Mazdeuce does One Lap of America 2017

One Lap in on my bucket list. If all goes well I'll be at Gingerman to watch.

The offers for help are all appreciated. I encourage anyone to stay and see us off on the day you come watch.
The job of the person not on track is to organize and have everything ready to pack the moment the car pulls into paddock. While the driver is stripping off his fire suit the co-driver is packing. Once the driver is back in regular clothes he lends a hand. We timed ourselves in 2015 and we had a turnaround time of 4-6 minutes. From the time the car stopped in paddock to when we were pulling back out to hit the road. This is how we save time. If you save 10 minutes three times a day you get to sleep for an extra half hour.

In reply to mazdeuce:

+1 to that. Chrissy and I had it down to a science, and combine that with avoiding stops in transits and how nice our car was for transits is why even though we were usually in the "all remaining cars" group, we usually arrived at the hotel before more than half of the others. At NCM we were the third car there.

I don't think we ever had less than 6 hours sleep last year.

In reply to Sonic:

And here I thought it was because your tire selection made your speedo read 10mph too low.

as a note, I'd suggest that you keep your "load items" under ~50#s each and easy/small enough that they can be loaded by one person. I made the mistake of consolidating too much stuff into a single box, making it difficult to load the car solo.

I'm working on my calendar for this coming season.

Anything change in your guys' plans? I'm planning on going to Gingerman and South Bend. If you need a place to crash I have a couple places you can probably use.

I was at NCM last year but was busy working another event on the site, maybe I'll have more time to take in one lap this year.

Annnnnnnd......I'm a terrible co-driver. Already. I waited a bit too long and the official hotels are full-ish. One was Completely full and in a couple of others we'll be sharing a king size bed. Luckily my co-driver and I are the kind of people who usually tent camp at the track and we're already crashing on my brother in laws couches for the nights in South Bend, but fair warning, once Brock releases the hotel list, get right on it.

so, are these the practice donuts coming off, in prep for fresh new hotness going on?

ironically, about to do about the same thing

I think those are the new ones. I know we're running Michelins of some sort. Co-driver has tracked on them before and likes them. I'm going to be the slow guy so tire choice was his call. All we have to do is mount the fire extinguisher and we're done I think. Having a car ready this early for One Lap seems unsporting somehow.

Since this car is a rallycross car and a daily it was filthy. First order of business was to fix that. I'll probably spend the whole of One Lap touching up things here and there, but these things clean up well. Did a little light fabrication. Very light. Used the same quick release I used in the Cadillac and mounted the fire extinguisher. Then we investigated the clunk in the rear. I think we found it. The car has a date with a welder next week to get the sway bar mount fixed.

this falls under "extreme duty" fatigue schedule, right?

how's the other side look?

The other side looks fine but I think the idea is to plate both of them. Pretty simple fix all things considered. Hopefully.

Well we finally booked hotels last night, with that perspective you were much more prepared than us trying to book hotels nearly a month before us!

now to order tires....

re:klodkrawler05

have you done a test pack yet?

Anybody got a good source for road triangles, that doesn't require shipping?

Not an official test pack with the exact items we're taking to OLOA but what we hoped was a fairly representative test pack while at Mid-O a couple weeks ago. driving gear/tools/spares/tire fit inside the car quickly and easily. soft goods will be in a roof box on top of the car that we can remove/install in sub 5 minutes.

What day are you guys driving through Frederick? Maybe we could meet up for lunch?

We pass through Frederick leaving Dominion on our way to Gingerman.

However Dominion isn't scheduled to end until 4pm and then we have 702 miles worth of commuting to get to MI before the morning, I can't speak for certain being a Noob to OLOA but I'm guessing time will be in precious short supply between leaving Dominion and Arriving at Gingerman.

However we will be at Dominion 8am-4pm waiting for our stints if you're able to stop by and put usernames to faces!

good luck

That's one of the drives that doesn't have any slack in it. I imagine we'll be full tilt from the moment come off track. We do have a ton of slack during the day at the track, but in general, once it's time to move, we're moving.

Co-driver sent me these pictures of the sway bar reinforcements. I believe they will do the job.
He also finished the brakes and the car is ready to go. Yes!
Time to break out the vinyl cutter.

Currently placed at the number 44 seed?

Impressive

Although the LTD is currently seeded #1... so there might be some adjustment between now and Thursday? Or did you request the number?

How does one see the seeded positions? I never seem to get any emails from Brock/One Lap, although I assume that is because my co-driver was the one who signed us up?

Honestly, there haven't been too many emails this year.

Brock and the team tend to slowly fill out the seeding via the Entrants Page

Some of the numbers are requested, though... based on preference, or hold-over numbers for returning competitors. Brock's got a pretty eloquent way of describing the process, the gist of it being "don't worry about the seeding"... the event has a mechanism to get the cars properly sorted.

Come Saturday you'll want to keep an eye on the Results Page

I assume Brock is taking the cars former national championship status into consideration.

The vinyl cutter is about to come out, who needs GRM member stickers?

Sleephyead
Klodkrawler05
Mazdeuce

Who else?

Grm member stickers????

I actually need to get with you after one lap about some decals for the challenge car.