the record. The car left on a trailer, headed for Rennessy Fabrication for an overhaul before next year.

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Saturday, May 8, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

Dry Skid Pads and Ceremonies

We returned to the skid pad this morning, on a day that felt almost as cold and damp as last year.
Last year we looked at the schedule and arrived mildly late for the morning photo shoot. While the top 5 get shifted to the front of the group photo, the rest of the field is organized on how early they drove in the parking lot. Yes we are deliberately going for the media exposure, as that’s what pays for this trip. Sean and Chris would have been right along side of us if Chris wasn’t over by the hose trying to wash the car in a hurricane like rain storm. Somehow the guys with the $130k Porsches didn’t break out the buckets of soap. Let us know if you can tell when the magazine comes out.
The skid pad was damp, but drying quickly. The main factor was the cold. Cold tires don’t stick very well. I am still amazed at how well the Dunlops handle the skid pad on this 18 year old car running a 255 tire width.
The Evo X is running 275′s and the Subaru Sti is running 295′s so we are very happy with the results.
They had the reception among the tires again and went above and beyond this time for food. Last year was pretty tame, but this year they tool all of the states we visited and created a specialty dish from that state. Very cool.
Of course the Evo X group grabbed the spotlight from our table, taking 1st in the mid price sedan class and landing an amazing 7th overall. It is a testinment to all the hard work Chris has put into that car and depicts some excellent driving from both guys.

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Friday, May 7, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

Road America in Photos

I am working in reverse order using the first time we have arrived in a hotel before sunset to upload pictures. Here are my photos from Road America, which seems almost decades ago.

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Friday, May 7, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

Nelson Ledges the Final Road Course

We are headed back to South Bend after a welcome overcast day at Nelson Ledges. After a week on the road with absolutely unheard of weather, we are cooked.
After visiting some very prestine and nice race tracks, Nelson Ledges could be described as a field with some pavement in it. With barns retro-fitted into buildings the track surface at Nelson Ledges is anything but even.
Amanda Hennessy blew the side curtain airvags on her HHR after brushing a curb at Nelson.
We also realize it is the downhill time for the entire event. With South Bend on our sites finishing Nelson Ledges is a sign of victory for survivng the road courses.
One of the Mustangs threw a rod and blew a motor, which also helped bring the big finish line into focus for a lot of teams. I happened to grab the best photo of my week, being in the right place for once, which is still on the camera.
We are looking forward to getting into town before everything is closed for the first time, and possibly enjoying a real meal.

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Friday, May 7, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap

Photo’s from New Jersey

The car and Stephen held up fine.  We are pushing as hard as we can and having a great time doing it.  Here are my photos from the day.

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Thursday, May 6, 2010 Categorized under 2010 OneLap, 2010 Team VR4

Sponsor Support from Prodigy Surgical

I wasn’t done announcing all of the sponsors, as we had some people step up at the last minute to help us out. These guys also don’t have a website and aren’t looking for praise, but it is the only thing I can offer back to them, so I wanted to pay some recognition to Prodigy Surgical, who helped sponsor the VR4 around the country this year.

Car guys know that having the right tool in your hand can make all of the difference. The same hold true in the medical world. If you are in any form of orthopedics around the Rochester area, you already know who Wes and Joe are at Prodigy Surgical. They are the guys who bring the doctors the tools it takes to get the job done right and quickly in the operating room.

Thanks for keeping us rolling and for helping doctors all around the area look good.

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