Coloring Challenge
Coming up with a design for the car is a challenge. For the last two years, we had the most photogenic car on the track, not to mention it reflected the iconic years of Mitsubishi racing. So while we work to find a design for the car, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to get some help.
We are looking around for a legitimate design for the car. This may or may not help us find it, but we also want to see what your kids can come up with. We have made up a coloring page for them to help us fill in with some color. Granted the car is black, so it might be hard for us to bring their designs to life, but it does create a certain amount of entertainment value.
We’ll post some of the more “entertaining” designs back to the site.
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FP GREEN Evo X Turbo
Let’s define what the ideal turbo would look like for One Lap of America to go into a Mitsubishi Evo X. First you want to find a turbo that can push over 50lb/min in order to create enough power to be competitive. Ideally you want a turbo that does not need a large amount of surrounding modifications, just to make it work.
You want a turbo that
0Track Updates at NOLA
There are some track updates to watch closely as the months move on. NOLA is under construction and is in process of battling off some rain storms this week. In 2009 we were supposed to run at BlueGrass, but it never finished in time, so we keeping an eye on what is happening with this site. They do have a very informative blog and a Facebook page if you want to
0Evo X Winter Hibernation
The car is awake and awaiting transportation to Canada. It wasn’t very happy about the early wakeup call, but the car did stretch it’s legs to see if it could see it’s shadow this week. After all we can’t wait for a groundhog to decide out fate.
The Dunlop Direzza’s are amazing on the tarmac and in the rain, but they really
02011 Week 1 Highlights
It is hard to imagine that it is January and we are so busy trying to put a car together which doesn’t happen until May. The first week of the new year and the new season have been rather busy.
While Tim is out there making the calls and putting the parts together, I have been flopping the site over and bringing the marketing pieces that might fund this little adventure into place.
Logo Design
It really stinks to have to come up with a new logo. We had a really cool logo for the VR4
which came from
02011 Evo X Build up to One Lap
This past month has been a whirlwind. To the outside world we went into a winter hibernation perhaps to enjoy the holidays and to take a break from the One Lap work preparing for Magnus to do the work. While that sounds really nice, nothing could be further from the truth. While you rested over the holidays with visions of turbos and intercoolers dancing through your heads, we have been busy little elves setting up the ultimate naughty and nice list of vendors. After all what good is it having Magnus build up the ultimate One Lap car if you don’t give them anything to work with?
The result? Starting in February we get to
02010 Posters
It is that time of year when we break the website, clean off the table and start all over again to get ready for a new season. Before we close out the year we want to take a pause to thank everybody who made it possible for us to put this team together.
In 2009 Tim and Stephen came up with the idea making posters for our sponsors, highlighting the epic moments of our journey. The posters were well received and we knew we wanted to make it happen again this year.
Building almost a tradition, we are really proud to be sending out our 2010 posters to everybody who sponsored the VR4 around the country. We are waiting for USPS to deliver some more shipping tubes to get them all out, but you should see something in the upcoming weeks.
Though you might want to get your hands on one these for yourself, the only way is to sponsor the car. It is much cooler to know they are hanging in only a select few garages around the country.
Thanks again for your help in 2010 and we are excited to bring you into the 2011 season.
0Magnus Motorsports sponsors RochesterDSM One Lap car for 2011 event.
Rochester NY (December 6th 2010)
The One Lap of America team of Stephen Burke and Tim Harper have partnered with Magnus Motorsports to help build a competitive track car for the 2011 One Lap of America race. Marco Passante and the team at Magnus Motorsport are going to transform our stock EVO X from a competent track car to a monster, track clawing, Goliath slaying machine.
0and so it begins
Let me tell you how wonderful it sounds to be entering a Mitsubishi Evo X into One Lap of America for 2011.
First of all, One Lap is a survival race, so our expectations of taking a stock Evo X and surviving are pretty good. The car has no mechanical issues, hasn’t seen any of the NY winter roads and isn’t starting to rot out, and for the most part would be a great car to take a cruise across the country in. It has A/C, Recarro seats, and the factory Rockford-Fosgate stereo for easy cruising no matter how hot it gets in Florida and New Orleans.
Here is where we fall into a large problem. There is no way in hell we are going to be able to roll into Indiana in a completely stock car.
0A change in the lineup
RochesterDSM team announcement.
The RochesterDSM team, after a long and lengthy struggle, has decided to make a change for the 2011 One Lap of America race. In 2011 the 1992 Mitsubishi Galant VR4 which has served us proudly, will be parked and in its place will be Steve’s 2008 EVO X. This was not an easy choice for us as we have enjoyed not only the power, performance, and fun the VR4 offers but the support of the entire VR4 and DSM community along the way. In all honesty as much as we love the VR4 it was the connection the car had to the DSM community we feared loosing the most. But, as with all things cool, there comes a time when a change is needed. The VR4 is a competitive, fast, and fun car but it is also almost 19 years old and has over 217,000 miles on the clock. Most of those miles have been racing miles and the platform is showing its age. Last year we suffered through a transmission failure pre-launch, a blown head gasket, a rocker arm that flew off, wheel bearing failures, and brake issues. Most of those problems were obviously the result of a limited budget but even with more support the car was full of weak links that come with age. That’s where the EVO X comes into play. At our disposal is Steve’s EVO X brand new and ready for racing right out of the box. In its stock form it can corner right along side the VR4 and with some upgrades it can be as good or better in a strait line too. The VR4, in all its glory, is a still an 18 year old car that only 3000 were brought into the country. That makes marketing a huge uphill battle. Most, if not all, the major DSM part suppliers have long ago moved on from the DSM/VR4 platform and have for years only produced new parts for the EVO platform. Racing the EVO X in the 2011 One Lap of America brings us into the modern day along with our sponsors.
This does not mean the VR4 is being mothballed. Tim is still racing the VR4 and has quite a few upgrades planned so we can all look forward to his build blogs and race updates. In the next couple of weeks the RochesterDSM team will have some pretty exciting announcements as we team up with some powerhouse Mitsubishi and other well known shops and manufactures.
We want to be sure that as we park the VR4 we personally thank the people and shops that helped make it successful and by far the most popular car in the 2009 and 2010 One Lap races.
Ryan Hertz who along with the fine folks at www.galantvr4.org have come through time and time again not only with financial support but with parts, supplies, advice, and a place to sit and great home cooked food to eat at the races. Some of our best memories are of the people we’ve met along the way. The cheering section at Autobahn, the home cooking at Road America, and meeting Curtis for the first time somewhere in Tennessee when he brought us the upper control arms we needed to finish the race.
Garfield Wright who brought the full power of TunersNation.com to (www.tunersnation.com) help us with the parts we need, money to help the budget, and some really cool work behind the scenes to help bring other vendors to the table.
Curtis the man, the myth, the legend. What can we say? In the 2009 when we broke a rear upper control arm our rookie One Lap was finished before it even really got heated up. We sent out a SOS via the Internet and out of nowhere Curtis comes to the rescue with parts he sourced from his own car. From there we have built a great friendship and partnership and Curtis is responsible for a lot of what “is” the One Lap VR4. There is not a single person who sits in the VR4 who isn’t just blown away with his killer gauge plates and custom logo’s. His work on the wing pylons, with little notice, no time, no budget, and without having the wing to work with, is his Pièce de résistance.
Emery Kapral and Street tuned motorsports (www.streettunedmotorsports.com) who personally opened up his shop, mechanics, and his tuning expertise to bring some real power to the VR4.
Thomas Dorris, who provided us with the ECMlink V3 which is by far the best damn tuning tool on the planet. (www.ecmtuning.com)
Art Hoffman / Forced Performance (www.forcedperformance.com) / teamNABR.com …Art loaned us his personal FP3052 turbo to give the VR4 some real bite and the fine folks at Forced Performance provided us with the warranty basically saying “go beat the hell out of the turbo and if you break it we’ll fix it”…The turbo was flawless and easily made 385whp on a conservative tune.
Pina Motorsports (www.pinamotorsports.com) who sent us a set of there built-proof chrommoly upper control arms and along with Tunersnation.com a set of rear suspension bushings that totally transformed the handling of the VR4.
Gabor (www.gabormayer.com/) who provided all the killer vinyl for the VR4 that made it the most photographed car the last two years including some shots in Motor Trend magazine.
Autobhan Tom who donated a set of adjustable cam gears that made all the difference in the way the VR4 grunted out of the corners.
www.throttlebodys.com who put a killer TB on the car and has, by far, the best customer service on the planet.
Wilson Performance (www.rhwracing.com) who loaned us a trackmate camera system for killer in car track footage with speed and g-force displays.
Harry Blanchard at www.three-speed.com/ who’s scatter sheild protected our ass and who’s support helped us make it all happen.
These fine folks helped make it all happen…
East Rochester Public Library Staff
Children’s Medical Group
Joe and Wes from Prodigy Surgical
Finally we thank our friends, family, spouses who help us, support us, and put up with us as we lived our dreams in the trusty VR4.
We look forward to our new adventures in the EVO X and we’ll be sharing it all with you. There are some really cool projects in the works as well as some new partnerships to go along with our current sponsors. Stay tuned…this is going to be epic!
Tim Harper / Stephen Burke
