Schaut Speed Racing Blog

Last time we were here (2 years ago, and in the same M3), I spun on the first lap coming out of the bus stop.  While I was busy gathering the car up and getting pointed in the right direction, Dan was wondering where I was - only able to hear the tires…   I was intent on not doing that again as I strapped in for my turn at the grand track that the Daytona Road Course is.

But I am also very excited to experience all the new power this car has, and go as fast as I can - not just for a better finishing position, but also because its just plain F-U-N!!!  And after this run, I’m going to have a little smirk and sparkle in my eyes for a while…

I am lined up 2nd in the second run group, behind an Evo.  We get the green and take off in our usual one-by-one fashion.  To make things easier and safer for the One Lap crew, we start on the straight after turn 4 (instead of the Nascar start/finish).  So we get to go through part of the infield before heading out to the oval.  On the back straight, to help keep speeds down and make things more interesting, we go through a left/right/right/left called the ‘bus stop’, at speeds around 80 mph.  After that, we are back on the oval all the way to turn 1 where we dive back into the infield.

Out on the oval, the extra power really shines!  Last time here, we had the speedometer showing 170 mph, and figured actual speeds were ~155.  With the supercharger pushing the extra ~200 HP, we were seeing over 190 MPH on the speedometer coming down the front straight at Daytona!

After 3 very fast, very fun and clean (yes!  no spins this year!) laps, I get the checkered flag and head back into the pits.  There is some very good potential to at least equal Dan’s placement from the morning.  The car is simply awesome.  It felt great on track - balanced, easily controllable and those high speeds are just incredible!  Data acquisition showed my top speed to be 173.955 MPH!  Wow.  That is by far the fastest I have ever driven, and a scant 2 mph faster than Dan :D.  Having this kind of opportunity is spectacular, especially when I can share these experiences with my father. 

The second run has tacoed the license plate even more, with the upper-left corner practically bent completely over….  And its shrinking…  The price you pay for an extra 200 hp.

We are on our way to Gainsville for the drag races.  I’ll be anxiously waiting for the results from my run…

Results from this morning were astounding!  Dan finished 6th overall with a time of 6:33.635!  Leh Keen was once again the class of the field finishing his 3 laps in 5:49.808, 35 seconds ahead of the next competitor!  The top 5 consisted of all 3 Nissan GT-Rs, the Porsche Turbo and one of the Roush Mustangs.

The luxury sedan class was spread out a bit.  The #47 M3 was in 9th, CTS-V in 35th, S4 in 46th and Panamara in 50th.

With our placement, we are up to 10th overall.  Very good place to be, especially with the low place at the beginning of the week.

We arrived at the hotel about 12:40 last night after a nice, uneventful drive.  It was still 70 some degrees out when we rolled into the hotel.  5 and a half hours later, we wake up to about the same temp with a hazy sunshine.  A very quick drive across the street and we find ourselves a garage on the infield of the Daytona Speedway.

We were here 2 years ago with the BMW, and was amazed by the track, the car and the speeds.  With an extra 200 HP on tap, it should be interesting!  Dan is again running the morning session and has a certain amount of excitement along with a smile. A smile that, judging from how bit it was when he got out of the car, probably grew continuously as he made his 3 laps of this awesome track.

The car looked fast out on track, and the howl of the supercharged engine could be heard ALL the way around the track!  We are running data, so we get to see just how fast the car gets going out there.  Fastest point on the track is just before the NASCAR start/finish (we use the straight after turn 4); Dan was FLYING here!

Dan had a little excitement going into turn 1 on the first lap, but held a nice drift, got on the throttle and continued on like that was how you are supposed to take that turn.

We are still waiting for the results to be posted since there are still some cars out on track.  But we did get a chance to review the data.  Top speed Dan reached was 172 MPH!!!  Absolutely flying! Based on the speedometer readings from this year and 2 years ago, that is about 20 mph faster…  Thank you Active Autowerke!!!!!!!  That much power is just HOT.  Literally.  Check out this pic - the license plate frame was nice and straight this morning….

Lunch break is coming up, and then I’ll get a chance to experience this track with the new beast!

We are back on the road after a long day of unpacking, racing, packing, partially unpacking, packing, unpacking, racing and packing again.  whew!   Our trusty co-driver Stan is once again behind the wheel.  Its nearly 9 pm and we still have almost 300 miles to go.  With all the activity today, coupled with a fairly long drive, this will be one of the latest nights of driving we will have.

The good news is that we are now up to 13th overall, and still holding 1st in class!

Dan ran the event at the BMW Performance Center - their high-performance training facility (for both on and off-road driving) in Greer, SC - and came out with another solid finish - 13th overall, 2nd in class.  The #47 BMW bested us with an 8th place finish.  The Caddy is making up some ground with a nice 31st, followed by the Porsche in 39th and the S4 in 53rd.

Tomorrow we will be at the big track.  Daytona.  We will be running the road course, which uses the infield along with the majority of the oval.  Speeds will be high here, and should suit our car very well.  Anyone want to take a guess on what the Race Technology DL1 data acquisition system will have for a top speed?????

For now, a little nap before taking over driving duties.  g’night.

The One Lap of America is a tough endurance event.  Attrition is part of the game, but it has been unusually high early on this year.  The Mitsu that burned up had significant damage to the engine wire harness.  In addition, one of the Porsche 911s dropped anti-freeze all over the track.  This created an early lunch and long delay as they had to clean up the track.  So far, we have had 3 cars that signed up not make the start (although the Lister Corvette has been following us along on a trailer - they are trying to get parts to fix it so they can run Daytona tomorrow).  There have also been 3 other drop outs.  The #6 Subaru had a potential blown head gasket at the autocross, a Corvette came in with smoke out the tail-pipe at Summit and the #1 Tune-in Concepts Subaru had issues at Summit and appear to be done.

Sometimes lots of power isn’t the key.  Remember that old saying “To finish first, first you must finish”

CMP had a special opportunity for the One Lappers - they opened up their kart track for us to run a few laps for charity.  With the down-time due to the track clean-up from the Porsche’s antifreeze spill, we took the opportunity to go have some wheel to wheel fun!

Stan is an avid go-karter, but opted to stay on the side-lines and take a few photos of Dan and myself playing around in the karts.  He provided a few words of advice on how to go fast, indicating that with the weight distribution, karts are nearly impossible to spin.

So, we strap on our helmets, jump in the little 8.5 hp karts and take off.  Dan promptly spins on the first lap.  I laughed a bit as I nearly spun and then had a nice slide through the next series of corners - I don’t buy this ‘cant spin’ bit….  I am following a couple of guys from Dodge who have stuck GoPro camera’s to their helmets and seem to be out to get each other.  I hope they put some of that video on YouTube…  I had one of the best seats in the house, with one guy driving in the grass.  Until some of the bumping spun the one guy.  I passed, but this apparently went on the whole time.  They were laughing it up reviewing the video after.  It was a fun little break, and at that point I had the 4th fastest lap time of One Lap competitors.  Not bad!

With the track cleaned up and lunch and go-karts over, its time to line up.  We are running a slightly different configuration in the afternoon with a few corners near the end of the lap changed.  Temps are now in the mid 80’s.  This seems to have made the track a bit slicker, as on my recon lap I’m struggling to get the power down as soon as I’d like.  Not much grip out here, but it is the same for everyone.

I get the green and take off.  Some wiggling through first few turns, but I’m up to speed.  End of the back straight, I hit the brakes where I think I should, and feel like I’m not slowing down.  I go straight off the end of the track - same place as the GT-R this morning.  Oops.  I gather it up and quickly get back on track.  Knowing I lost a bit of time, I took a deep breath, noted I needed an earlier brake point for the next lap and carried on.  Other than some drifting and a lot of waiting to get the power down, the rest of the run was fairly uneventful.  The power this car makes is immense and even with the lack of grip, its a ball to drive.

Back in the pits, with the front brakes smoking hot (literally, smoking…  the red calipers are significantly darker now… and front wheel weights are falling off…), I take a look at the video and data.  I calculated that I lost about 3 seconds with my little off.  Hopefully that wont hurt too much.

Luckily, the slick track was the same for everyone.  And the One Lap guys were quick with results.  My final time was a 5:36.007, which was amazingly good enough for 15th place.  Without the off, I would have matched Dan’s placing from this morning.  Not bad.  I think I owe Active Autowerke’s a thank you - power is your friend!

With each team in Luxury Sedan sharing driving ditues at each track between both drivers, there has been a lot in-class shuffling.  Finishing order for PM is:
Us - 15th,
#59 Panamara - 25th
#10 S4 - 27th
#54 CTS-V - 34th
#47 M3 - 38th

With these finishing positions, we have moved up to a 15 point lead in class and up to 16th overall.  Not bad for a day with a few mistakes.

Our first vehicle issue has cropped up - with the brakes hot enough to basically melt the sticky tape holding the wheel weights on both front wheels, out on the highway the steering wheel is shaking.   So a quick pit-stop at a local Firestone tire shop got the wheels rolling smooth once again, and even gave us the chance to do a quick brake bleed.  Hum…  this scene looks a bit familiar…  The M3 up on jack-stands at a Firestone shop…

We are now on our way to BMW performance center to run an autocross.  And I get to see my sister and little nephew!  From there, we have a LONG drive down to Daytona.  It’s going to be a late one tonight!

We woke this morning to a beautiful day here in South Carolina.  Sunshine and 80’s is the forecast; gotta love the South!  This is shorts and t-shirt weather!  Much better than the cold and rain that has been hanging around Detroit much too late in the year…

Along with the various other One Lappers that seemed to have filled the hotel, we grabbed breakfast and headed down to Carolina Motorsports Park.  This is another great facility that we have visited as part of One Lap for many years.  A longer track, with a few technical series of turns and some high speed turns that are demanding on car and driver.

We are getting the routine of the day down, so it doesn’t take us very long anymore to unload the car, get the camber set on the front wheels and finish the few prep items.  With that out of the way, Dan and I take off for a track walk; Dan on his little scooter and me running (my first run since the Boston Marathon - felt really good to stretch the legs out a bit!).  The track has a very rough surface, which looks like it would provide some decent grip.  But the climbing temps have a tendency to take grip away.

Dan is running the morning session, and lines up in the 3rd run group.  As we are waiting for the 3rd run group, it becomes apparent that the heat of the track is winning over the grippy looking asphalt as the #2 GT-R goes off at the end of the high-speed back straight; a very slow, tight left hander.

Catseby gets the GT-R back on track and carries on.  Then in the 2nd session, after watching the #47 M3 of Brian Hair slide around turns 1 and 2 a bit, the #26 Mitsubishi EvoX driven by Tim Harper comes by for his 3rd lap, with flames coming out from under the car.  Tim notices something is wrong and pulls off just after turn 2.  the car is soon engulfed in smoke as the rescue crew heads out to douse the flames.  Tim is safe and out of the car, but the oil fire damaged some electrical bits under the hood and they look to be done for the year.

After a brief wait to get the track cleaned up and the Mistu back into the pits, Dan heads out on track.

He looked good out there - nice a smooth with a few wiggles.  The slickness of the track showed up again as on the 3rd lap, a dust trail follows Dan at the track-out point in the high-speed right-hander on the back straight.  2 wheels off, no drama

Dan indicated the track was slick and the car was loose.   Other than the 2 wheels off, review of the video also showed a few instances of some healthy drift and count-steer.  Definitely slick!

Dan’s official time was a 5:34.750 - a 12th place overall finish and 1st in class.  It is amazing how close these cars can be; over 3 laps, places 10th through 13th were separated by a mere 0.253 seconds!!

For the rest of the Luxury sedan class, Brian Hair was in 15th with a 5:38.232.  The #10 S4 was in 35th with a 5:53.565.  Followed by the CTS-V with a 6:09.423.  Treffert in the Porsche with a 6:10.130.  This rounded out the luxury sedan class.

Notice I didn’t mention the #18 BMW.  The apparently had a bit of an incident last night and have some repairs to do.  No one was injured, as no one was in the car….  I’ll touch on that again once I get the full story (They should rejoin us either tonight at BMW or tomorrow).

With these results, we are now in 2nd in class, 5 points behind the #47 M3.  With no points for #18, we have jumped ahead of that team by 25 points.

Results for today are now posted both here and on the One Lap of America main website.

I managed a strong 11th place finish with my run, and first in class!  With combined with the 10th/2nd this morning, we are starting to move up the field and in class.

We now sit in 3rd in class, with a mere 5 points behind Floggas/Babcock and 10 points behind Chow/Hair.  With 5 points received per place, that means we are basically 2 finishing places out of the lead.  Technically, tomorrow morning if the finishing order is us, #19 then #47, we will have a 3 way tie for first.  Talk about some close racing!

We are also catching back up in the overall rankings - up to 20th and closing fast on the next few cars.  If we can stay in the good graces of Lady Luck, we could soon be right up to where we finished last year.

The field order has been VERY dynamic so far this year.  The #47 M3 finished the first session today well enough to still hold onto the overall lead.  But there has been a charge from a few of the big dogs.  Defending champs, Doug Wilks’  TopSpeed Motorsports with Leh Keen behind the wheel, have shown their might in the fantastic #3 Nissan GT-R to come out on top at the end of the day.

Leh and Doug are followed closely by Catesby Jones in his GT-R, Hugh Bate and Rene von Richthofen in a new Porsche Turbo and the Ultima GTR driven by Carl Warren and Sam Kimberley-Bryant.  A mere 125 point separate the top 5.

There are always some very cool vehicles that show up to the One Lap.  This year is no exception, and even includes a few factory rides.  Dodge has brought out one of their new Challengers with the 392 engine in it.  Its good to see these guys back at it, partially since it shows off some good ol’ American muscle, and partially because the guys driving it are a riot.  A bit of fanfare and nostalgia follows this team around.  Like in the past, the guys over at Dodge like to do something special (like the ‘Vanishing Point’  Challenger a few years ago), and they followed through again this year.  This particular car has a few styling cues as well, although I have not found out what the background story is.

Another sweet entry, er, entries for this year comes from Roush.  They have brought along a pair of 2011 Stage 3 Mustangs - these are 2 examples of what you’ll be able to buy new.  One of  these cool looking and great sounding machines is even driven by Jack Roush Jr. himself.  And doing very well too!  These cars have a LOT of performance potential, with the afternoon session at Summit showing the #11 car piloted by Jr. placing 4th overall, with the sister car #12 completing the 3 hot-laps in 7th.  Oh, and the body kit/paint schemes look SWEET!

I’ll have to admit - other than getting to drive on tracks that I normally wouldn’t have access to, my favorite part about One Lap isn’t the cars (no matter how cool they are!).  Its the people.  Lunch time today was a decent track-side brat and a good 45 min of some awesome stories from past One Laps.  This is what this event is really about.  A bunch of nutty racers, driving around the country having adventures along the way.  And a good amount of humor.  For instance, apparently I am not the only one who ‘killed’ a few cones at the autocross yesterday.  We awoke this morning to find that one of our competitors kindly placed a little gift behind the car of another competitor.  Ah, the joys of One Lap!

Now its early, and I’m actually writing this blog from the hotel.  But with a LONG day tomorrow at CMP, then BMW performance center and then the 400+ mile drive down to Daytona, I need some sleep.  Gotta get it while I can!

I apologize for the delayed posting here, while Virginia has some absolutely beautiful roads through some gorgeous mountains, they lack adequate Verizon Wireless service…  Now, on to the good stuff!

Stan is now behind the wheel (still, even with the internet access delay - gotta love transit drivers!) as we are now on our day 2 transit drive on our way to South Carolina.  A nice easy 400 mile trip that is currently following along the blue ridge mountains.  The top of the ridge is occasionally obscured by some clouds that have been sprinkling on us.  It is a beautiful area, and after the fun I had this afternoon, is an area I certainly wouldn’t mind coming back to.  Not the best for cell phone reception since I don’t have internet right now (this will be posted as soon as I can get signal - along with the AM results)

After a nice lunch which included tacking a few more very entertaining ol’ One Lap stories on to the tally, I got myself ready to go for my first real session in the ‘new’ car.  With all the extra power on tap, I’m not really sure what exaclty the car will do at speed on track.  Dan and I went over his video from the morning and the track map.  We chatted a bit about the driving line, brake points and power-on points.  With that, I lined up in 10th, right behind the Porsche Turbo of Hugh and Rene (quite the couple of characters, and one of the reasons why I enjoy this event so much).  Weather is looming, but luckily, we got our run and the car packed up before any rain started.

Pulling out onto the give me my first real opportunity to get on the power.  The car pulls amazingly strong all the way through 4th gear.  Perhaps a bit too strong in 1st and 2nd since I wagged the tail a bit too…  :D   The suspension and brakes are basically the same as last year, so the chassis remains composed, confident, and crying out for curves!  A pure and simple joy to drive.  The supercharger merely add some welcomed power.  I am rather amazed that drive-ability of the car, even with 50% more power, seems to be BETTER than last year!  Along with rocketing the car down the straights much faster, the extra ponies also makes it easier to control the yaw of the car in the turns.  Car needs to rotate mid-turn?  Simple, apply a bit more throttle.  Through the twisty stuff, this car’s direction can now be just as easily controlled with the throttle as it is with the steering.  I believe this could be considered ‘pure bliss’!

The extra power and me not being familiar with it was fairly apparent, as the green-flag signaling the start of my run was followed quickly by spinning tires in first.  And second.  Geez, I wasn’t even at half throttle!  This’ll be fun, I say to myself as I prepare to figure out just where the braking point is for turn 1.

The characteristics of the supercharger allow for easy modulation and smooth power delivery.  The car really is very drivable.  And very fast.  Corners come up quick, and the straights that look so long on paper are done in a blink.

The 3 laps go by very quickly.  I feel like a chunk of time was left out on track.  And I feel the desire to come back here.  It a challenging little track with some tricky corners.  But the session felt good and the car is definitely fast!  Hopefully fast enough to equal Dan’s performance from this morning.  How I actually did will come to light later once the One Lap crew has a chance to compile and upload the results.    I’m going to attempt to upload some in-car video too; if I cant get it to work here, I’ll see if I can put it up on YouTube.

Until then,  I’m going to look at the data and video from my run and then enjoy the scenery.  Later.

Summit point is a great race facility in the hills of West Virginia.  With 4 tracks of varying length, difficulty and ‘interstingness’, including a kart track, there is something for everyone.  The first year I joined my Dad for One Lap, we ran the “Shenendoa” circuit - a ver tight, twisty course with lots of corners including one that resembles that infamous corner on the Nurburgring (which incidentally, launched one of our competitors, ending his run for the year).  This year, we are running the original summit raceway circuit - the first time here for both Dan and myself.  A small 10-turn, fast track with a high speed corner leading onto a long front straight and a series of slow left-right-left corners that take patience and discipline to run fast lap times.

As is the norm for One Lap, the first road course event is run in car # order; finishing position here will set the running order for the rest of the week.

Dan ran the first session, lining up in the 3rd run group.  This is further up than our car # dictates, but we wanted to run #30 in honor of Active Autowerke’s 30th anniversary, and with that supercharger stuffed under the hood, our potential is quite a bit higher than 30…

The #30 M3 is the first car on the track for the 3rd run group.  As Dan pulls onto the cool and dry track and applies the throttle, the car wags the back end a bit as the engine growls and the tires scream a bit under the force of the 600+ HP; the car straightens out and shoots off down the track for the recon lap.  In One Lap fashion, the first lap warm-up/recon end at the start finish line for the standing start.

Green flag flies and the M3 rockets away, engine howling and the faint whistle of the blow-off valve can be heard with each shift.  Down into turn 1 and the hot-laps are on.  The M3 sounds mean as it flies past the start finish after the first lap.  It sounds and looks significantly faster down the straight than the #18 M3 being driven by Dave Floggas.  But its not just about straight-line speed.  It the total lap time that counts, and there are 2 more to go.

At the end of 3 laps, Dan’s time is a 4:27.9, which puts us in 10th overall for the session.  A very good starting point for the rest of the track sessions and right up front where the car belongs!  For the rest of the weak, starting this afternoon, we will line up 10th.

When racing, power isn’t everything.  One of the biggest benefits a driver can have is knowledge.  Being new to a track, we can do what we can with watching in-car video, studying track maps and notes made by those who know the track, and even walking the track.  But the best way to learn a track is to run it.  Every lap teaches you something, every lap you can get faster and eventually, you get to the point where you can maximize lap times in whatever car you drive.  Brian Hair, driving the #47 M3, is a native of the Summit Point raceway, and with his 22 some years of knowledge ran a blistering set of laps to finish 6th overall.  This is 3 excellent finishes in 3 events, and they are currently leading the entire One Lap field!  Best of luck to these guys the rest of the week.

As long as the rain subsides long enough, I’ll be taking over track duties for this afternoon.  More later once we are on the road.

We are sitting at Summit Point raceway on a beautiful morning, overcast with some dampness but warming up.  Should be another great day of racing.

Late last night, the results from yesterday were posted.  I either really love cones, or really hate them…  :D  My 2nd run was the fast one once the cone penalties were applied (2 more in the 3rd run… oops).  the 55.595 second run was good for 24th place overall and 2nd in class.  (My fast 3rd lap, if it had been cone free, would have bumped me up to 15th overall, but still 2nd in class).

Brian Hair in the blue M3 turned fastest time for our class and placed 11th overall, and the other M3 slotted into 3rd in class good for 32nd.  The Caddy and S4 were neck and neck in 60th and 61st.  The Panamara rounded out our class in 69th overall.

Random counts so far:

• States visited - 6
• State-lines crossed - 8
• Hot dogs consumed - 3.5 (I guess one wasn’t that good….)
• random funny One Lap remembrance stories - 7

Action will be starting soon here at Summit.  The car is ready to go, so is Dan.  More updates around lunch time.