Mazdeuce does One Lap 2018, Round Four!

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

Was good meeting you too.

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

Just noticed your silencer question. Without a doubt it was the best $15 we could have possibly spent. We can have conversations and sleep and not arrive with a general buzz about our heads. I only wore ear plugs twice for sleeping and that was because Brian likes to listen to the radio louder than I like when sleeping. Just the best thing ever.

One of those One Lap days. The dry skid pad event is run in reverse order, slow cars first. We got about 25 cars through the group before it changed from a cold morning to a cold wet morning. Because of this we ended up 14th in the event and 42nd overall. This was quite an improvement from our 60th last year but we didn't accumulate the points to pull off a class win. We were happy with 2/3 and the trophy that goes with it but that mistake/tire wall thing hurt more than just the car. We have plans for next year.

We're about to stop for the night and the plan is to recover at home for a day or so before getting thoughts and pictures organized for a recap post. 

Home. Whole family is out at a ball game which is ok. I'm going to drink a big glass of lemonade because I don't have to worry that I might have to make an unscheduled pee stop and lose sleep time because of it. Another amazing week. 

Why do I do One Lap? 
Having just finished my fourth one, I know why and I'm going to try and explain it in this post through the story of the year. 

Is the car ready? Is any car ever ready? This my fourth year at One Lap and we were running the same 2009 Civic Si as last year. The stock 130k mile suspension was pulled and replaced with moderately good coilovers that worked well. We somehow managed to cram  a set to 275/35R18 tires under all four corners on 18x9.5 wheels that had come on a CRV that Brian's dad had bought. Dumb luck, but they fit with some fender rolling so we went with it. At the behest of my wife we also bolted in an Autopower four point roll bar, a race seat that I picked up for cheap from on old One Lap co-driver and a six point harness. We were safer and more secure in the car over the week though the jungle gym in the former back seat make packing problematic. Always a compromise. On the way up we ran into our first problem. During a deluge in Illinois the car was sputtering over half throttle. We traced it to the recent lack of fender liners between the new big tires and the cold air intake. A quick stop at the parts store turned the long snaking cold air intake into a short ram and we were back in business. The more a car becomes a track car the less it acts as a street car in daily life and the more problems need to get sorted on the drive. Something to keep in mind. 

Parking lot at registration. All the cars. From a nearly stock Miata to the Big Bad Wolf S2000, to a McLaren wearing paper plates. An amazing field this year. There is no way to describe the breadth of cars that compete together over the week. 

The week consists of a wet skid pad at the beginning, a dry skid pad at the end, and an autocross and drag race sometime during the week which all count for points and are all important, but the real meat of the event is the road course time trials. We are gridded in groups that are roughly correlated to speed potential. You don't want to catch the guy in front of you or be caught as passing adds an element of danger if either person itn't paying attention. You never know who you might be gridded next to when the week starts. I ended up behind some motorcycle guy early on.  

The format for the time trials is a sighting lap, a standing start with approximately 10 seconds between cars, and you get three laps. It's simple, but completely different than what you're used to. The sighting lap is at maybe 75% speed so you get to see the track, but you don't really know it, and for the most part the bulk of the field has never turned a wheel on this surface. Then the first lap is different than the rest because of the standing start and a tendency to take what you think you know about the track and turn it into braking and shifting and turning. Usually you get things mostly right and come off thinking that with a couple more laps you could shave seconds off. Occasionally you get it wrong like I did this year. Brave braking with very little space between the track and a tire wall is a bad combination. Did I mention that this isn't my car? 

The walls at Gateway Motorsports Park claimed four cars. All of them finished the event with differing degrees of mechanical repair. I talked to all of the drivers and all of us considered ourselves lucky beyond words. The event is serious. Right about 10% of the cars that start in South Bend don't finish. Some times it's track incidents, lots of mechanicals, and not uncomonly traffic incidents on the transits. We had two cars hit in traffic this year. One a minor bump on a historically significant car, and another destroyed by an inattentave (non One Lap) driver that required a stop at the hospital for a group of competitiors from half way around the world. 
One of the ways we try to ease the on-track mistakes is through track walks. Almost all of the competitors are at the track absurdly early to get a peek at something they've never seen before. In some ways it's like high stakes autocross. We can walk or use bikes, but lots of people are using scooters these days. They pack small and enable you to get in three rolling laps instead of one on foot. 

There is nothing quite like the morning at a One Lap track. It's not like a track weekend or an autocross. If your alarm is set early enough you can be the first guy there. 

And so many of the tracks are just beautiful rolling roads through the countryside. You get to walk them in the cool of the morning with your best friends, and later in the day drive around them as fast as you think you can. 

The field consists of mostly normal people, fast people to be sure, but regular car guys and girls. There are always a few hot shoes that show up and that usually adds very positive things to the event. At Cresson we were paddocked next to Andy Pilgrim in the Michelin entry. Over the week we ate breakfast with him at a hotel, chatted, and just hung out. Regular car guy stuff, except I'm a mid pack local autocrosser and he's Andy Pilgrim. One Lap stuff. 

There are also opportunites to hang out in the evenings after you get to the hotel, especially if you end up in a city like New Orleans. Some of us are sane and go to bed, but you don't have to. This picture has a five time winner of One Lap, a 25 time competitor (who rented the limo that got them safely to Bourbon Street and back) my co-driver, and that motorcycle guy who keeps hanging around as well as a few people that I can't remember because the week is absurdly long. 

My favorite new people this year were the NSX team. We found ourseves spending the week talking to a guy who runs a kangaroo petting zoo in Canada and entered the event in is daily driven 1990 Acura NSX. They told stories about a Capybara licking someones ankle like a tootsie pop (including the bite at the end) getting hugged by a 6'2" red Kangaroo, and flocks of baby emu's chasing toddlers around. A change in subject could lead them to telling more stories about the Canadian Air Force in Afghanistan and keeping track of 40-60 combat aircraft and once from a roving flying command center. You can't make up the stories that these guys have lived. 

We drove some big fast tracks that weren't the strong suit of the Civic. Around us were reminders to be brave, but not too brave and that tire walls are softer than bare concrete. Did I mention how lucky we were? 

The whole goal is to end up here, running and driving, back in South Bend for the dry skid pad. It was only on the last day the everyone was reminded that One Lap is an all weather event. In every other year I've run there has been at least one or two days when you have to lace up your big kid shoes and run a track you don't know in the rain. This year was dry until the closing hour of the event when the dry skid pad became another wet skid pad for half the field. More One Lap things. 

So how did we do, and does that even matter? On overall position we 42 out of 71 cars. This was a significant improvement on our 60th place finish in 2017. We were 2nd in a class of three for Economy car and that came down to the final couple of events. The car that beat us was well driven, had 100 extra hoursepower on us and four driven wheels. Did we want to beat them? Yes. Are we upset that we didn't? Not really. We hung out with them all week, talked cars, forced induction, and the people who we should talk to about making our Honda faster. We both left the event wanting to make our cars a bit faster so that we can have another battle to the end next year. Great people everywhere you look. 

We were talking about next year before we even started this year. By the ride home we had a plan in place. Suspension bushing refresh, clean up the aero on the car, and improve braking, again, so we stop having this issue. 

Fewer mistakes on track (no walls) and some off season practice should get us to where we need to be. Maybe. Either way, we'll be in South Bend next spring, at this point we can't not do it. There will be new tracks, new friends, old friends, and the same car, just a bit better. We'll do another 6,000 mile drive and get just enough sleep to make this seem possible, and maybe reasonable. 

Edit: This post was supposed to be an event wrap up and I was going to write another post about why I do One Lap and so should you. I'm not fully recovered yet and I kept drifting back and forth between those two goals. Expect some revisions. I need a nap. 

as an FYI, there were three cars hit in traffic this year.  Two were totaled, one finished the event with a bunch of packing tape.  Unfortunately, I never got around to hearing the story of the third.  Kind of odd that they were all GM's, and 2 of 3 were Crammits?  

Great re-cap and awesome pictures! You guys were making us regret not being there all week. See you next spring!

Found this picture while sorting through Brian's shots. GRM paint protection plan. 

That right there is suitable for rattle can clear coat .....kinda like WWII aces decals on P51 Mustangs

Hey your write up is an early B'day present.....tomorrow is a milestone....65 yrs YOUNG!!!!!

Down here in D'Iberville Miss... just up the road from Pete G (haven't met yet) and looking forward 

to swingin' by the compound (if  i may) on my way back to SW Mont Co and sayin' a big HEY!!