One Lap of America: Project One Lap – Update #11
When we got up, it was clear someone had pulled some shenanigans on some of the other competitors. They had covered the Kleeman Benz completely with post it notes. The whole car just covered, it was hilarious. The Alfa was decorated like a birthday cake. Funny stuff, I can’t imagine how long it took to cover the Benz. The Marines were at Tire Rack with two of the most humongous helicopters I’ve ever seen. They hung out for awhile, then took off and buzzed us, very cool. We started out with a group photo, which was very well organized. I look forward to seeing it. Then it was off on the dry skid pad. They started in reverse order, so I had some time. One of the Tire Rack sales guys, Luke, is a real Audi guy. On a whim, I asked him if they had any spare SSR GT7’s laying around. He looked into it and amazingly (as they’re a discontinued unobtanium wheel) he had one! I was so stoked I practically walked on air for about an hour, I bought it on the spot and now I have a spare wheel for the set. Woot! I suited up and hit the skidpad, which is really easy, twice around the circle counter clockwise, then twice around clockwise. Auto-x helps alot here, and it was fairly warm by the time I went, so the tires were pretty grippy. I turned a .99g one direction and I didn’t hear the other one, but it was good enough to beat all the other S4’s in class and most of the other cars in class as well. Then it was time to pack up the car one last time and hit the banquet. We stayed around for the awards, talked some with Brock Sr, Jr, and Tony Swan, then we dropped Ed off at the airport and hit the road for Colorado. After all the driving we’ve done the last week, I’m not really looking forward to the 1100 mile drive home. We’re almost to Nebraska already though, so we should be home early tomorrow, just in time for Mother’s Day. We ended up 36th overall and 7th in class. I’m very happy with the results as we didn’t know a majority of the tracks beforehand and the brakes were never good throughout the event. Both Kasim and I felt that we left alot of time on the tracks, but without knowing the tracks beforehand, that’s what happens. The teams that are very competitive fly to all the tracks beforehand and run them, that way they can just hammer around when One Lap comes. I feel if we’d known the tracks we could’ve easily finished in the top 20 overall. It was a great experience that I’m glad I did and was able to share with my good friends Ed and Kasim. The true indicator is that not only are we all still speaking to each other, but we’re still friends after spending 7/24 with each other for over a week in a small car. Everyone has asked if I’m going to come back next year and do One Lap again. While I enjoyed the experience, I’d like to get more track time in for the amount of time spent on the road, so I probably won’t do it again for a little while. Lastly I’d like to thank everyone who helped us with this project, Mark, Peter, Reggie, Ryan and Nick from SCR Performance who spent alot of time building the car and supporting us when we were at Pueblo, M&M Auto Reconditioning for financial assistance, painting and fitting the OEM RS4 rear wing and detailing the car, Avalon Motorsports for providing the RS4 rear wing, Parts4Audis.com for the S8 brakes, HMS Motorsport for their excellent advice on safety equipment and the Schroth harnesses, APR Tuning for their RS4 stage three kit, which worked flawlessly the entire time with not one hiccup, Racing2Savelives for being our sponsoring charity, TrackGraphic for the track maps, and AudiWorld for giving me the space for the pics and text. I’d also like the thank all of those who went well out of their way to help us with the master cylinder, including the guys at 303 Motorsport, Hans@Streamline, Ernie from Prestige Audi and Dean E smail of the Rocky Mountain Audi Club. Finally I’d like to thank my wife, who let me take off on this little adventure, leaving her alone with our two year old daughter for almost two weeks. Love ya! Thanks for reading, hope everyone enjoyed it!
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