It's 4:37 am, two weeks before One Lap 2018
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 C6 Z06 Corvette dubbed "Panda Express." The nickname for the Z06 comes from the fact that I'm of Chinese (Taiwanese, to be accurate) descent, not because I own a Chinese food franchise restaurant, as some have guessed after seeing the car's vanity plate that reads "PNDAXPS."
Last night, Doug and I spent a couple hours test-packing the car with nearly everything we will be bringing with us... multiple tool boxes/bags; Harbor Freight floor jack and jackstand; racesuits, helmets, and HANS devices; spare tire (just the tire... the empty space within the tire is prime real estate for cargo); air compressor; and a smattering of clothes for the 8-day-long adventure. What originally seemed to be a sizable cargo area in the back of the hatchback Corvette quickly was consumed by the essentials for the trip. We could have opted to tow a mini trailer during the event, which would dramatically increase our cargo capacity, but that creates other problems, namely that with the center-exiting exhaust of the car, running a tow hitch requires removal or custom fabrication of the car's mufflers (mufflers are required to stay on the car during the duration of One Lap) plus trailer tires and axle bearings have a habit of blowing out.
Packing the car efficiently for two people is just one of the unique challenges of running Brock Yates Jr.'s One Lap of America event. It's a survival / endurance event as much as it as a contest of driver skill and speed. Pure race cars need not apply, as each race team must drive their competition vehicle on public roads from race track to racetrack... with no support vehicles allowed, and no tire changes either, unless the car suffers nonrepairable tire damage from road debris. Meaning, if you cord your tires because of the race alignment of the car during the highway transit legs of One Lap—which this year will total nearly 4,000 miles—you're simply SOL.
Running out of tire before the end of One Lap (which is the dry skidpad event at Tire Rack, sometimes followed by celebratory, tire-killing drifting around said skidpad after the event is done) is one of the many concerns keeping me from sleeping. Our tire choice—the 200-treadwear-rated Falken Azenis RT615K+—was selected for multiple reasons, one of which was its anticipated better wear characteristics than the faster-in-dry-track-conditions BF Goodrich Rival S (the Bridgestone RE71R and Michelin Pilot 4S are not available in an 18" size appropriate for a C6 Corvette).
Other concerns high on the list for us One Lap first-timers include:
* trying to drive at 9/10ths without going four-off on tracks most of which are foreign to us (Doug and I are infinitely familiar with High Plains Raceway, being our home track here in the Denver, CO, region; and I have driven at Hallett with NASA in 2016)
* not falling asleep during the transit legs between the track events, as sleep during each intervening night will be limited due to the amount of travel time required
* tearing off the elaborate and somewhat outlandishly oversized plywood front splitter during the off-track portions of the event, possibly by hitting an armadillo on the highway at night in Texas, which fellow Colorado One Lapper (not a puppy) has described as being akin to "hitting a bowling ball"
* catastrophic vehicle failure, which is certainly possible due to the stresses of running hard on-track and Murphy's Law
Well, time to get up and do more One Lap prep, which today will include doing a final oil change with Red Line 40-weight race oil; resetting the TPMS sensors to the car; watching YouTube videos I found the tracks we'll be driving starting in just two weeks; and practicing loading and unloading everything in the back of the car... there'll be photo documentation of this process to help us memorize the order and position of what goes where.
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 C6 Z06 Corvette dubbed "Panda Express." The nickname for the Z06 comes from the fact that I'm of Chinese (Taiwanese, to be accurate) descent, not because I own a Chinese food franchise restaurant, as some have guessed after seeing the car's vanity plate that reads "PNDAXPS."
Last night, Doug and I spent a couple hours test-packing the car with nearly everything we will be bringing with us... multiple tool boxes/bags; Harbor Freight floor jack and jackstand; racesuits, helmets, and HANS devices; spare tire (just the tire... the empty space within the tire is prime real estate for cargo); air compressor; and a smattering of clothes for the 8-day-long adventure. What originally seemed to be a sizable cargo area in the back of the hatchback Corvette quickly was consumed by the essentials for the trip. We could have opted to tow a mini trailer during the event, which would dramatically increase our cargo capacity, but that creates other problems, namely that with the center-exiting exhaust of the car, running a tow hitch requires removal or custom fabrication of the car's mufflers (mufflers are required to stay on the car during the duration of One Lap) plus trailer tires and axle bearings have a habit of blowing out.
Packing the car efficiently for two people is just one of the unique challenges of running Brock Yates Jr.'s One Lap of America event. It's a survival / endurance event as much as it as a contest of driver skill and speed. Pure race cars need not apply, as each race team must drive their competition vehicle on public roads from race track to racetrack... with no support vehicles allowed, and no tire changes either, unless the car suffers nonrepairable tire damage from road debris. Meaning, if you cord your tires because of the race alignment of the car during the highway transit legs of One Lap—which this year will total nearly 4,000 miles—you're simply SOL.
Running out of tire before the end of One Lap (which is the dry skidpad event at Tire Rack, sometimes followed by celebratory, tire-killing drifting around said skidpad after the event is done) is one of the many concerns keeping me from sleeping. Our tire choice—the 200-treadwear-rated Falken Azenis RT615K+—was selected for multiple reasons, one of which was its anticipated better wear characteristics than the faster-in-dry-track-conditions BF Goodrich Rival S (the Bridgestone RE71R and Michelin Pilot 4S are not available in an 18" size appropriate for a C6 Corvette).
Other concerns high on the list for us One Lap first-timers include:
* trying to drive at 9/10ths without going four-off on tracks most of which are foreign to us (Doug and I are infinitely familiar with High Plains Raceway, being our home track here in the Denver, CO, region; and I have driven at Hallett with NASA in 2016)
* not falling asleep during the transit legs between the track events, as sleep during each intervening night will be limited due to the amount of travel time required
* tearing off the elaborate and somewhat outlandishly oversized plywood front splitter during the off-track portions of the event, possibly by hitting an armadillo on the highway at night in Texas, which fellow Colorado One Lapper (not a puppy) has described as being akin to "hitting a bowling ball"
* catastrophic vehicle failure, which is certainly possible due to the stresses of running hard on-track and Murphy's Law
Well, time to get up and do more One Lap prep, which today will include doing a final oil change with Red Line 40-weight race oil; resetting the TPMS sensors to the car; watching YouTube videos I found the tracks we'll be driving starting in just two weeks; and practicing loading and unloading everything in the back of the car... there'll be photo documentation of this process to help us memorize the order and position of what goes where.
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