One Lap of America 2018 (Team Panda Express, One Lap Puppies)

In the last five months, I've been preparing the car for One Lap. Since we're competing on a different size of tire than my previous setup, I opted to order a new pair of Forgestar wheels from Howey Industries. They're the same design (CF5), size (18" x 12") and offset as the rear wheels I ran before with 335/30-18 tires, but for One Lap we'll run 315/30-18s on 12"-wide wheels all around. The tires are a little stretched, but after testing at High Plains Raceway, this setup seemed pretty decent, even with having realigned the car to reduce the negative camber... this in the hopes of not cording our tires from all the highway miles before One Lap is over. I've also done some preventative maintenance, such as replacing the clutch master; replacing the transaxle mounts; and replacing the front Stoptech brake rotor rings and rebuilding the STR-60 brake calipers with fresh pressure seals and dust boots. Of course the car got fresh brake pads (Stoptech SR...

Here's a glimpse into the one of the key decisions every One Lap of America team has to make: which tires to run: https://www.tirerack.com/content/tirerack/desktop/en/events_sponsorships/one_lap_pastresults.html Tire Rack in South Bend, Indiana, is both the title sponsor of One Lap of America, and the supplier of tires for all the competitors (each team is allowed to purchase up to 10 tires at a 25% discount from the regular retail price... the discount is rebated after you actually show up at the One Lap event, so those looking to score the generous discount on the tires and not actually run the event need not apply). Tire rules for OLoA 2018 here:  https://www.onelapofamerica.com/rulesFormsFiles/2018OLoATireProgram.pdf Tire Rack has also been the long-time sponsor of the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) autocross series, something I've been racing in for decades, so I'm well familiar with the application of the required Tire Rack windshield banner. It will be r...

Seems appropriate to describe the vehicle Doug and I will be driving (and coexisting in, for eight straight days) during One Lap of America. "Panda Express" is a cyber gray 2013 Corvette Z06. 2013 is the last year of the C6 generation, and it's also a 60th anniversary edition—1953 was the first year of the Corvette (back when it came with an inline 6-cylinder engine, what??). Its moniker comes from the fact that I'm Chinese American (my parents are from Taiwan, so Taiwanese American really)... no, I don't own a Panda Express franchise restaurant. I'm not sure I've ever eaten at a Panda Express restaurant (aside from maybe once at an airport somewhere, because it seemed vaguely more appealing than the other dismal food offerings). Just something to underscore the fact that the vast majority of Corvette drivers aren't Asian. The car has a Colorado vanity license plate that reads "PNDAXPS" to go along with the logos a friend made for m...

I know exactly how long it is 'til One Lap of America starts, because there's a countdown timer on the official One Lap website: I woke up at 3-something AM thinking about One Lap prep. Couldn't sleep. Grabbed my phone, figured I'd start a blog for documentation of my first One Lap adventure. I've been preparing (over-preparing?) for my first One Lap of America event for over six months. It was still November 2017 when my codriver Doug and I decided, "Let's do this." About the two drivers of Team Panda Express: we're both One Lap noobs, but both Doug and I are fairly experienced track drivers. Doug is an accomplished NASA road racer in his E46 BMW (and has dabbled in autox too) while I've run in NASA Time Trials for a few years in various vehicles—an Evo IX I called "The Evo of Doom" (it doomed my bank account,  basically); an AP1 S2000 that I campaigned in TTB and TTC, and then my current track car in TT1, a 2013 cyber gray C...