Team TurboImports OneLapSupra.com
Andi Baritchi and Clint Pohler - Car #21
Our One Lap of America 2002 Adventure
by Andi Baritchi

Cannonball One Lap of America 2002 Overview

8 days, 5200 miles and 17 track events of the best in driving fun!

Update #1

Filed by Andi
May 1, 2002
Still in Dallas, TX
"What the hell are we doing putting a motor in the car, in Dallas, 48 hours
before One Lap starts in NY?"
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To say that we've had a bit of bad luck in preparing the car for One Lap would be the understatement of the year. As I write this, it's 6:30pm and we're still working on getting the car ready to go. If all goes well, we will finish in a couple hours, and be able to head out this evening.. meaning that the cannonball-style driving begins a day early for us, as we have to drive straight through and like a bat out of hell just to make it to the Rochester registration/start in time.

It all started this past weeked - I had decided to shake the car down at Motorsport Ranch to make sure all would be fine and fix any gremlins that might arise now and here rather than during One Lap. I went out there with a couple good Rx7 friends - Meg Wadley and Eric Michel. Meg, from Austin, was just visiting to see MSR and Eric's car, whereas Eric is a seasoned pro at MSR and has a very well Setup Rx7. ;-) Well, evidently the "shakedown" was way too effective. At the end of the 25-minute session, I pulled into the parking area and turbo timed like always, unknowing about any problems... a few minutes later I was informed that in my cool down laps my car had started smoking and that I had left a thin trail of oil all the way from the track exit to where I had parked. A quick inspection under the car revealed the culprit -- my front main crank seal had blown and as spewing oil all over the place. :-( Eric decided to have some fun and film my misery w/ his camcorder, rubbing it in about how the reliable Supra gets towed home whereas the Rx7 drove home. Bastard. ;-) j/k.

We had the car towed back to CTC and arranged to change the front main seal on Sunday. I returned to CTC midday on Sunday to help out, and Wayne told me that more than just the main seal had failed. The crank pulley was cracked as well, and the only place that had one in stock was Jay Marks Toyota in Houston. To make a long story short, I arranged with Jeff Watson at Jay Marks Toyota to meet me at the Houston Hobby airport with the parts first thing in the morning, so I could fly back and get them installed and get the car done on early Monday, ensuring time to spare. In the end I was unable to fly down there myself, and my co-worker and friend Susan Adams very kindly got the ticket and flew dow in my place and brought the parts to CTC on Moday morning. Along with these fixes, we also replaced the oil pump with a new one on which we drilled out the oil pressure relief orifice to avoid future crankcase overpressurization... and anybody who's replaced an oil pump on a Supra *knows* how much of a pain that is. Wayne of CTC, along with me and Sinclair stayed up all night working on the car to get it done. In the end, we got the car running again midday on Monday and then I went to Dallas Frame and Alignment to have it aligned.

All was well, or so I thought. Except that the car didn't feel quite right. It sounded a bit odd on spool-up, and the exhaust gas temperatures at wide open throttle were way too *COLD*, which is very strange. On top of that, even short 40-140mph highway pulls would raise the water temp from 90C to 100+C, and in the past such pulls never even affected water temp by more than 1-2 degrees Celsius. Something was very wrong.

Clint arrived on Monday night, planning to trailer the car up to New York on Tuesday->Thursday for the start. We changed the spark plugs and checked a few more things under the hood and did some more diagostic pulls on the highway. Same thing-- cold EGTs, hot water temps. Then the unthinkable happened -- after one of these pulls, a plume of blue smoke began to shadow us, and some even made its way out of the Euro-spec hood scoop vent. :-(

Our first guess was a blown head gasket. No big deal, we can have that fixed by the evening and still leave in the morning, right? CTC was kind enough to let us use their facililties and even helped us with removing the head using their lift. Don Bo even came by at 11pm with some ARP head studs that he had available for me to use, since nobody had such things locally especially at this hour. Jimmy Lin was also kind enough to come by to help us. It was about midnight on Tuesday night by the time we had the head off, and found out the bad news -- my #5 and #6 pistons are lightly damaged. That's right folks, I blew my motor the week before One Lap. I'm not even sure what exactly happened -- we suppose that the head warped and the head gasket failed at the track on Saturday, causing the crankcase overpressurization that blew out the front main seal. But why would this have happened in the first place when my EGTs at the track were fine (850C peak before the turbo) and my water temps were also fine (108C = 226F)? The only thing we could think of, that would also correlate to the odd low EGTs when the motor FINALLY completely let go on Tuesday, is possibly a bad knock sensor that was allowing the motor to get insane amounts of timing. You see, Supra ECU's dial in as much timing as possible w/o getting knock (well, to the point of maximum power of course), for the best performance on any octane, and we're thinking maybe a bad knock sensor could have prompted way too much ignition timing advance and thus the demise of my motor w/ only 57K miles on it. ............. :(

But Clint and I weren't ready to let a little snafu like a blown motor 72 hours before the One Lap start on the other side of the country phase us. ;-)

Don said a friend of his across town had a new fully asssembled Toyota 2JZ short block at his house and could bring it within the hour. Hmm.... tempting, tempting.... But alas, when we checked my cylinder head, we found out that it's warped so we can't just change the block.

2am on Wednesday morning and it's time for Plan B. We cleanly removed the entire motor on my car and set it aside, and prepared the car for a motor transplant. Clint (aka Mr. TurboImports.com), you see, had a spare 2JZ GTE motor just sitting at his shop in Austin. It was a 100,000 mile motor out of a wrecked Supra, but what the hell, right? :) With the help of Jimmy Lin and Sinclair Mudaly, we had the motor out by 4:30am. I took a little nap from 3:30 to 4:30 so I could drive to Austin, and we all hopped in Clint's Suburban and headed for Austin at 5am. It was a pleasant drive except for the annoying 100mph speed limiter on the Suburban -- the 454ci motor in the Suburban really wants to go faster. ;-) We averaged 90mph until we hit rushour traffic in Austin, and then made it to TurboImports.com's garage by 8:30am. Motor was loaded in the truck by 10am, and we made it back to Dallas by 1pm this afternoon. We've been working on installing the motor since then, and are expecting to be done by about 9pm. After that we're going to do some more shake down runs on the highway, and then get cleaned up at my house and leave for Rochester sometime in the middle of the night.

Hmm... assuming we leave at 3am, and our goal is to arrive by 10am on Friday, and counting the time zone difference, that gives us 30 hours to drive 1600 miles. Doable? Wish us luck. We'll do our best. :)

Later,
Andi
Going back to help w/ the motor install...

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Filed by Jordan
May 1, 2002
Staying in Dallas, TX
"21 is higher than 96"
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Quick update: the One Lap Supra has been assigned car #21. This # is actually meaningful as it determines the order that the cars will be started at the first event. It is a seeding based on the organizers estimate of potential speed. I'm expecting Andi and Clint to beat that estimate :)

Jordan
Going back to wishing I was there...

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Old Motor:

New Motor:

Update #2

Filed by Andi
May 2, 2002 2:44am
Still in Dallas, TX
"Rochester or Bust"

It's now 3am and we're back home with the car. Just finished putting Clint's spare 100,000 mile motor in, and the car runs like a champ. Took us 26 hours from when we started pulling the motor out to driving away w/ the new one -- including the 3 hour drive each way to Austin and back to get the motor. We're off to Rochester.
Later,
Andi and Clint.
OneLapSupra.com

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Filed by Megan
May 3, 2002 2:53am
"Thank you for flying NorthEast"

Clint and Andi are at the hotel in downtown Rochester now (2:45 am, 3:45 there).[they made it in 23 hours in Clint's Suburban trailering the Supra -Jordan] They're actually going to get some sleep, in an actual room! He (Andi) sounded quite relieved/surprised to have gotten there in time after the whole engine transplanting ordeal. Anyway, just keeping y'all updated. I think I'll get some sleep myself...
Megan

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Filed by Andi
May 3, 2002
Rochester, NY
"Finished!.....getting to the start"

With just 40 hours to go before the race start of One Lap of America, Clint and I finally finished the “new” motor install in my Supra at CTC’s shop in Richardson, TX. We were now faced with the daunting task of getting the Supra and ourselves up to Rochester, as driving the 1600 mile distance straight-through, Cannonball-style, was the only option at this point.

After dropping by my house at 3am to clean up and to enjoy some of my mother’s almost world famous Bavarian home cooking, we departed for Rochester at 4am. Rather than load up the Supra on the trailer from the start, we decided I should follow the trailer for a while and do shakedown highway pulls… this way, if anything broke, we’d have a trailer right there for assistance. I drove the car for about 1/2 a gas tank, doing multiple 40-160 pulls at 18psi. Clint’s spare 100,000 mile motor we dropped in the dawg never missed a beat, pulling strongly to redline in every gear and showing proper EGTs and water temps in the process, unlike my old motor that was showing cold EGTs and high water temps in its last hours of life… (probably the blown head gasket allowing exhaust gases & combustion pressures to go back & forth between the #5 and #6 cylinders…).

After that 1/2 a tank of fuel, I was pretty exhausted and my driving began to exhibit signs thereof. Clint’s better at this long distance driving stuff than I am, so we loaded the Supra on the trailer and got back on the road… In true One Lap spirit, I went to sleep in the passenger’s seat and got some much needed rest for a couple hours. Fast forward 23 hours and multiple driving stints and passenger seat rests for both of us, and we’re arriving in Rochester at 3am eastern time on Friday morning. It was at this time that I discovered I had forgotten to pack any jackets for the cold weather. Nice. We checked into the host hotel – the Sheraton Four Points Hotel in downtown Rochester – and got some much needed shut-eye… our first sleep in real beds since Monday night. Nice.

We woke up refreshed around 10am on Friday morning, and quickly got to packing and preparing the car. We still had to wash the car and apply a whole lot of stickers! Note to anybody that hasn’t been to Rochester – it’s a beautiful town! The scenery is beautiful and the people are real nice, and there are also a ton of badass cars here. Oh wait, never mind, they’re all One Lappers. Apparently Brock hasn’t abolished trailers yet, as we saw even more cars towing trailers this year. Most amusing of course was the gorgeous yellow Lamborghini Diablo towing the little white trailer. How cute…

We finally finished everything just barely in time for the 7pm start at High Falls Brewery. What a start it was, too.. there is this pedestrian bridge over the river in Rochester that starts at High Falls Brewery, and they had us drive the cars over this bridge for the start – the first time any automobile has driven over this bridge in the past 50 years. On the other side of the bridge, there were hundreds of Rochester’s fine citizens cheering us on, and even a radio or TV station saying our names on the air and interviewing us as we drove through on our way out. Quite cool!

I drove the first hour or so, and then we switched drivers so that I could sit down and study the IRP track map, write this update, and get some rest so I can drive well tomorrow… It’s now 12:30am as I write this, and we figure we’ll be at the Tire Rack for the “hearty breakfast” in about 2 hours – or about 2 hours ahead of schedule. Perfect.

Tomorrow should be interesting. Like all but one of the tracks on this year’s One Lap agenda, I’ve not ever driven Indianapolis Raceway Park. I’ve got a track map, and thanks to a friend I’ve seen a video of the track, but that’s about it. We get one recon/warmup lap and then the 3 timed laps. Fun. Like I said, it’ll be interesting… ;) The first two events at IRP will be the road course time trials, and then we get one drag racing run for best ET, and then bracket drags. The bracket drags should be pretty amusing for us, as it’s hard to think of a more difficult car to bracket drag in than a single turbo Supra on 18" Pirellis. Heh.

Andi

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Filed by Jordan
May 3, 2002 7:07pm
"And they're off!"

Just got a call from Andi as they left the starting line in Rochester. Their destination is the Tire Rack in South Bend, Indiana. This stop is a checkpoint which they must reach by 5am Saturday morning. Clint could cover that distance in that time blindfolded on a turbo barstool so this leg shouldn't be too dramatic. The #21 Team OneLapSupra is currently drafting the #20 Swain-Tech C5. The real action begins after they check in at the Tire Rack and then head to Indianapolis Raceway Park. The IRP stage starts at 8am and includes two all out roadcourse time-trials, one all-out drag race, and one bracket drag race. Expect an update sometime Saturday with their results and hopefully some pictures. Whee!

Jordan

Update #3 (pics below)

Filed by Andi
7pm, Monday, May 6, 2002
"Pull up a chair..."

The rest of the drive to the Tire Rack on Saturday morning was pretty uneventful, at least for me as I slept through most of the 2nd half after writing the previous update in the car. We were scheduled to arrive at the the Rack at 5am for breakfast, and we arrived an hour early at 4am… oh wait, South Bend, Indiana isn’t on Eastern time? Heh. After sleeping in the car in the Tire Rack parking lot for another hour or so, the kind folks at the Rack opened the doors and treated us to breakfast. Also, the Tire Rack was the first official checkstop of this year’s One Lap, and they gave everybody that was there during the allotted time window a sticker that counts for points at the end of the race.

A leisurely 2 hour One Lap caravan drive later, we arrived at IRP at around 8. Unpacking the car was kind of a pain in the ass, but that’s part of the fun I suppose… Clint setup a cool lipstick camera in the front bumper area, so I am excited to see how the videos turn out. From my previews on the DV cam they look really nice.

IRP is an interesting road course – medium length, lots of blind turns and straights, and the front straight having walls on both sides as it is the same straight used in the IRP 1/4 mile drags. This day we did 4 events at IRP – two road course time trials, a one-shot 1/4 mile drag race, and then bracket drag racing. The first road course event was interesting as I’d never seen the road course before, but I found out soon after that we managed to get 6th place overall. Wow, I was pretty happy when I heard that news. Sadly, after this session the car started making a strange creaking/clicking noise from the rear when rolling. We suspected either a differential or wheel bearing failure, and after checking the diff fluid we found it was fine. The wheel bearings both felt fine when testing them, but the left rear corner of the car was just making a lot of noise. Clint tried lubing the outside of the bearing by pulling out the axle a bit and greasing it, which seemed to help quiet the noise slightly.

What does one do on a Saturday afternoon in Indiana when one loses a wheel bearing? One calls Jeff Watson to see how long it would take to get another, of course. (no local dealer had any). Jeff said it would take too long to ship a new one to me, and that since it had to be pressed in, it wouldn’t be possible for us to install on the road. :( What to do? Jeff said he would get off work at 5 and at that time he would go take the entire left rear hub & axle off his car and bring them to us. All I can say is wow – without him we wouldn’t still be in One Lap.

The second session at IRP was a bit scary, as knowing I had a bad wheel bearing meant every bump awakened my paranoia of having the left rear wheel lock up and spin me off the track. Not good. That having been said, the previous session was enough for me to at least kind of learn IRP and what blind parts I can go WOT over, so I was 10 seconds faster over the second 3-lap time trial than the first one. My competition had also gotten faster, though, and I was 6th again the second time around.

After this second session, I called Jeff and we arranged the logistics of how he could get the wheel hub to us. With Tommy Banh’s much appreciated help, Jeff got the wheel hub and axle off his car by 7pm and he caught an 8pm flight to Dallas on Southwest with the replacement parts in hand. There he met up with Jordan and Meg and they drove up from Dallas at the same time we were driving down from Indianapolis. If I discovered anything on this trip down, it was that after a couple days of Cannonball style sleep depravation, it becomes much easier to fall asleep in the passenger seat of a sports car traveling at high speed w/ a nut behind the wheel. *Much* easier. We all met at Shane Duvall’s house in Tulsa at 4am, where Jeff and Clint replaced the axle and wheel hub with Jeff’s. Bearing noise gone, problem solved. Except for my toasted ABS sensor on that corner. Sigh..

We finished at around 7:30am and then hurried to Tulsa Speedway for the dirt oval event. I had heard that the dirt would be grippier in the morning before it dried up, so as soon as they opened up the track for cars to line up, I started my car and began to get ready. Then the motor just died and wouldn’t start back up. No fuel pressure is a bitch. Turns out that a hose had popped off one of the in-tank fuel pumps. Clint fixed it within 15 minutes, but by this time a 50+ car line had developed so I’d have to wait till later to run. No big deal, dirt wasn’t my forte anyway. It was cool watching everybody else run first, especially the new supercharged BMW 740i that popped its back window due to chassis flex, and then scattered the pieces all over the track. Of all the events of One Lap 2002, the dirt track was probably THE most fun one to watch, as it’s just absolutely insane seeing high dollar supercars like these going sideways around a redneck dirt oval. I personally didn’t do too well at the dirt oval – a quite crappy 33rd place actually. Somebody told me the PT Cruiser beat me. Nice. I guess I didn’t miss my calling to be a dirt track driver, eh?

Next event – Hallett. We were taking bets on what was going to break next, as we were on a roll. Clint said maybe the turbo? Heh. Hallett is a very interesting track – technical and twisty with a couple of high speed straights as well. It’s definitely a track I want to race again. In the first session, I discovered that I can’t drive my Supra worth a shit without ABS. (recall the toasted ABS sensor from the wheel bearing failure). I flat spotted my tires pretty bad, and went off the track in turn 1 once due to wheel lockup. I only went a few car lengths straight off into the grass, then got right back on. I figure I probably lost 5-10 seconds in the episode, which is why I was flabbergasted when I found out I got 13th place in that session. Including the off-track scenic route! Wow..

After the first session, I was scrambling to find an ABS sensor to borrow off a Supra. Shane said his would probably break upon removal as his car has 210,000 miles. Luckily my old friend Jeff Hood was there for the Porsche event that had taken place earlier this weekend, and still had his Supra there on the trailer. Jeff was kind enough to lend me his left rear ABS sensor until Jeff Watson could get him a new one ordered. Yet again Clint replaces a part and the day is saved. The 2nd session at Hallett went a lot better, after getting some track line advice from Shane, regaining anti-lock braking, and just learning where I could push it harder. We got 7th place in the 2nd session, which brought us to 7th overall in points by the end of the day Sunday. By the Hallett races, it started to become apparent what teams we’d end up fighting against at the end…

It was on the way from Hallett to Colorado Springs on Sunday afternoon that we discovered the flat spots on the tires. I mean yeah, Oklahoma roads suck, but they couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, could they? Heh. I drove for the first hour and then asked Clint to drive so I could start writing this update. Only problem was, as soon as I got in the passenger’s seat, I was gone. Wheel thumping? No big deal, slept like a log. Clint woke me up 6 hours later in Colorado, and asked me to drive the last 60 miles. I happily obliged, and we were happy to arrive in at Colorado Springs a few hours early at 3am. As I read on some One Lap story website before, hotel sleep during one lap is a gift from God and you don’t know when God will be generous, so we were happy to have some time to crash in real beds at the Colorado Springs Airport Super 8 for 3 hours.

Pikes Peak International Raceway reminds me a lot of Texas World Speedway. The main straight and turn 1 are like a miniature TWS, and the infield is like Texas Motor Speedway’s. Thanks to Brian Beezley, I had a bicycle to “walk” the track before hand, which really helped me understand the racing line before the race. I also have to thank Braiden of Suby Sports for bringing me 104 unleaded to the track, as the high boost really helped down the straights.

The first session started off nicely – I got a decent launch from the start and guesstimated the braking point and intensity for turn 1 well, as the rear end was trying to come around all the way through turn 1 when powering back out onto the back straight in 4th; quite exhilarating. Since PPIR is such an easy track, with no blind corners/etc, I wasn’t at as much of a handicap from not knowing the track as I was elsewhere, so I did pretty well. The morning session netted me 4th place and brought our overall point standing to 6th overall. I still haven’t seen the results from the 2nd PPIR session yet.

As I write this, it’s 8pm and we’re 50 miles out of Albuquerque. We would've gotten here sooner but we decided to get the Supra's oil & filter changed at a Sears auto service center in Colorado Springs before heading out. This will be a nice relaxing night, our first full night of sleep in a long time. And our last, too. The next few days promise to be insane, with an 850 mile overnight drive from Sandia to TWS, a 950 mile drive from TWS to Road Atlanta the next day, and a 600 mile drive from Road Atlanta to Summit Point via the last checkpoint, the Carolnia Rod Shop, the next day. I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to post an update again – it may be during One Lap again or it may be afterward, depending on how tight our schedule is and where we get Internet access. I’ll do my best to post another soon.

Andi

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Filed by Andi
2 hours later than the previous one
"Drive-Race-Break-Fix-Repeat"

Well, it looks like I got to post another update sooner than I expected. Just as I finished writing the previous update in the car a couple hours ago, the car started stumbling any time we got into boost. We were about 90 minutes outside of Albuquerque, and the FJO wideband o2 sensor was telling us the problem was a lean condition. We pulled over and checked the fuel pressure gauge – 20psi. Nice.

I called Nick Visokey, a DSM friend that lives in Albuquerque, and he met us at a gas station and led us to his house, where Clint is now in the garage fixing the problem. Thanks to Nick the car is getting fixed and I was able to connect to the Internet to post these updates. The problem was a simple one – just like before Tulsa Speedway, an in-tank fuel hose had popped off. Except this time the rubber had actually deteriorated enough that we replaced it with another hose. Hopefully it will stay together this time.

As soon as we finish/test the fuel setup upon reinstallation of the pumps, we’re off to go get some unleaded race gas from a friend of Nick’s so the car can be in prime running condition at Sandia Motorsports Park. After that, some much needed rest at a hotel before a hellish gran turismo across the southern United States…

Andi

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Filed by Jordan

I took these pics yesterday at the dirt track which was a blast to watch. I didn't take any at Hallett but Shane did get video on my dvcam at both tracks which i'll try to get to later. [click to enlarge]

Update #4 (pictures below)

Filed by Andi
11pm, Tuesday, May 7, 2002
"Steady as she goes"
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Last night we had planned to arrive in Albuquerque around 9pm and actually get a full night’s sleep before the Sandia track event. Obviously the One Lap gods wouldn’t let that happen, as we were working on fixing the in-tank fuel hose till 11. Then we went to Frisbee’s Performance in Albuquerque to get some 104 unleaded race gas, as Sandia only has the leaded stuff that would hurt my oxygen sensors. After filling up with race gas and stopping by a Denny’s type place for dinner, it was about 3am before we checked in to a Motel 6 by the track and got some sleep. 4 hours of sleep in real beds – I guess the One Lap gods decided to give us a break for once. Heh.

We woke up refreshed this morning at 7am and hurried to Sandia Motorsports Park, just a couple of miles away from the track. Sandia is an interesting little track, a mix of autocross and oval racing. The tightest sections bring you as low as 30mph, and on the “straights” you’ll hit upwards of 100mph, with a couple of 70-90mph left turns with oval racing style walls on the outside. Not my favorite track.

When we got there, I was very happy to see that the results from Pikes Peak Event #2 had been posted – I got 3rd place overall! Sweeeet. The 4th and 3rd place finishes at PPIR brought us to 5th overall in the points standings. Being in 5th place, we got to run in the first run group of each time trial, so we got the car ready quickly upon our arrival in the morning. Shocks stiff? Check. Tire pressure? Check. Boost turned up to 1.8 bar? Check.

The session actually felt pretty bad – the car understeered a bit in the hairpins and I let it power oversteer too much in the fast turns on the straights when pinching the line to keep a buffer between me and the walls. I really was surprised when I found out I got 5th in the morning session. I knew what I had to do before the afternoon session – reduce the understeer. I played with the tire pressures and shocks a bit, and turned the boost down slightly (from 1.8 to 1.7) to preserve the motor since it had gotten warmer. The second session felt significantly faster, with balance in the hairpins and better driving on my part to not slide the car and scrub off speed in the high speed turns. But as I learned earlier this One Lap, I’m not the only one that gets faster between the 1st and 2nd session at a track ;), and I got 5th place again in the afternoon session. Our overall points placing didn’t chance, and we left Sandia with a 5th overall standing in the points.

Today the car has been running like a champ. Clint is amazed he hasn’t had to fix a damn thing since yesterday. ;) The only minor issue we’re having is that my cross-drilled front rotors are FUBARed. They are horridly warped now and have begun to develop hairline cracks at the vent holes. As soon as I get back home (or maybe sooner) I’m going to call and order the solid version replacements, no slotting or drilling for me. That stuff may look nice but it sucks for racing. I just hope these rotors last the rest of the event (I think they will).

We packed up and left Sandia at 1:30pm, which is 2:30pm central time. Clint and I both drove across NM and TX at a pretty decent clip today, and we should be arriving in College Station in about 90 minutes, in time to get quite a few hours of sleep at the Manor House Inn, not to mention dialing in and posting this update. Cars line up at the grid at 8:30, and before that we have to fill up w/ race gas, bleed the brakes, check for boost leaks (the FJO wideband reports that we’re running a little richer than normal), and try to clean the car up a little. We’ll probably leave the Manor House around 6:30 to get all that stuff done, meaning we’ll get to sleep from 1:30 to 5:30. 4 whole hours. Sweeeeeet.
I’m really looking forward to tomorrow at TWS.

Andi

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Filed by Jordan

These pictures were taken by Peter Tsai at Pikes Peak. Thanks for sending them Peter.

Update #5 (pictures below)

Filed by Andi
8pm, Friday, May 10, 2002
"One for the history books ;)"
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The One Lap Supra saga continues to amaze us with a mix of the worst and the best of luck. I think our last update left off as we were approaching College Station, TX for Texas World Speedway, and I've got a good bit of storytelling to do about the happenings since then.
The sweet roads of New Mexico and west Texas allowed us to cruise at 100+ for hours, so we got to the Manor House Inn in College Station at 12:45. As has been the case all week, we traded driving/sleeping duties as we got tired, with Clint being able to pull off longer driving stints than I could. When we got to the hotel, I went straight to sleep to be rested for the racing in the morning, while Clint went out and burned off the remaining tank of pump gas and got the car cleaned up at a car wash.
When we got to TWS in he morning, most of the competitors were already there and getting ready. I set my tire pressures and shock settings, and most importantly, filled up with Sunoco GT Plus 104 unleaded. If there's anything that's truly amazed me this One Lap, it's the Supra community. I can't tell you how cool it is to have friends, from online and offline, visiting you to watch you race at every single track, not to mention folks like Jeff Watson and Jeff Hood that lent us parts off their own cars to keep the One Lap Supra team going. This day at TWS my buddies Jordan and Jerry came from Dallas to watch us race, and most of the Houston Supra club came as well, even bringing food and drink with them. Too cool.
I was originally lined up behind the DaVia/Denmeade Porsche 996TT, but Denmeade asked me to go ahead of him since this was my home track. No problem. TWS was my favorite track on the One Lap circuit thus far, not to mention that it's the only track I'd actually seen/driven before. I found out in the warm-up lap that the EGTs were getting too hot when running 26psi of boost, so I turned the boost down to 24psi as I approached the starting line. Problem solved.
We lined up at the finish line from the start as we always do, although TWS added some flair to the start since the finish line is on the banked oval part of the front straight -- ergo keeping the car pointed in the right direction on the launch was challenging to say the least. Especially at 24psi of boost on 18" Pirellis. The morning session was run on the long 2.9 mile configuration that I know pretty well, and the runs felt great. The only thing I think I could've improved on was my entry into turn 1 - with the big brakes and the well adjusted bias, I could've dived into turn 1 harder and deeper. But other than that I really enjoyed the session and it felt very fast. The only hang-up was that in the second half of the last lap, my spark plugs started missing slightly. I turned the boost down to 20psi and careened on to the finish line, unaffected by the spark plug problem for the most part. I was a little disappointed when I found out I only got 2nd place and not 1st on my home track, but I guess I can't be that disappointed since it was Brian Smith, last year's winner and all around badass driver, that beat me. And by only about 1.8 seconds over 3 laps. Oh well.
In the afternoon session, after changing spark plugs, we ran the 1.8 mile short course at TWS. Although it doesn't have the character, panache, and speed of the 2.9 track, it's still a fun little course. I didn't have lots of experience on it like I did on the 2.9, but I did do one track day on it about a year ago which is better than nothing. I had to push harder in the 2nd session as unlike me, a lot of people would be getting a lot faster as they learned the track. I used the brakes harder and deeper going into turn 1, and did my best to be smooth and fast in the tight esses on the infield. It killed me not knowing how I did for the rest of the day, as they didn't update the website w/ the results all night (I kept calling friends to check the net and see). But once I got to Road Atlanta I found out I got a 3rd place on the TWS 1.8. Not too bad - and it solidified our 5th place overall standing.
After the time trials, we examined my brakes in the TWS garages. The front rotors were completely trashed -- the hairline cracks I reported earlier had become fractures the went all the way through the rotor. There's no way these brakes would survive One Lap, or that I'd risk it. Screw that. It was 2pm by the time we finished packing up and left the track, and we headed straight for Dallas. Qualen Freeman was kind enough to take his 14" AP 6-piston front brakes (just slotted and not cross drilled) off his car and leave them at CTC for us, so we could just put his brakes on for the rest of One Lap. (Nobody had the non-drilled version of my rotors in stock to just overnight them to the next track, unfortunately). We got to CTC in north Dallas around 5pm, and by the time we installed the brakes and got the wheels to fit over them (some wheel spacer shopping at various auto parts stores was necessary), it was 8:30pm central time. We would've been done by 7, but the weirdest thing happened. As we were pulling the car off the lift from changing the brakes, we heard a loud screeching noise. It turns out that the 100,000 mile crank pulley off this 100,000 mile motor split in two and the gear driving the belts just spun right off and fell on the shop floor. There are two ways to look at this mishap, and I still think that is some of the best luck imaginable to have an item like that break at the **SHOP** instead of on the road. I mean, had the brakes not failed, we would've been somewhere on I-20 rather than in the shop in Dallas when the pulley broke, which then would most assuredly caused us to break down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. We had just installed a brand new crank pulley on my old (now blown) motor a week before, so we just took the pulley of that motor and installed it on the car and were on our way by 8:30pm. I still can't believe the crank pulley just split in two pieces at the shop of all places. That luck is just almost good enough to cancel all the bad luck we've had this week.
As the One Lap Gods would have it, today was the longest drive of the whole circuit -- the remaining leg from Dallas to Road Atlanta was 850 miles and we had 11 hours to do it (we left Dallas at 8:30pm central / 9:30pm Eastern time, and the time trials at Road Atlanta started at 9am the next day). Since we were 5th overall, we always run in the first run group every day and there is a 10 second penalty if you're late for a time trial and miss your run group. Thus we were going to try our damnedest to make it to Road Atlanta on time. And so the excitement begins.
I drove first so that Clint could get some sleep and let me sleep in the latter half of the night, so that I could then watch some Road Atlanta videos on the computer as well as get some sleep in the car before racing. We were making really good time. I recall at our first gas stop around midnight figuring we'd averaged 87mph from Dallas. At that first gas stop somewhere in Louisiana, I almost decided to quit driving and let Clint drive, but said to myself I can go a little longer. Little did I know I was about to pass through a little South Park of a town called Monroe. You see, Monroe frowns upon doing 50 over their artificially low 60mph speed limit, as I found out last night the hard way. All I know is, I recall clearly I was just cruising their little town doing a nice and comfortable ~100ish MPH with Clint asleep in the passenger seat, and was chatting w/ Meg on the handsfree cellphone. Thus her now famous post on the Texas Supra list telling everybody how I said "I'd better go, I'm getting pulled over" and then never called her back. The officer made me step out of the car and angrily asked me "son, what is your problem?" I said well sir, I guess I was speeding since you stopped me.. how fast was I going? "110mph in a 60. You ever been arrested before?" And so the next few hours are spent in Monroe, Louisiana ;) Oh, and I'd forgotten my phone in my car so I had no way to call anybody - even Clint, since I never remember anybody's phone number as they're all in my phone. Our delay in the fine city of Monroe, Louisiana was only a slight 3 hour one. I just thank god Clint didn't have his camera on him when the transportation officers brought me back in cuffs and shackles from Ridgewood Correctional Facility to Monroe to be released. (Note - all day at Road Atlanta and Summit, people have been asking me about my trip to jail so hopefully it'll be noteworthy enough for Tony Swan to mention in the C&D article and it might just win me the "in most need of a good radar detector" award. Wish me luck). Heh.
As we were leaving the Monroe city hall, Clint says, "well, there goes our hopes for One Lap. I told you to keep it under 100 in the cities and not get your ass arrested." Damn. What could I say? <shrug> We had made it right around 250 miles before I got arrested, so we still had ~600 miles to go, and it was 4am by the time we got back on the road. Man, what a trip it was to get to Road Atlanta after this. We were sure there would be no way in hell we'd make it before the end of the first session, let alone avoid the time penalty for running late. But we were sure gonna try -- if you've read this far through our updates you know we wouldn't give up. When we got out, Clint drove first and let me sleep. I know he did a lot of 140+mph bursts through the rest of Louisiana and Mississippi and whatever other states were on the way whenever he felt like the odds of a cop being present were sufficiently low. I was real used to sleeping in the car even at wide open throttle w/ the wastegate blaring by this point, and I slept like a log for an hour or two until Clint woke me up just outside of Birmingham and asked me to drive. We pulled over onto the shoulder of I-20 and I took command of the wheel. I swear I didn't get to drive for more than 30 seconds before I passed a state trooper in the median doing what my speedometer said was 78mph. I even told Clint, "Nice.. watch this, I'm getting another fucking ticket, for just 78 in a 70." The ticket was actually for 81 :( I still can't believe I got pulled over that soon after getting behind the wheel. I hadn't even accelerated all the way up to my 85mph cruising speed yet by that point. Sigh :( After that I cruised at around 80-95mph for the next hour, then started doing 100-110 once we got under the cover of sparse west Atlanta traffic. Ivy Johnson called me and told me a better way to get to the track - the Atlanta downtown bypass loop to avoid the traffic. Then the really great news came - Kyle Corcoran called me and told me there was no penalty today for missing my run group. He was right - in the rulebook it says that Road Atlanta #1 is the only event where this penalty is waived, just to be nice since this was the longest of all the legs in the One Lap 2002 circuit (TWS to Road Atlanta is 950 miles).
We got to the track at 10:10am averaging ~100mph for the previous six hours including a couple gas stops. In fact if my math is right, we averaged 65mph from Dallas to Road Atlanta including the 3 hours stop in Monroe. Mission accomplished. Well, almost. We just missed the race gas pumps closing by a couple minutes. And our tank was strategically empty as we pulled in. Nice. Thankfully the very nice grid marshall of One Lap, Mrs. Corcoran, got the race gas guy to come back and let us fill up. I filled up with Sunoco 100 and then we scrambled to empty the car and get me on the track. The Atlanta Supra club was nice enough to come out and help/support us w/ food, drink, and assistance, and Barry Hair and his wife even came from Alabama to watch us race and give me advice on the track. These great guys even paid for the race gas. We got the car emptied in less than 5 minutes and I was in the pits ready to race by 10:30. I can't express in words how happy and relieved we both were that we made it in time, especially with no penalty. It was a long night, but it was worth it. Shit, when I was in the back of the cop car with cuffs on, my biggest worry, in fact, my only worry, was how to still get to Road Atlanta in time. Mission accomplished. Now I just had to do well on the track. Brock gave me the go ahead to go do my warm up lap, and I drove the car as if I were already in the time trials so that I could get a feel for the track. The first session went well enough, and DAMN that's the most fun track I've ever been on. I will return for open track days in the near future -- I love Road Atlanta. The car felt very strong at Road Atlanta, and the power no doubt helped me tons there as RA has the longest straight I've ever seen :) I easily got up to 150mph before the downhill braking zone at the end of the back straight. This was great until my 3rd timed lap, where I was coming down the hill at 150mph and the brake pedal went straight to the floor. Nice. Pucker up. Luckily I still had SOME braking at that point, and that combined with downshifting, slowed the car down for the chicane and let me finish the lapping session in one piece. I placed 6th overall in that session.
Over lunch, with the help of the Atlanta club that had come to watch us race, we bled all the brakes and checked to see why the brakes faded. Note: this is the first time I've ever experienced complete fluid fade, and damn, what a place to experience it. It sucks!! We soon found the problem - the way we installed the calipers slightly offset to clear the wheels, when the rotors expanded from the heat of the insanely hard braking needed at Road Atlanta, the edges of the rotors had been touching the edges of the calipers. Nothing too bad - just that the heat generated from this extra friction translated to quickly boiled Motul 600. The problem was fixed now as the rotors and calipers had self-clearanced each other, and I was ready to do the 2nd time trial.
During the lunch break between the 1st and 2nd time trials at Road Atlanta, a couple of current One Lap of America competitors got married in the paddock. I hear they met at One Lap a couple years ago. I think that's pretty cool. I wish them the best and look forward to seeing them again next year.
Just to add more drama to the One Lap Supra saga, as we were sitting in the pits waiting to grid for the second time trial, as Clint was sitting in the car w/ the door open setting up the video camera, my passenger side door gets hit by another One Lapper in a Caravan. Nice. The door still closes and seals well, it just doesn't look too pretty. Oh well, I guess it's not that bad, at least in the end after everything's fixed I'll get a souvenir doorshell with One Lap of America 2002 stickers that I can hang up somewhere for display. Since it happened in the hot pits and everybody could see it, Brock Sr. came up to me before my time trials and gave me a little pep talk, which I thought was really cool of him. "It's just fucking metal. Don't worry about it, you'll get a new door. Don't let it affect your driving and slow you down or screw you up. Go out there and kick ass. Remember, it's just fucking metal. Now go out there and concentrate on driving."
The second time trial was very good for us, as I did a lot better than the 1st one (4 seconds better at 5:10 total elapsed time for 3 laps from a stop), even with taking it a little easier on the brakes and lowering the boost from 1.7 to 1.5 just for safety. What really helped was keeping in mind that I can go down the hill onto the front straight a lot faster than I first wanted to - and I worked my way up to a pretty good corner speed there. The 2nd time trial at Road Atlanta got me a 4th place overall finish, which would further solidify our 5th place finish except for the fact that the 4th place Porsche ahead of us went off the track sideways at the top of the hill leading to the front straight, and saved it from hitting the wall by entering pit lane on the other side of the grass -- thus giving him a DNF. So after Road Atlanta we've got a solid 4th overall spot in the points.
The drive from Road Atlanta to Summit Point was nice. At least it was for me as I slept through most of it. We got to the Shoney's Inn about 10 miles from the track at about midnight, and poor tired Clint just passed out on his bed without even changing or anything. I took the opportunity to take my first shower since Wednesday morning, and then slept like a log from 2 until 6:30.
I watched some videos and studied the track maps on the computer on the short drive from the hotel to Summit Point Raceway this morning. We got to the track around 8:30, and were ready to race by 9. Summit Point has one long straight which should be good for my car, but it also has some blind technical stuff that really hurts those that aren't familiar with the track. That having been said, I was only driving at 8/10th's today at Summit Point because we've got a 150 point cushion in each direction in the overall standings, so the only thing that can move us up or down is a DNF from us or somebody above us - so my job was to make sure it wasn't us. I got 8th place overall in the morning session, and unless one of the "slower" cars in the 3rd run group and on beat me, I've got 7th place overall in the afternoon time trials. As of now we've still got a solid 4th place -- all we have to do is keep it. There are two events left in One Lap of America 2002 -- one paved oval time trial at Lancaster Dragway, and then just finishing the lap around the country by crossing the pedestrian bridge at Rochester that started it all one week ago.
It is 8pm on Friday as I write this, and we just made it to Rochester an hour ago. We're going to stay here at the Sheraton Four Points host hotel tonight and tomorrow night since it's only an hour away from Lancaster Dragway and we'll be too tired to leave town tomorrow anyway. This was probably the easiest leg of One Lap yet, as it's still light out and we even had time to go visit Lake Ontario just now. We're pulling into downtown to check in so I'm gonna stop writing here. I'll try to post another update after the One Lap of America Awards Banquet on the River tomorrow evening. Wish us luck.

Andi

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Filed by Jordan

Pics from Texas World. Some I took and some one of the Houston Supra crew took. (email me your name...I never caught it)

[click to enlarge]

Update #6

Filed by Andi
Noon, Sunday, May 12, 2002
"All good things..."
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Friday night, the last night of One Lap 2002, we made into the Rochester hotel pretty early, which was a pleasant change from the previous days to say the least. We were starving, so we had dinner at the hotel restaurant with Dan and Kyle Corcoran of the #25 Firebird team. These are some of the nicest folks you'll ever meet, and they continued to give me good advice for running the tracks even though they were just barely trailing us in the points. Way cool.
We woke up pretty early Saturday morning since the Lancaster event was still an hour away. Breakfast? We'd rather sleep. We left the hotel around 7 and made it to Lancaster Dragway by 8. For One Lap, Lancaster Dragway was a bit of a misnomer as we weren't doing a drag race there -- we were doing an oval race. At this track, they have a paved, slightly banked oval that shares one of its straights with the dragstrip. It's an interesting setup. Since it was such a short track (cumulative 3-lap laptimes were barely over a minute), they only had two cars on the track at the time.
The track was a bit tricky, as you kind of "hop" off the banked oval onto the dragstrip, but you don't actually slide across because the dragstrip is grippier pavement. The harder part is actually going off the dragstrip back onto the oval as you -do- lose some grip even with the banking. It was a fun little track and like w/ most tracks this week, I wish we'd've gotten some more practice laps to better learn how fast we can go through the turns. I ended up turning in a 9th place finish at Lancaster, which was only 3.3 seconds slower than the #1 finisher, John Boos, over the 3 lap time period. Oh, I almost forgot.. they put huge Styrofoam pads around the oval track this morning, and amazingly, I heard that some Miata actually took advantage of this by brushing up against the padded walls with his rear bumper. Ouch.
Although the lackluster finish here and at the previous tracks meant everybody else was catching up to us in the points, we weren't worried as we had 4th overall locked in as long as we didn't do something stupid and DNF - so I was only trying 8-9 tenths instead of the 10 tenths effort I was putting into the driving at the beginning of One Lap.
The mission from here was simple -- get the car washed, grab a quick meal, and make it to High Falls Brewery to cross the bridge (the finish line) by 2pm. Do New Yorkers not wash their cars? The only car wash we found was the same car wash in south Rochester that we had found and used before One Lap. Nice. After getting the car cleaned up and eating a splendid meal from Burger King, we made it to the finish line and lined up at the bridge with about an hour to spare.
Crossing the bridge was the culmination of all we had worked hard to achieve this week. Once we made it to the other side, it was all over. We had somehow managed to get a 4th place overall finish in the Cannonball One Lap of America 2002, and now we could party. =) We parked the in line with all the other finishers by Jillians, where it all had started 8 days ago, and walked over to the club for the awards party/banquet. (I forget the name of the place but it's the same place we had the drivers meeting a week ago and I hear it's also Rocheter's most happening night club).
The awards banquet was really cool. All the friends we'd made over the past week were here, all exhausted and hungry and ready to do it again next year like us, and most were disappointed that it's already over. There was free food too, dammit, since we weren't hungry after all that spectacular Burger King food. Oh well.
We got two trophies from Brock this day -- 4th place overall, and 3rd place in the SSGT1 class. And I also got another awards whose name I'm unsure of: the award for the guy who most needs a CB. For my...umm... delay...in Monroe, Louisiana, Brock gave me a K40 CB Radio with an antenna that's taller than I am. Cool. I guess I can mount it at home and listen to the truckers driving by on the freeway. ;) j/k
Since Clint had slightly straightened my wrinkled doorskin earlier with a hammer and a half of a Hoosier tire, it was now slightly more presentable. We put more stickers over the damaged part, and decided to get some signatures on this door and keep it forever as a One Lap souvenir. We pulled the car up to the front door of the club and got everybody to sign it on their way out w/ a Sharpie permanent fine point marker. The door turned out really cool :) I can't wait to take it off and hang it up on the wall.
And so ends the story of the One Lap Supra's 2002 saga. It was one adventure after another for sure, but it was worth it. We look forward to experiencing all the insanity again next year.

Andi

Special Thanks for Your Support

We are deeply touched by the outpouring of support from the Supra community. In this space below we'd like to thank those who've helped the team, in different ways ranging from inspiring the OneLapSupra team altogether, sending us track videos/notes, helping out with the car, starting online fundraisers for the team, or donating their own hard earned cash to the effort, and more. We love you guys (and gals) <wipes tear>.

The Sponsors

Note: Our budget for the event was about the same as what's available on our credit cards... probably more once all is said and done. Heh. :-/ Your support is definitely appreciated, thanks. :)

• One Lap of America Official Website
• One Lap of America 2002 Official Website
• One Lap of America 2002 Official Entrants List