Our 2023 One Lap of America is complete and in the books. As I had mentioned before, I had a tremendous start to the week on Saturday in the Wet Skid Pad Competition, finishing 7th overall out of 84 competitors, and 2nd in class, in that event. The really neat thing is that I was the fastest American Brand car since the top 6 were all German cars with the first place being a Porsche GT3. After the we Skid Pad we went 83 miles south to Grissom Air Force Base and did an Autocross event on the Runways. After the Autocross we then went 311 miles northeast to near Youngstown, Ohio where we would compete at Nelson Ledges Race Track the next day.
At each Road Course Track we do a morning and an afternoon event and when complete, usually by 2:30 or 3:00 pm we then head to the hotel near the next track. After completing the event at Nelson Ledges we had a more than 700 mile transit to our hotel near Road Atlanta Grand Prix Course getting in about 1:30am. After the events at Road Atlanta we then had a short 274 mile commute to Nashville Superspeedway Roval, near Nashville, Tennessee. After finishing up at Nashville we had another over 700 mile transit to Texas where we stayed the night with Jeff & Kelly Murphy. A BIG THANKS for their hospitality. We ran on Eagles Canyon Raceway, Italian Canyon Course on Wednesday, the headed to Hallett Motor Racing Circuit only 252 miles north in Oklahoma where I had one of my better events of the week on Thursday.
Our transit after Hallett in Oklahoma was over 700 miles east to (National Corvette Museum) NCM Motorsports Park Road Course where it rained for the morning event and I had my best road course event of the week. After finishing up at NCM on Friday we then headed only 373 miles north back to South Bend where we would do our final event Saturday morning, the Dry Skid Pad event where I did well becoming my 3rd best event of the week. After the Dry Skid Pad competition they wrapped up the week with the Awards Banquet. My transit home was just over 600 miles and including my miles from home to South Bend and to home after the finish plus the event transits and miles on the tracks I totaled 5,037 miles in just a little over a week.
Gary "Duck" Drake, a friend from Cincinnati was my Transit Driver for 4 years now and our diet for the week was some of the finest foods available at fast food restaurants and Gas Stations 😅 My biggest success of the year was raising over $4800 dollars for the Pa. Breast Cancer Coalition and now over $45,000 over the years. A big Thank You to the members of the Lancaster County Corvette Club and the Mount Joy Lions club members and all the friends and others who donated for their generous help in my fundraising effort.
