Not an issue.. I think you are in a car that will be reliable, and i know how fast you are out of the box in anything you drive in. I think unlike last year, you probably wont have tire issues, and like last year, you will be around at the end.

It's hard for me to say, as I might be being more realistic. I know what times I have run on the track, and I know where that puts me in the running. The GTP is down on power, and we jsut dont have the time int he car to really turn the heat up like we need to. Do I think I can finish higher, sure.. It is just a matter of if I will push the car that hard with my worries about it lasting.


Well, that's a tough one this year. I don't expect you or DaVia to have issues, and Corcoran usually runs strong, with only a couple of odd issues the past two years.

Who do I really worry about though? Here it is:

Danny Popp/Mongoose GTP Version 1.0 - he is testing at Nelson today so we might know a lot more here shortly, but the fact is the car is having teething issues, and will only have 150 miles or so on it total when it heads for One Lap.. not a good position.

Lipperini/Acura NSX - If this car shows (a fact that is in question) forced-induction NSXs seem to be volitile at best. Lipperini drives hard, so if there is a weak link in the car - he will find it.

Krolewicz/Mongoose GTP Version 2.0 - This car has 2500 street miles and about 700 track miles right now - enough that I think it should fare ok on the track. What I worry about is the fact that it has only gone 200 miles on the road in one drive, so I am worried that we might see heat issues while over the road. The transmission scares me to death, and I hope we don't bake it driving 700-900 miles a night.

Clay/BMW 135i - When I talked to him at the BMW plant, he was talking about how fast this car was going to be, and I can tell you that the team is aiming for first. When he said the thing abotu "being fast enough to last" he didn't seem convinced. I have some serious questions about this car.

Winker/Hennessey Viper - The previous three years the Henessey Vipers have had issues.. ok in 2005 it was lack of development, but 2006 was engine and 2007 was clutch. The cars are tweaked, and it always puts parts in jeapordy.

The thing about the rest is, unless the mistakes are driver-induced or a fluke-occurance (like our rotor last year) the cars are reliable. Porsche 996 TT, Porsche GT3s, tank-like factory chryslers, subarus, etc.. so I think if we see issues from that group, it will be in the form of overdriving.

 

No problem, I really enjoy doing it, and I enjoy seeing everyone follow along at home, visiting us at tracks, etc. I know not everyone has the funding or opportunity to do this every year, or maybe ever, but it helps to share it with car guys.

It also means a lot to have you guys pulling for us (or sometimes pulling against us :-P )

 

Are they running the new config at CMP?

Do they ever publish individual lap times or is it that composite thing every time? I'd like to see what kind of times guys are putting together there on street tires.

I'd run NT-01's or Sport Cups if it were me.

 

Both configurations at CMP. the "old" in the morning, and the "new" in the afternoon.

Nitto NT01s nor Sport Cups are allowed, UTQG must be 140 or better, and I don't think Nitto is on the list.

They do not publish individual lap times.. but a rough estimate - depending on the track is to subtract two seconds from whatever the average is, some tracks, like VIR where you go by the start line at 145mph at speed, there is a larger difference.

Some front-running times from the last few years:

I have seen One Lap cars run 2:20s at Road America in the dry, without the motorcycle chicane while testing. On One Lap.. I have seen 2:50 - 2:55 in the wet, with the Chicane.

Mid Ohio, Club course, 1:33s.
VIR Full Course 2:04s
Roebling Road 1:16s
Putnam Park: 1:11s
Nelson Ledges: 1:11s
Mid America: 1:33s
BeaveRun: 1:01s

In testing on the new CMP configuration, there was a report of a 1:38 being run.


Essentially, these street-driven cars run SCCA T1 lap-record times. Of course without the speed through the corners provided by R-Compounds, the straight-line speeds make up for a lot. Some of the higher trap speeds I have seen:

Roebling Road - 168mph, Ultima GT-R
Indianapolis Raceway Park - 172mph Viper GTS-R w/twin turbo Chevrolet engine
I am sure VIR was near 180 being that I was in the high 150s in the AMS Evo and running 2:09s but there were no radar guns to prove it.

Some other interesting facts: (AMS Evo based)
I entered the main straight at Putnam Park doing 91mph
on the front straight at Roebling Road i was going from 100 - 160 at 9mph per second.
I still trapped over 150mph in the wet at Road America.


I will hopefully be posting fast single laps from every track this year, and hopefully some comparisons fromother cars as well.

 

On street tires...

Jebus I am so slow.

 

Everyone is slow compared to how we run One Lap, that's part of what's so impressive about it. The combination of high HP, good cars, and just flat-out being brave to the point of stupidity will produce those results.

At Autobahn South course in 2006, in a car I had never driven in the dry, on a track I had never driven and walked once, my first full lap (not counting the standing) was a 1:38.2 - A time fast enough to take fastest time at every NASA event there until I went back with r-comps and ran into the 33s. The scary part was I was like 9th overall or something. Ron Adee had run into the 1:32s, on street tires... (granted, it's his home track)


Brock Yates Jr. said to me at the BeaveRun school, "I like to watch the first couple groups, those cars are just so god-damn fast," and I remember sitting in the car at Watkins Glen in 2003, in "80% track-day mode" when Adee and Smith came down the front straight.

It took me a couple min to catch my breath, I had simply never seen a street car that fast, and there were FOUR of them on the track going faster than I had ever seen anything other than full-blown GT cars run.

Make no mistake, the guys at the front of the One Lap field are bat-S**t crazy.

 

GOOD-NESSSS!!!!!!

2:04 on streets at VIR???? OMG!

 

Want to know something even more scary? That's in three laps. As in, no practice, line up. Go. If given more practice, I am sure we would see a couple seconds faster.

Even scarier?
Randy Pobst took a STOCK (and on OEM tires) Porsche Carrera GT to a 2:02 at VIR. His response was, "that's a really scary car to drive, it has some high-speed oversteer issues" I think later he ran into the 2:00 range on OEM tires, but track-specific alignment.

 

What's the most popular tire that guys run on?

 

RE01s?

 

We used the Neova's last year. They began to get a little greasy on longer tracks, but overall they were fantastic. For a OneLap format, I think the Neova's have the edge over the RE01r's, but it's close as always.


Devin

 

If you run like 275s or whatever the largest size is for the RE01 R or Advan is, then you go with those.. or do like Rankins and I did last year and go on Continental Sport Contact 3s

Above that, the only choice is the Michelin Pilot Sport 2 (PS2) The GTP has 335 rear and 295 front, so we are on the Michelins.

 

Any updates?

 

Some updates:

Leh Keen took some time out from his One Lap of America preperations to drive in a Grand Am Race at VIR today and finished on the Podium..

...ok so maybe I have it backwards, but it will be good to have not just a current Grand AM driver in the event to fight for top honors, but one coming off of a good finish, way to go Leh.

 

With just over five days till we all converge on The Tire Rack wet skid pad.. we have some updates.

The rumor mills are swirling, the Evo board ready to cheer on evo drivers in, uh a Porsche and a Neon.. well.. ok. The Corvette boards are in a tizzy and anticipation is building for the 25th running of the TireRack One Lap of America.

Motorsports is about attention to detail of course, so what detail-oriented stuff is going on with just a week to go?

The 4-time consecutive and defending champion Mark DaVia has done some dyno-tuning on his car - the first ever on a chassis dyno, and to make sure everything is ok, he and co-driver Wickstrom will be going on a 400-mile roadtrip as PRACTICE in the next couple of days before putting the car back on the dyno to take a final look at things. That's right ladies and gentlemen, a week before the event this team is taking a little road trip as a systems check. Want to know why they have four wins in a row? Yea.. re-read this paragraph.

The Mongoose GTP team is going over the cars, making sure all the "i's" are dotted and the "t's" are crossed. Danny Popp had a good test day in the Mongoose GTP Version 2.0 on thursday - outrunning his own afternoon winning-time at Nelson Ledges in 2005. The car certainly has stopwatch strength.

Some teams have been scrambling for co-drivers with at least two advertising on the One Lap boards, and a third (the post-above-mentioned SRT4 may have found their guy.)

Now, this is an Evo board I know, but being as there are no Evos in the event, I am going to report on one of the now two Subaru teams in the event - hey, they have AWD right? (and also, I spent the better part of the last 24 hours with them)

Saturday, co-driver Steven Kornhaus came down to help out with some prepwork, and because I got to drive the car last year with little prep-work involved, I went ahead and helped out too.

First the car was wired for ethernet, cameras, computers and the like. Then the brakes were changed, there was a short engine mapping check on the road, and the car was scaled...


Steven "Godzilla" Rankins - so nicknamed because he beat up on Japanese favorite-son Tarzan Yamada in a couple of events last year, like Godzilla beat up on Tokyo - works on the computer and tune in the Boxer4Racing/Continental Tires STI.



"Godzilla's co-driver, Steven Kornhaus - now nicknamed "Mothra" because he also beat up on Tarzan, but doesn't quite have the physical stature of Rankins - works on the brakes of the STI.


"Mothra" keeping his eye on air-fuel ratios on the drive to dinner.

So the weekend was over right? Not quite. This morning the Boxer4Racing/Continental monsters took their car down to Carolina Motorsports Park to do some testing.. not on the big track, but on the skid pad.


Kornhaus takes some laps on the wet skid pad at CMP, he was steady, and his numbers were good, and compared to the dry skid pad numbers of the SRT 4 when it was testing, this looks like they should be way closer to the front than Rankins was in 2007.

So.. t-minus five days and counting...