One Lap of America: Project One Lap – Update #7

Source: Project One Lap

Well, we met up with a fellow VAG enthusiast in my town, where’d we stopped for a quick dinner. He followed us down to Pueblo and shot some video. We hit the hotel around midnight and just crashed out. I had to give the wheel to Kasim around 11pm, I was just whipped. I ended up sleeping in the back seat until we got to the hotel.

Got up the next day and made another rookie mistake. I thought our running order would change based on how we did at all the tracks, and we’d done well at Mid America and Miller, so we got to the track early. Turns out it’s only based on how we did at Autobahn, which was crappy, so we could’ve gotten at least another hour sleep. Crap!

We met the crew from SCR at the track, they’d brought water, food and some tools. The brakes still aren’t 100%. I went out for the morning session early, as I know Pueblo very well. The brakes felt soft, but were stopping the car, so I put the hammer down. I was doing great until my last time down the front straight away, where the pedal sank down more than usual (which was already pretty low) and I didn’t think I was going to make the turn. So I took the over run road till I got the car slowed, then banged second gear, turned the car into the weeds so I could see the track, saw there was nobody coming and just nailled it across the dirt and weeds to get back on the track. I was pissed, as that cost me at least 2 seconds.

Got back into the pits and jacked the car up and saw that the pads were badly glazed and the rotors were showing signs of severe heat. Jared (the videographer) went out and got us emery cloth which we used to scour the pads and rotors, then we re-bled the system, getting out some dirty fluid and air from each caliper. The brakes felt better, but not perfect.

I took it a little easy on the afternoon runs, I probably left 4 seconds on the table, running 1:50’s, but to put that time in perspective, my friend in his Porsche 993 with coilovers, race tires, etc runs about that time, so this wagon is plenty fast!

We decided to have Stoptech overnight me a new set of rotors/hats and pads to Hallett, our next track, so I can swap them out. Looks like the current pads are too far heat cycled to come back and there’s nowhere to get the current rotors turned in time.

The Autospeed S4 had some issues with blowing off boost hoses and didn’t get to run in the afternoon, and the M6 broke a contol arm lollipop, but he was able to source one from the local BMW dealer. Listening Audi dealers? Keep more than oil filters and brakes pads in stock!

We’re once again taking the northerly route to the track, ignoring the One Lap route book, which wanted to send us on secondary roads most of the way. It worked out for us last night, we were able to really make time and didn’t see many cops. Unfortunately our friends in the C6 Corvette got stopped and written up for 148 mph. Yep, nearly 150 mph! However there’s no way they were doing that on that stretch of road, but you can’t argue with The Man.

Speaking of The Man, I just had a close encounter, getting a ticket in Kansas for 12 over the limit. The troopers leaving remark was “Don’t rely on that radar detector too much.” Gee, thanks!

The next three tracks we haven’t run, so we have to get to the tracks early to walk them to learn them a little. Course that cuts into our sleep time, as that means getting to the tracks at 7am instead of 9am. Doh. We’re also losing an hour of time tonight and tomorrow night due to the time zones. We’re going to get to the hotel around 2am tonight if we’re lucky. Another sleep deprived night, ugh.

At least I was able to move us up in the standings today, I ran 21st fastest in the morning, despite going off the track and 20th in the afternoon. That moved us up from 49th to 39th overall and we moved up one spot in class. We’ll have to see if we can hold onto that as we enter the back stretch of tracks.