We made it home.

Well, we made it home again.  My Transit Driver Steve Barrett made it home to the Cincinnati area on Saturday evening and let me know he got a nice home cooked meal and a full 8 hours of sleep.  Steve was a great choice as a partner.  He was a big help in the highway driving and helped me get ready for my runs and kept checking over the car and keeping aware of what was going on at the track and in the paddock.  I had more than one person ask me in amazement about heading off on an 8 day 3700 mile event sharing hotel rooms and being in the car shoulder to shoulder with someone I didn't know before last Friday except for a couple of phone calls and emails.  But it worked out very well.  As far as myself, I didn't get home until Sunday morning.  With a 600 mile run home, I decided it was time to stop after about 475 miles and get a motel.  With no co-driver for the trip home from South Bend and leaving about 3 pm it was time to stop.  

Just to share some numbers, the highest price we paid for gas was $4.58 around Chicago and a low of $3.59 in Oklahoma, and that was for hi-test.  We spent almost $1100 for gas and were averaging over 20 mpg on the transit runs and about 6 mpg on the track events.  We had a couple of transit runs where we averaged over 22 mpg and that was pulling a trailer.. The overall for combined came out to 17.09 mpg.  Our best finishes were the Dry Skid pad with a 10th place and the morning run at Mid America Motorplex out in Iowa where we got an 11th place finish. 

Don't forget we are still raising money for our charity, the Pa. Breast Cancer Coalition.  We still need about $375 to meet this years goal.  For a donation of $10 or more we will place your name on a Pink Ribbon sticker on the car, or the name of someone you would like to honor or memorialize.  Pa. Breast Cancer Coalition helps women going through Breast Cancer as well as helping to fund mammograms and research.  Help us meet our goal.  Please make any checks out to Pa. Breast Cancer Coalition or PABCC and send to Jim Roberts 14 W. Main St. Mount Joy, Pa. 17552.  This event is really a lifetime experience and we felt is was a good way to leverage it to the community good by raising funds for this worthy charity.

The Final Competition of the week

We headed to South Bend, Indiana to finish the week on Saturday morning with a Dry Skid pad competition.  What a drive.  We were in Wisconsin above Milwaukee and only had a few hundred miles to go but those miles included a drive time circuit around Chicago.  That was painful.  We went for miles and miles in beep and creep mode which took two hours more than we expected.  Somebody has to figure out how to handle traffic better around Chicago.  Since our main menus of the week were either McDonald's or the tracks wonderful hamburger based offerings and since it would be 10 pm till we got to our hotel Steve and I stopped short and got  ourselves some nice steak dinners.  That was the first good food we had since we started the event.  When you have 600 miles to go before getting some sleep you don't waste much time eating.  Fast food and track food fill the bill.

I figured if I did well in the Dry Skid pad competition we could probably move up a couple of positions in the overall standings. I was about the 40th car to run in an inverted field.  When I was finished I heard the announcer say I was first in class and first in overall up to this point in Dry Skid pad.  I realized the fastest cars in the group were still to run I knew that the 1.018 g's I posted would get beat by several but my goal was to finish Dry Skid pad with a top 10 finish.  When all was done I had 10th place for that event and moved up two positions to finish the overall in 34th for the week.  That was not the final number I was hoping for when we started this years One Lap of America, but it was better than last year when we had a blown engine. 

The real success of our group was Scott Breneman along with his partner Nick Young. They were in car #28, Scott's 2002 blue Zo6.  Scott drove all the competition laps and finished in 13th place overall eclipsing his best ever finish of last year.  This was Scott's 9th year competing and Nick's 2nd year.  Early on we had a strong competition going between us with me leading in the early events and Scott taking the lead with a stronger event at Hallet, Oklahoma.  The next day in High Plains, Colorado, was our first problem with our car's computer shutting down when it didn't like the air flow versus the rpms  ending in our first of two DNF's.  I think we would have had a top 20 finish without the problems but that is called the "what if" game and we have to live with the 34th place that we did earn.  In racing one of the first goals is to finish "above the fold" which basically means in the top half of the field.  So we will be proud that even with our electronic gremlins we still finished better than more than half of the competitors.

A beautiful track at Road America

WOW, what a track at Road America near Elkart Lake, Wisconsin.  I was here two years ago with Scott and was impressed then but we had our power steering problem and I didn't get to run the track.  This is also one of the few tracks they won't let us ride a bike, run, walk etc.  There are a lot of elevation changes and a real challenge riding a bicycle around all the trails to get to the different corners to have a look.  I got quite a workout  They have lots of bridges and a couple of tunnels to allow you access to almost any corner of the facility.  All the bridges and tunnels really add to the aesthetics of the grounds.  The track is over 4 miles long an has several very fast sections.  My only problem is that I was really driving my tach and trying not to exceed 5,000 rpm so my computer wouldn't shut me down again.  The first session I did a "Granny lap" and regretted it afterwards.  The afternoon session I tried to be a little more aggressive and cut my time down a good bit but still had really watch the tach to prevent the gremlins from raising their ugly heads.  Our friends from Rochester, New York, Tim and Steve blew the engine in their Mitsubishi Evo and ended their week.  Robert Dubler the Swiss Chocolateer rolled his new Cadillac CTS-V Wagon on turn 8 and pretty much destroyed the car.  Lot's of airbag but Robert was not hunt.  So as bad as our luck with the computer gremlins was it wasn't as bad as some.  Now we have Milwaukee and Chicago drive time traffic to deal with and one last event which is the Dry Skid pad competition.  I did pretty well on the wet skid pad and am hoping I will do well on the dry pad.

If it is Thursday it must be Brainerd

If it is Thursday it must be Brainerd.  Steve and I are on the go so much we forget what day it is.  When you look at the schedule and match where you are and know it's Thursday.  What a long drive from Hastings Nebraska to Brainerd Minnesota, over 600 miles.  And that was after doing the extra event at the Hastings track.  They changed the Autocross course after the Mustang Boss ran into the guard rail so those who had run had to run again so we didn't get away till about 4pm and didn't get to bed until about 2am. 

My brother Mike and my nephew Hank came up to see me run at Brainerd.  My first run at Brainerd was on the full course and I did a pretty good run finishing in 26th place.  Scott did a little better than me with a 22nd place finish.  In the afternoon we ran the shorter SCCA course and the computer gremlin bit me again shutting the car down and leaving me with another DNF (did not finish).  By the time I was able to clear the codes in the car's computer the run was finished, so no points for that run.  If I would have gotten another 26th place that would have been 250 points so this is getting costly in my points count.

At Brainerd we also did the drags, both pure elapsed time and the bracket drags.  I wasn't pleased in my pure e/t run and went out in the first round for the bracket drags.  In fact the guy who took me out is our friend in the #45 C4 Corvette, Gary Griessmann who has some history as a drag racer and is very good at it.  He lasted through 7 rounds of bracket racing and finished up in 2nd place for brackets losing in the last round.  Congratulations Gary!!!  A little earlier, Gary's partner JD White had some fun on the SCCA course in the afternoon.  He spun the car on turn one and went backwards under the bridge that is right after turn one.  Lost a little time but no harm done, he was perfectly in the center and didn't hit the walls.  Because we couldn't leave for Road America in Wisconsin until we did the drags so we didn't get going until about 5pm.  It ended up being another 2am evening till we got to bed.

Need a little good luck!

Another not so good day at Hastings Motorsports Park in Hasting Nebraska.  To try to avoid the car shutting down like it did at High Plains yesterday . I am short shifting which changes my driving style and I am not getting quite the speed from the car.  In addition to the High Speed events at Hastings we also did a very tight little autocross which I didn't do very well at.  I got a cone on each run which cost me 2 seconds and 2 seconds was enough to drop down several positions.  As bad as my day was it was worse for the owner of a new Boss Mustang who hit a guard rail and folded the drivers side door back enough to break the rear quarter window.  Better luck tomorrow.

The Gremlins Bite us at High Palins in Colorado.

Well the gremlins bit us today.  While on my second lap the when I was driving hard the computer didn't like the air flow numbers and shut down into limp mode.  I pulled off the course onto a crossover road and tried to reset the computer.  Unfortunately by the time I completed the reset the session was over and I ended up with a DNF.  That is not good.  We will probably lose 250 to 300 points because of the DNF and it is not an amount you can make up.  I have reset my shift lights and will continue to run but it is going to cost me, since I can't drive it quite as hard or the same thing is likely to happen again.  As it stands now we have dropped to 25th position overall.  Our new goal now will be to try to maintain or improve on 25th but a top 15 is no longer in the works.

Tomorrow we will be a little closer to home since we turn east and head for Hasting Motorsports Park in Hastings Nebraska.

Hallet Motorsports Park, Monday

I guess turnabout is fair play.  Today, Monday we were at Hallet Motorsports Park near Tulsa in Oklahoma. Scott beat me in the morning race placing 20th while I cam in in 27th.  In the afternoon race I improved by only one second but Scott improved by 3.2 seconds.  That gave him a 19th and me a 30th place finish.  At this point we also swapped on Overall standings.  I was as high as 12th place and Scott was 14.  Now he is 13th and I am 16th overall.  Well done Scott.  While we are competing with everyone at One Lap we have a good competition going on between us.  This course is a very technical with several decreasing radius turns which are easy to overdrive.  This course also has a lot of elevation changes.

Now  we are off to High Plains Raceway in Colorado only 608 miles away.  We got in around 11:30 and got some much needed rest. 

A little Success at Mid America Motorplex

Sunday morning we showed up at Mid America Motorplex in western Iowa at a place called Pacific Junction.  I think the name comes from the Pacific Railway which is nearby.  While we were there we saw several long long trains go by.  The day started rainy and windy with winds probably a steady 30 miles and hour.  We appreciated the wind when it came to drying the track but I didn't even try to ride my bike around the course.  The couple competitors who did try to ride bikes to recon the track walked their bikes most of the way.  Just a note on the bikes, there are only a handful of us who bring bikes because it is sometimes a challenge to have enough time to walk the track.  Others walk, run, jog, or scooter around or just hope their out lap for reconnaissance is enough.  Most tracks you can't get a view of the whole track because of elevation changes, trees etc.  At Mid America Motorplex there no trees of note and there is absolutely no elevation change but at over 2.23 miles you still can't see the whole track very well even from the top of the grandstands. 

I had an excellent run in the morning and came in 11th and not quite as good in the afternoon in 18 place.  Because of finishing fairly well in the wet skid pad and the oval track that was good enough to move us up to 12th place overall. In our qualifying run back at Autobahn we finished 28th and with the competition, that is probably a fair rating of where we really rank in the whole field.  The high finishing in the first two events propelled us forward but it might be tough holding on to as the week wears on.  At this point I am a couple of positions ahead of Scott Breneman and we have a great competition going on and are that close that we are in the same run group.

Now it's off to Hallet in Oklahoma only about 450 miles away, then one of the biggest legs of the trip out to High Plains Raceway in Colorado with over 600 highway miles.

The Competition Begins

Friday morning began sticker day, putting all the national sponsor decals on the cars and going through tech to have the car and equipment checked and have your tires stenciled so they could see at a glance that you had the correct One Lap tires on the car.  This is also the day that I got to meet my new transit driver Steve Barrett.  Steve is from the Cinncinati area and we have spoken on the phone but just met on Friday.  I am posting a couple of pictures showing me finishing stickers on the car and a picture of Steve.

On Saturday morning the competition began.  I was able to post a g force reading of .819 on the skid pad.  Last year I got 6th place with a .804 but the .819 was only good for 16th place this year.  Last year's .804 would have only placed 25th in this years event.  I guess the competition keeps getting tougher each year.  Some evidence of this is there are now 8 Nissan GTR's in the SSGT1 Big Bore class this year as well a great mix of awesome vehicles throughout the classes.

After the wet skid pad we went to South Bend Motor Speedway's paved 1/4 mile oval.  I have never run an oval before and the cereal bowl look and the wall can be intimidating.  I was able to come out of there with a 20th place and am now in 14th place overall.

Next we ran off 106 more miles to Joliet, Il. to Autobahn Country Club Raceway and run on the 2.1 mile South Course and the finishing order of this event would set the starting order for the rest of the week.  I didn't do as well as I had hoped and posted a 28th place finish.  I was hoping for a little better but that still puts me in the front half of the 75 cars to run in each event and will let us get going to the next event a little earlier.  Most days we will put on 450 to 620 miles going to the next racetrack after we do two events a that days track.  When we finished at Autobahn we then headed to Council Bluffs, Iowa 452 miles away to be ready to start Sunday at the Mid America Motorplex.  This was on heck of a day and we didn't get in our motel room until 1:30 am.  Tomorrow it is two events at Mid America then 460 miles to Hallet Oklahoma.

Stay tuned for more posts as I have the time to do them.

It won't be long now.  In a few days it all begins.  All the preparation is complete and I will soon be headed to South Bend for registration and a kick-off luncheon then it will be lots of competition.  The first day we will have three events.  The first event is a wet skid pad competition, then a short distance to an asphalt oval and finally off to Joliet, Il. to The Autobahn Country Club for a road race course Time Trial which will set the running order for the rest of the week.  The first day will be busy, but once we finish the three events it's off to western Iowa for two events at Mid America Motorplex the next morning.  Keep checking on this blog and I will try to post each day and let you know how we did or some of the interesting stories of the day.

BTW we are still collecting donations for the Pa. Breast Cancer Coalition.  Send in a donation of $10 or more and we will put your name on the car and you can ride along.  Check the last post for info and address to send donations.  We are closing in on our goal but still need your help.  Why not put every family member's name on the car to show their support in the fight against breast cancer?  Thank You all for your generous donations.