Chris Wirth & Sean Caron 2011 One Lap of America Videos - 6th Overall / 1st in class!
May 22, 2011, 08:51 AM
#1
Chris Wirth & Sean Caron 2011 One Lap of America Videos - 6th Overall / 1st in class!
I’ve been struggling to find the time to post all the videos and do a final writeup for the 2011 One Lap of America event we recently participated in. This will be a somewhat long writeup but really the One Lap of America is like a mini race season all compacted into 8 days and 5000 miles worth of driving once you add in getting to the starting line and returning safely home. Many thanks to everyone that contributed to the success of Team Igloo Racing for the event as some of the cars had a really tough sequence of events to overcome to even finish the race. Even with all the problems we still raised over $118,000 for the Kids with Cancer society and that was just counting checks in hand! People and Businesses are continuing to give contributions to this great cause and I can’t begin to thank everyone enough for that.
We ended up placing 1st in class and 6th overall in our car, which is a one spot improvement over last year. Honestly if we had a few more consistant results and if I actually practiced for the skid pad events we would have had a shot at 3rd or 4th overall but there were a few hurdles holding us back. Right after the first of 18 events we found ourselves clawing our way back through the field and we definitely made it harder than last year to finish in the top 10. There were also some really consistant professional drivers like Leh Keen and Billy Johnson competing this year along with a long list of very fast cars that weren’t always running in 100% capacity. Another factor was that we were seeded as a top 5 car which meant we had to be at the tracks the earliest, but we often found ourselves one of the last few cars to leave since we had to make sure all our team cars were able to continue. This took away directly from our sleep schedule and several nights of arriving at the hotel at 1 to 3 am in the morning caused some horrific driver fatigue.
Luckily STM helped me prepare a car with a number of key things that helped make it reasonably fast AND reliable, critical components in order to finish well in this event. We had relatively few issues on our own car which amounted to some reservoirs loosening up on our suspension that were easily corrected at Barber. The casualty rate in the Mid-priced sedan category was brutal this year though. There were 75 cars total and 11 in our class. By the end of the event only 6 cars were running and 3 of them were Team Igloo Racing cars! The Subaru’s were fast but couldn’t keep their engines together for various reasons. Our RochesterDSM friends in the Magnus prepped Evo X had a freak engine fire out of the blue which really hit home that you can never be 100% certain your car will survive.
Probably the two biggest factors that allowed us to score so many top 5 results at the road course events was driver confidence and car preperation. The STM GTX30 turbo setup was a perfect balance of power delivery for my stock internals engine and I ended up tuning it to about 560 crank HP at 26 psi. We avoided reving the car too high and I tuned out the low end torque from hitting too hard which allowed the engine to bring us to the finish. The real test was staying WOT around the 31* banks of Daytona International Speedway where I had the car going over 150 mph in the turns and easily reached 165mph in he straights with the engine just shy of 8000 RPM’s. I setup the TPS tables to automatically dial back the throttle from 100% at 7800 down to 30% throttle at 8000 which worked out perfectly and allowed me to concentrate on driving the car without worrying about bouncing the rev limiter.
The driver confidence came from Sean and I being able to push the car further to the limits without risking my daily driver car. Luckily I had Summit Point and Autobahn south course under my belt as tracks I was familiar with and Sean was in his element for the Auto-x event where he could really explore the handling limits of the car in a relatively safe environment since it was scored best out of three. Sean has a really good feel for the road courses even if he has never been on them before and that showed with great results from Carolina Motorsports Park and Barber Motorsports Park. I was also amazed how stable the car was at Daytona without any Aero changes besides an SSP undertray. Not once did I have to worry about the car getting light as I pinned the throttle around the speedway! We expected to fall behind on that event yet scored a decent 8th and 6th place finish despite being gear limited in top speed. I’m sure the 285mm wide Hankook tires play a part in our success as well.
In the final few events I managed a 3rd place finish at Autobahn which tied us for 5th overall with the #2 GTR driven by Catesby Jones and helped open up some breathing room to the #7 Twincharged Civic that was charging hard driven by William Chan. Turns out we needed a 15th or better finish on the Dry Skid pad to secure 6th overall since Chan had just ran a 1.065g. Catesby rattled off a 1.120g giving them 1st in the Dry Skid Pad despite taking all 4 wheels into the grass and risking a DNF. Luckily I ended up finishing 13th in the Dry Skid Pad with a 1.007g run which was my second time ever driving on a skid pad. Considering we ran 18 points events over the 8 day race it really came down to the wire!
When it came to the rest of Team Igloo racing, AMS Performance came through in a major way with sending a tech with parts in hand via airplane the same day of the turbo failure on Barry’s Evo X. For most companies, talking about your excellent tech support and actually standing behind your products can be two different things, but AMS went above and beyond to get Barry’s Evo X back in fighting shape! While it would be difficult to come back from missing any of the 18 points events, this still allowed the car to finish the race after a week of torture. Also I need to mention again that Stephen Burke and Tim Harper driving the #26 Magnus Evo X GSR can’t be thanked enough for assisting into the early hours of the morning to get Barry’s car back on the road knowing that their own car was burnt to a crisp.
It appears that the turbo support bracket bolt was what started the chain of events although you would never suspect that the precision 6262 turbo housing would crack like that. Plans are to safety wire that hard to reach bolt so that nothing like this happens in the future. When it comes to surviving the One Lap event there are three grades of parts.
1) Street Driving Parts – Do fine on the street but can show weakness when raced, definitely need spares
2) Racing Parts – stand up to the punishment of racing but might need higher maintenance, might need spares
3) One Lap of America Parts – withstand 5000 miles worth of racing and street driving heat cycles with zero maintenance and no spares.
I would also like to give a hats off to the Team Igloo Racing #57 Evo X MR driven by Paul Seto, Wally Qiu, and Robin Ng for a great effort finishing 19th overall and 3rd in class. Consistent finishes kept them in the hunt for 2nd in class and this years field was even tougher than last years. I’ll take some credit in that I personally prepped the car with the help of STM to ensure they had a car that would be rock solid reliable and be easy to drive close to the limits. They kept Team Empire in their #25 Evo IX RS consisting of Jarrod Hoops and David Bruzewski honest until the last few events, a strong team that definitely had a shot at placing higher if they didn’t have so many issues to contend with. Still for a first year out they also managed a very respectable 15th place overall!
That’s a clean sweep with Evo’s for the Mid-priced Sedan class this year!
Thank you to Barry Stewart with Igloo Building Supplies for being a major sponsor of my car and making it top 5 capable this year. I’m not sure we could have seen the same success without your help! It was also an honor to race along side the entire crew and Sean and I look forward to running more racing events with you in the future!
Garfield at TunersNation also came through in a big way when we needed to get some better brakes on both my car and Dr. Seto’s Evo X MR. He visited us at the Daytona International Speedway with some cool shirts and at least got a parade lap ride around the speedway with Sean driving for his troubles. We also lost some lug keys in the shuffle to bring Barry’s car back from disaster and was able to overnight a set to us at the next track we visited.
Emery and crew at STM were the absolute best people to work with for this year’s track preperation. Cory assembled a custom GTX30 top mount turbo system that was the key ingredient for the wide powerband the car had. Initially I was skeptical that a single scroll .83 housing turbo could pull this off but his near equal length runners synced up almost perfectly allowing 20 psi spool by 3800 rpm in 4th gear while delivering 450 whp on their “heartbreaker” Mustang Dyno. We easily had an extra 60 crank HP over last years setup and this car will be an absolute monster on E85. Plans are already in the works to get a 2,2L engine upgrade, some aero work, and a taller final drive installed towards the end of this racing season, I can’t wait for what is to come!
Many thanks to Sean Caron and his family for letting me borrow his driving skills as an excellent co-driver for the entire event. I’m not sure you could find anyone better to share this experience with and his dedication to making it happen in every aspect are much appreciated.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the track videos! The full article with all pictures is at our blog site here:
1st in class & 6th overall for the 2011 One Lap of America!
We ended up placing 1st in class and 6th overall in our car, which is a one spot improvement over last year. Honestly if we had a few more consistant results and if I actually practiced for the skid pad events we would have had a shot at 3rd or 4th overall but there were a few hurdles holding us back. Right after the first of 18 events we found ourselves clawing our way back through the field and we definitely made it harder than last year to finish in the top 10. There were also some really consistant professional drivers like Leh Keen and Billy Johnson competing this year along with a long list of very fast cars that weren’t always running in 100% capacity. Another factor was that we were seeded as a top 5 car which meant we had to be at the tracks the earliest, but we often found ourselves one of the last few cars to leave since we had to make sure all our team cars were able to continue. This took away directly from our sleep schedule and several nights of arriving at the hotel at 1 to 3 am in the morning caused some horrific driver fatigue.
Luckily STM helped me prepare a car with a number of key things that helped make it reasonably fast AND reliable, critical components in order to finish well in this event. We had relatively few issues on our own car which amounted to some reservoirs loosening up on our suspension that were easily corrected at Barber. The casualty rate in the Mid-priced sedan category was brutal this year though. There were 75 cars total and 11 in our class. By the end of the event only 6 cars were running and 3 of them were Team Igloo Racing cars! The Subaru’s were fast but couldn’t keep their engines together for various reasons. Our RochesterDSM friends in the Magnus prepped Evo X had a freak engine fire out of the blue which really hit home that you can never be 100% certain your car will survive.
Probably the two biggest factors that allowed us to score so many top 5 results at the road course events was driver confidence and car preperation. The STM GTX30 turbo setup was a perfect balance of power delivery for my stock internals engine and I ended up tuning it to about 560 crank HP at 26 psi. We avoided reving the car too high and I tuned out the low end torque from hitting too hard which allowed the engine to bring us to the finish. The real test was staying WOT around the 31* banks of Daytona International Speedway where I had the car going over 150 mph in the turns and easily reached 165mph in he straights with the engine just shy of 8000 RPM’s. I setup the TPS tables to automatically dial back the throttle from 100% at 7800 down to 30% throttle at 8000 which worked out perfectly and allowed me to concentrate on driving the car without worrying about bouncing the rev limiter.
The driver confidence came from Sean and I being able to push the car further to the limits without risking my daily driver car. Luckily I had Summit Point and Autobahn south course under my belt as tracks I was familiar with and Sean was in his element for the Auto-x event where he could really explore the handling limits of the car in a relatively safe environment since it was scored best out of three. Sean has a really good feel for the road courses even if he has never been on them before and that showed with great results from Carolina Motorsports Park and Barber Motorsports Park. I was also amazed how stable the car was at Daytona without any Aero changes besides an SSP undertray. Not once did I have to worry about the car getting light as I pinned the throttle around the speedway! We expected to fall behind on that event yet scored a decent 8th and 6th place finish despite being gear limited in top speed. I’m sure the 285mm wide Hankook tires play a part in our success as well.
In the final few events I managed a 3rd place finish at Autobahn which tied us for 5th overall with the #2 GTR driven by Catesby Jones and helped open up some breathing room to the #7 Twincharged Civic that was charging hard driven by William Chan. Turns out we needed a 15th or better finish on the Dry Skid pad to secure 6th overall since Chan had just ran a 1.065g. Catesby rattled off a 1.120g giving them 1st in the Dry Skid Pad despite taking all 4 wheels into the grass and risking a DNF. Luckily I ended up finishing 13th in the Dry Skid Pad with a 1.007g run which was my second time ever driving on a skid pad. Considering we ran 18 points events over the 8 day race it really came down to the wire!
When it came to the rest of Team Igloo racing, AMS Performance came through in a major way with sending a tech with parts in hand via airplane the same day of the turbo failure on Barry’s Evo X. For most companies, talking about your excellent tech support and actually standing behind your products can be two different things, but AMS went above and beyond to get Barry’s Evo X back in fighting shape! While it would be difficult to come back from missing any of the 18 points events, this still allowed the car to finish the race after a week of torture. Also I need to mention again that Stephen Burke and Tim Harper driving the #26 Magnus Evo X GSR can’t be thanked enough for assisting into the early hours of the morning to get Barry’s car back on the road knowing that their own car was burnt to a crisp.
It appears that the turbo support bracket bolt was what started the chain of events although you would never suspect that the precision 6262 turbo housing would crack like that. Plans are to safety wire that hard to reach bolt so that nothing like this happens in the future. When it comes to surviving the One Lap event there are three grades of parts.
1) Street Driving Parts – Do fine on the street but can show weakness when raced, definitely need spares
2) Racing Parts – stand up to the punishment of racing but might need higher maintenance, might need spares
3) One Lap of America Parts – withstand 5000 miles worth of racing and street driving heat cycles with zero maintenance and no spares.
I would also like to give a hats off to the Team Igloo Racing #57 Evo X MR driven by Paul Seto, Wally Qiu, and Robin Ng for a great effort finishing 19th overall and 3rd in class. Consistent finishes kept them in the hunt for 2nd in class and this years field was even tougher than last years. I’ll take some credit in that I personally prepped the car with the help of STM to ensure they had a car that would be rock solid reliable and be easy to drive close to the limits. They kept Team Empire in their #25 Evo IX RS consisting of Jarrod Hoops and David Bruzewski honest until the last few events, a strong team that definitely had a shot at placing higher if they didn’t have so many issues to contend with. Still for a first year out they also managed a very respectable 15th place overall!
That’s a clean sweep with Evo’s for the Mid-priced Sedan class this year!
Thank you to Barry Stewart with Igloo Building Supplies for being a major sponsor of my car and making it top 5 capable this year. I’m not sure we could have seen the same success without your help! It was also an honor to race along side the entire crew and Sean and I look forward to running more racing events with you in the future!
Garfield at TunersNation also came through in a big way when we needed to get some better brakes on both my car and Dr. Seto’s Evo X MR. He visited us at the Daytona International Speedway with some cool shirts and at least got a parade lap ride around the speedway with Sean driving for his troubles. We also lost some lug keys in the shuffle to bring Barry’s car back from disaster and was able to overnight a set to us at the next track we visited.
Emery and crew at STM were the absolute best people to work with for this year’s track preperation. Cory assembled a custom GTX30 top mount turbo system that was the key ingredient for the wide powerband the car had. Initially I was skeptical that a single scroll .83 housing turbo could pull this off but his near equal length runners synced up almost perfectly allowing 20 psi spool by 3800 rpm in 4th gear while delivering 450 whp on their “heartbreaker” Mustang Dyno. We easily had an extra 60 crank HP over last years setup and this car will be an absolute monster on E85. Plans are already in the works to get a 2,2L engine upgrade, some aero work, and a taller final drive installed towards the end of this racing season, I can’t wait for what is to come!
Many thanks to Sean Caron and his family for letting me borrow his driving skills as an excellent co-driver for the entire event. I’m not sure you could find anyone better to share this experience with and his dedication to making it happen in every aspect are much appreciated.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the track videos! The full article with all pictures is at our blog site here:
1st in class & 6th overall for the 2011 One Lap of America!
Last edited by Hiboost; May 22, 2011 at 09:20 AM.
May 22, 2011, 08:52 AM
#2
Here are the videos!
Event #2 - Grissom AFB Auto-X (Sean Caron – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkIkn46SOz4
Event #3 - Summit Point Raceway - Main Course (Chris Wirth – Session 1 – Finished 4th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbpiKvGbISg
Event #4 - Summit Point Raceway – Main Course (Chris Wirth – Session 2 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE7QiDWCYe4
Event #6 - Carolina Motorsports Park (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 3rd overall)
Video Coming…
Event #9 - Daytona International Speedway (Chris Wirth – Session 2 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59FDiHMejY0
Event #12 - Circuit Grand Bayou (Sean Caron – Session 1 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdUWcEerZzQ
Event #13 - Circuit Grand Bayou (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 5th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WywrEmY2I
Event #15 - Barber Motorsports Park (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 7th overall)
Video Coming…
Event #17 - Autobahn Country Club - South Circuit (Chris Wirth – Finished 3rd overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lugLAqlMxtk
Team Igloo Racing Highlights Video (Video of all three Team Igloo Racing Evo X's)
Video Coming…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkIkn46SOz4
Event #3 - Summit Point Raceway - Main Course (Chris Wirth – Session 1 – Finished 4th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbpiKvGbISg
Event #4 - Summit Point Raceway – Main Course (Chris Wirth – Session 2 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE7QiDWCYe4
Event #6 - Carolina Motorsports Park (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 3rd overall)
Video Coming…
Event #9 - Daytona International Speedway (Chris Wirth – Session 2 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59FDiHMejY0
Event #12 - Circuit Grand Bayou (Sean Caron – Session 1 – Finished 6th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdUWcEerZzQ
Event #13 - Circuit Grand Bayou (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 5th overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WywrEmY2I
Event #15 - Barber Motorsports Park (Sean Caron – Session 2 – Finished 7th overall)
Video Coming…
Event #17 - Autobahn Country Club - South Circuit (Chris Wirth – Finished 3rd overall)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lugLAqlMxtk
Team Igloo Racing Highlights Video (Video of all three Team Igloo Racing Evo X's)
Video Coming…
Trending Topics
May 22, 2011, 09:27 PM
#9
Thanks everyone, I do my best to make the Evo's look respectable. 
Having an 800+ horsepower Nissan GTR is no guarantee that you will win, but it certainly helps your chances if you are a decent driver. Give the keys to a guy like Leh Keen and he just can drive like a pro, well, because he is! Still trying to convince Ryan Gates to come out, I think he would be really competitive. With 18 points events it really doesn't take much to drop a spot or two if you have a bad day. So not only do you need to be fast, but you have to take care of your car and make sure it survives the week without major issues.
Having an 800+ horsepower Nissan GTR is no guarantee that you will win, but it certainly helps your chances if you are a decent driver. Give the keys to a guy like Leh Keen and he just can drive like a pro, well, because he is! Still trying to convince Ryan Gates to come out, I think he would be really competitive. With 18 points events it really doesn't take much to drop a spot or two if you have a bad day. So not only do you need to be fast, but you have to take care of your car and make sure it survives the week without major issues.
Hope you catch-up with you this year at the track.
May 23, 2011, 10:07 AM
#11
Very good Chris! Proud of you guys and I'm happy to see the nice large figure you all raised for Kids with Cancer. It was great to meet you guys and even better to see you succeed at improving upon last year's performance. Maybe we'll run into each other again sometime on the east cost. If ever you find yourself signed up for another NASA-MA event let me know.
Oh, and just to pull your chain - I want to see a 500+WHP Lancer get down to 1:22 on Summit Main at least on the Hankooks!
You can do it!
Oh, and just to pull your chain - I want to see a 500+WHP Lancer get down to 1:22 on Summit Main at least on the Hankooks!
You can do it!
May 26, 2011, 09:06 AM
#12
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1st, let me say congrats to the entire Team Igloo Racing team for taking the top 3 spots in the mid-priced sedan class. Chris, Sean, Paul, Wally, Robin, Barry, Darren Stephen & Timothy are a great bunch of guys. If you ever get the opportunity to meet them don't pass it up. Team work above all was what kept them extremely competitive throughout this grueling event. A very humble group but don't be fooled, these guys are very professional & are all very accomplished drivers in their own rights.
Thanks for allowing Tuners Nation to be a part of the experience once again. What started out as a group of friends taking time off from work & away from family to follow what can be called a dream by many, seems to have become a yearly event we @ Tuners Nation must be a part of. The fellowship formed & strengthened only fuel our partnership.
Congrats on raising over $118k.
Garfield
Tuners Nation
Thanks for allowing Tuners Nation to be a part of the experience once again. What started out as a group of friends taking time off from work & away from family to follow what can be called a dream by many, seems to have become a yearly event we @ Tuners Nation must be a part of. The fellowship formed & strengthened only fuel our partnership.
Congrats on raising over $118k.
Garfield
Tuners Nation
May 26, 2011, 04:44 PM
#13
Excellent job on raising over $118k! Not bad in the One Lap either 
Chris, your car is still running stock cams isn't it? Maybe a Cosworth 2.2L long block with a GTX3582 size turbo in your future? I would guess a 4k-8.5k powerband with peak power of 550-600whp or so on STM's dyno.
Chris, your car is still running stock cams isn't it? Maybe a Cosworth 2.2L long block with a GTX3582 size turbo in your future? I would guess a 4k-8.5k powerband with peak power of 550-600whp or so on STM's dyno.
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