Schaut Speed Racing Blog

There has been a lot of shuffling and close racing throughout the One Lap field. There are pockets, with the Porsche GT2 and Nissan GTR going tooth and nail for 1st. Then a lone Corvette, followed by a gaggle of randomness. Cars that you would never think of being competitive with each other are battling it out with lap times within a few seconds. Some days, the Corvette, Porsche, BMW, STi or Evo wins; some days its the Honda Civic or Mazda5 minivan…

Currently, this is where the top 20 sit:

1. #3 Porsche GT2 - Leh Keen, Doug Wilks - 5020
2. #4 Nissan GT-R - Catesby Jones, Jose Collado - 4985
3. #5 Chevrolet Corvette - Jeremy Herzberg, Danny Popp, Todd Rumpke - 4795
4. #9 Porsche 997 Turbo - Rene von Richthofen, Hugh D. Bate - 4535
5. #39 BMW 325is -  Anthony Magagnoli, Kevin Kreisa - 4470
6. #8 Porsche 911 GT3 RS -  Geoffrey Bond - 4455
7. #15 Mitsubishi Evo X -  Chris Wirth, Sean Caron - 4355
8. #54 Honda Civic Si - Jonathan Weir, William Chan - 4235
9. #17 Ultima GTR - Carl Warren, Sam kimberley-bryant - 4220
10. #21 BMW E90 M3 - Schaut Speed Racing - 4160
    
11. #55 Honda Civic - Andy Hollis, Ann Hollis - 4015
12. #27 BMW M Coupe - Neil Simon, Woody Hair -  3955
13. #28 BMW 335i - Robin Sparrow, Brian Hair - 3905
14. #6 Subaru WRX STI -  Michael Lattos, Erik Van Cleef - 3840
15. #11 VW GTI - Bill Unwin, Reg Noble - 3825
16. #124 MAZDA MAZDA 5  - RICHARD FISHER, JASON SAINI - 3750
17. #48 Chevrolet Camaro SS - Robert Dubler, Christian Schober, Richard Plank - 3635
18. #10 BMW X6 M - Mike Schnell Renner, Thomas Lappin, Steve Maguire - 3545
19. #20 Porsche Panamera - Bill Treffert, Todd Treffert - 3515
20. #25 Chevrolet Z06 Corvette - Dan Corcoran, Kyle Corcoran - 3490

The One Lap isn’t just about the competition.  Its also about the trip.  And all that comes with driving thousands of miles and staying in some interesting places…

Traveling:

• Miles traveled -3239 (as of 5:13 PM, Thursday, traveling on I-80)
• Race tracks - 7
• States visited - 10
• 5 ft long 4×4 narrowly avoided - 1
• Latest arrival at hotel - just after midnight
• Earliest arrival at hotel - 7:30 pm.
• Longest transit - 580ish
• Horses being corralled in a construction zone - 1

Napping:

• Standard hotels - 5
• Awesome hotels / Bed&Breakfast - 1
• Crap-hole hotels - 1
• Castles - 1 (ok, really just another crap-hole, but at least it had character…)

Eating:

• Delicious cups of coffee - 1
• less than delicious cups of coffee - 5
• Absolutely terrible cups of coffee - one.  possibly 2 but I was too tired to tell….
• Burgers - 3 (this might be a record….)
• meals missed due to being on the road - none!!!! (another record?)
• Gas station dinner - 1 - another record!
• Delicious, sit-down, fill you up dinner - 3!!!

Random:

• Blog posts so far: 24
• pictures/video taken - 333
• Times Dan asked me if I wanted to drive the drag - 4
• Family teams (siblings, father-son/daughter) - 19 (I think)

Remember that ‘long line for lunch’ I mentioned in the last post?  Well, we were still in that line when they started calling cars to grid…  Dang, I would have thought 30 minutes would have been plenty of time to order, pay for and eat food…  After the 3rd time I heard them call “Car 21″, we get our food, jump in the car and drive back over to the paddock spot.  This will need to be eaten after the run….  As Dan gets his driver suit back on and situated, Nick does the few checks of the car, I go and check the results from the AM that are now posted.

We are listed at 26th with a time of 4:08!!!! What?!?  we had times down in the 3:58 range….  Hum, there was a track-out cone that Dan may have moved a bit out of the way a bit during an exciting corner 7 in the AM session (note: “downshifting” into 5th instead of 3rd can mess up a corner…).  Those cones are up to give drivers an idea of where the turn-in, apex and track-out point are, but are not necessary (not all tracks put these out) and no impact to safety (safety related cones, cutoff paths, lane markers, etc. understandably count for 10 seconds each).   This will need to be studied a bit!  But after the session…

With a bit of prep-talk to get Dan back in the game  (I’ll deal with the cone penalty, its his job to drive the wheels off this thing!), some knowledge gained from studying the data and our make-shift brake duct plugs in place, the session starts.  I head over to turn 7, just for curiosity….

The session looks good from where I’m watching.  Turn entry looks good and Dan carries a bunch of speed through the apex.

First lap he kicks up a bit of dirt at turn exit - maybe as a bit of a brush-of-the-shoulder at that pesky cone laying out there in the field….  What I really should have done was kept the camera out.  As the second lap there was a tad bit more dirt thrown in the same spot.  And the 3rd even more….  At least I got the aftermath…  Someone’s gonna have to clean this thing!

Dirty tires

With a solid looking run we meet back up in the pits.  The brakes were great this time around - our duct plugs worked to help keep some heat in the front brake pads, and once again they have achieved “Excellent” status.  (note to self: work on some adjustable plugs for next year… who would have thought that brake duct diameter could be a tuning tool?)

Just after the run, I went to find the timing and scoring guys to ask about the cone.  3 other cars in the morning hit similar cones.  We then go to talk to Brock.  He kindly reverses the penalty on the grounds that those cones were there as a convenience, not safety.  Not to mention that anyone else who has gone off in7 since it was moved (a lot of dirt was thrown about in that corner…) was no where near the cone, since Dan kindly moved it out of the way…..

We left the track not knowing the final official ruling for morning session, or full results of the afternoon.  Luckily, the excruciating wait of yesterday’s results is not repeated as today’s have already been posted.

Morning session - 13th with a 3:58.059.  A scant 0.924 seconds in front of the #20 Porsche Panamara of Bill and Todd Treffert.

Afternoon session - improving to 3:54.841 and 12th fastest time.

We still sit in 10th overall, and increased our lead in luxury sedan by another 10 pts over the Panamara.  With 3 events left, its going to be close to achieve a top 10 place.  We are 60 pts behind the Ultima GTR in 9th and 145 points ahead of the #55 Civic.  Anything can happen even in the closing events that can change things.  All I know is its close and going to be exciting!

One last cool thing as we cruise along I80 back to Ohio and our next track, Nelson’s Ledges.  As we were leaving Millevill, NJ, a car hauler with a bunch of VW Jetta TDIs on it was heading towards the track.  But not just any old TDIs, as these are the SCCA VW TDI cup cars.  A bunch of youngsters (18-26 yrs) battling it out in identical cars.  All on Diesel power!  Way cool!

The One Lap of America can certainly become “one” with you once you’ve competed.  One of the things about this event that makes it special is that people just keep coming back; even when they are not competing.  It seems that wherever we go, when the One Lap rolls into the various tracks, someone from the area who had run in the past makes an appearance.  Today was no different as there were a few former teams gracing us with their presence and there to enjoy the racing!  It’s in their blood, they just cant help it!

Case in point, shortly after we arrived and unpacked our car, this nice silver Porsche Turbo pulls into the spot next to us.  This car, driven by Mark DaVia, last competed 2 years ago.  When he did last run, he won overall.  Along with the previous 4 years!  Same driver, same car, 5 years in a row at the top!  That was quite a team.  He even brought out the trophy from his last win - a special one-off tire with the One Lap logo and Brock Yates Sr.’s signature carved into the tread!  Way cool!  The reason he hasn’t competed the last 2 years?  Well, his daughter was born last year in the middle of One Lap, so he opted to stay home for that and spend some time with the family.  It sounds like he will be back eventually…

The 2004-2008 One Lap Champ

Other than a few familiar faces of friends from previous One Laps, we also got to witness another familiar “face”.  Or more correctly, the back of heads…  Naps are starting to become common occurrences.  While waiting in the rather long lunch line today, I looked over to see one of the drivers of the #54 Honda Civic with his head down while his co-driver was in line.  That car is certainly very fast (300-ish at the wheels I think?), but it lacks what some would call any sound deadening or creature comforts.  I don’t think these guys are getting much sleep on the road….  Welcome to the One Lap, pups!

Its come to my attention that some of my posts were not readable.  It is a formatting issue.  It appears to be a problem with copying content over from Office Word into the blog.  Anyone using Internet explorer is most likely having issues with posts that I wrote in word and copied over (not all were done that way).  I didn’t know if was a problem since Firefox and whatever the Google phones use (Google Chrome?) do not have the formatting issues.

I’m in process of updating the problematic posts…. hopefully it will all be corrected soon.  But in the meantime (and from here-on-out), I highly recommend Mozilla Firefox for browsing….  It just works better!

Honestly, I had no idea that any part of New Jersey was so beautiful.  New Jersey Motorsports Park is located about an hour south of Philadelphia, surrounded by fields, trees and even a bit of elevation changes.  It is a gorgeous facility and where we are today.  Dan is running the events today, trying to hold onto our now Top 10 overall position!

We started the day waking up in possibly the shadiest hotel we’ve been at this week.  Last night I had to go down to the office to get some sheets for the fold-out bed I slept on; these sheets came from the maintenance room, which upon the hotel person opening the door, there was a scurrying of little critters - I’m guessing cockroaches, but I wasn’t about to do a closer inspection…  I might be burning my pj’s after this one…..  Coffee was on par with the low end of the scale (I think I might be getting used to it…) but on the plus side, they had BACON!

Most of the one lappers stayed here, and offered up a few cool shots last night and this morning.  And guess what, I figured out the picture loading thing….  so here you go!  (oh, and I’ll be adding pics to previous posts, so check those out too).

Arriving at the track, we once again unload the car.  Nick and I get the suspension changes done while Dan takes off for the track walk.  Once we get the car squared away and the Data Acquisition setup, Nick and I strap on our running shoes and do a few laps also.  The video we watched of the track does not do the elevation changes justice!  Big rise going into turn 1, followed by a quick drop.  Turn 5 is similar and the last corner has some significant banking.

Here’s Dan all lined up and ready to go.

While waiting on grid, the drivers have a tendency to chat.  Its part of the fun of this event.  Usually talking about some crazy thing that happened on the driver over (like narrowly missing a 4×4 in the middle of the road!), or the track line.  Or I think in this case, how to make the perfect spinach quiche….  I also found a nice little sticker on one of our fellow BMWs - my thoughts exactly!

Dan hit the track and was off.  Watching the car brake into turn 1 and disappear over the hill was nothing short of amazing.  And hair raising!  2nd lap through, he stomps on the brakes, carrying a lot of speed, and misses the apex.  Big time.  Off in the dusty part of the track.  Brake issue?  We will find out shortly.  Somewhere out there on the last lap, a little too much speed through a corner resulted in some agricultural activity…  oops.

It turns out that this track isn’t very hard on brakes.  The effective range of the Cobalts is in the 300-1300 degree range.  With the last 1/3 of the track needing no brakes, and high speed, we found that the brake ducting on the car was cooling the brakes too much.  By the time turn 1 came up, the brakes were cool again.  Hum…  what to do, what to do…  A bit of track-side engineering with a drill, 1 20 oz pop bottle and 2 tie wraps.  Make-shift duct covers. 

Results will be posted from this morning when we can.  Hopefully the off didn’t loose too much time, as we are neck and neck with a few cars for the top 10…

Great news - my afternoon run was good for 9th overall!!!  And we’ve moved back into the top 10!

We are now at New Jersey Motorsports Park, which Dan will run both events.

More later.