Schaut Speed Racing Blog

We are now well on our way for our long 600 mile drive up to High Plains Raceway, just east of Denver, CO.  Long drive, but almost all highway.  And unlike the Great Lakes area, these are nice and smooth!  Traffic is light too, we may just make it to the hotel at a very reasonable time!

As we were leaving the track, there was the first bit of real drama on the track.  One of the Porsche GT3s lost a coolant line, dumping coolant around about half of the track.  Unfortunately, this caught out the #46 Rochester DSM Mitsubishi Evo, who ended up sliding off track in the slick coolant and adding some new character lines to the left front fender.  Luckily it just looks like cosmetic damage, but it did hold up the entire group while they cleaned up the track.

Back to the results - after a great lunch, courtesy of Kicker Audio, and some time studying video and data, Dan lined up for round two at Hallet.  Armed with a plan, he roared off the start line, slid through the corners and put down 3 solid laps.  End result was a 2 second improvement, down to a 4:26.788.  This placed us 11th overall and 1st in class.  Renner also picked up a bit of time, dropping about 2 seconds down to a 4:29.035 for 13th overall.  Chow wheeled his car to 23rd with a 4:35.651, followed by the #48 CTS-V in 25th with a 4:37.048, Baron’s #8 M3 in 36th with a 4:40.632.  Next was the #69 CTS-V with a 4:43.907 in 39th.  Dawn Treffert in the #56 Panamara ran a 4:48.823 coming in 48th.  No time is being shown for the #55 Audi S4 (along with a handful of other cars that I saw at Hallet).

With the set of solid runs today, we have moved up to 17th overall, with a tight pack through 13th place.  Bonus is that we are consistently placing better than 5 of the car in front of us.  We have also whittled Chow’s lead down to 20 points.  It’ll be a battle to the finish!

Looks like its my turn to take the wheel for a chunk of transit driving.  We will be on hwy 70 for the next 350 miles or so…  At least the directions are easy!

Day 3 of the 2012 One Lap of America brings us back to a wonderful little track we have been to quite a few times in the last 7 years of One Lapping.  Hallet Motor Racing Circuit.  Which also happens to be the polar opposite of Mid America.  Counter clock-wise, lots of fun elevation changes, blind corners, and, wait for it…..  INTERNETZ!!!!!!!

We had a mostly nice drive down from Iowa to Tulsa OK where we stayed last night.  Surviving the hail storms and arriving at the hotel just after 8 pm.  A few other one lappers were at the hotel, and invited us to dinner at a Mexican place down the road.  We opted for the nice easy walk across the parking, foregoing extra seat time in the car for a few more hours.  Sometimes the most basic of bars have the best food.  One delicious burger and steak and a frosty beverage later, we headed back to the hotel for a relatively early night.

Today is a nice, cool overcast day.  Light breeze, mid-60’s.  small chance of rain but nothing has fallen yet.  Dan ran this event, and had a very nice morning session.  12th overall and 2nd in class.  This moves us up to 20th overall; still 2nd in class, but with a bit more of a cushion to the M5 in 3rd.  Summers ran the #47 M3 to an 8th overall, 3 seconds up on Dan.  3 seconds back is Renner in the M5.  The luxury sedan class looks like it will come down to one of the 3 of us, and as of now, its really anyone’s game.

Dan just headed out to line up for the afternoon session.  We poured over the Race Technology data acquisition info and found a few areas where he can pick up some time.  We might just be able to break into a top 10 finish this week yet!

With 600 miles or so to go tonight, we are looking forward to finishing up todays events, packing up and heading out.  Packing has already become 2nd nature.  I don’t even have to think about where stuff goes, and in what order it goes in.  Easy as pie!  Until later….