(stay tuned to OneLapSupra.com during the race for daily updates!)
Update #1 The beast lives.
Monday, May 05, 2003
by Andi Baritchi
It is now Monday evening, and after an interesting day at Road America, I
finally have have a bit of free time to write this first update on the road.
I’m sorry for leaving y’all hanging thus far – I’ll
try my best to be posting daily updates for the remainder of the race.
So, let’s get started with the summary of this year’s adventure,
shall we? Any race effort begins with car prep, and One Lap is certainly no
exception. We learned quite a few lessons last year, what with the engine swap,
wheel bearing failure, drilled rotor failure, fuel hose failures, crankshaft
pulley failure, etc. Wayne Potts of CTC Motorsports in Dallas, TX, the primary
sponsor of the 2003 One Lap Supra effort, spent the past two weeks doing nothing
but working on preparing the One Lap Supra for this race.
Once all was said and done, we brought the car to One Lap this year with a
10,000 mile engine that’s been track tested, all new wheel bearings,
a new TRD limited-slip differential and TRD twin-disc clutch (thanks to Toyotaworld.com
for those items), new axles, all new brakes with non-drilled rotors, a new
radiator air scoop / engine undertray, and tons of other stuff that’d
be too time-consuming to list. The goal was simple – the car needs to
be reliable this year, with none of the insanity of daily parts replacements
that totally defined our One Lap 2002 effort.
Clint and I originally planned to head out from Dallas toward New York on Wednesday
morning, which would have been a nice, relaxed schedule. In the end, after
a few unexpected extra repairs (and many parts runs to Houston and Austin)
to get the car totally ready, we strapped the One Lap Supra onto the trailer
and left from my house around 6pm on Wednesday. That may not have been optimal,
but it’s still 10 hours ahead of our departure last year. 
We didn’t
have time to sleep in a hotel on Wednesday night, so we drove straight through,
and arrived at the Lodge on the Green in Painted Post, NY, at around midnight
on Thursday night. I guess it really was a more leisurely drive than last year,
as we were only 2 hours ahead of last year upon arrival rather than 10 hours.
Friday was a relatively uneventful day – this year One Lap started on
Friday night at the Lodge on the Green, and the first time trial at Watkins
Glen on Saturday is only 30 miles away. Mike Lee, a Supra guy in the area,
kindly offered us to use the pressure washer at his house, so we headed there
after lunch. Once we got the car cleaned and stickered up, we hurried back
to the Lodge for the 6pm driver’s meeting.
Once we were back at the hotel, we met up with my good friend and fellow Supra
owner Bruce Hadfeld, who drove down from Canada to watch us run at Watkins
Glen. Friday evening, Clint decided to rig up an in-car camera mount, so he
went to home depot and bought a piece of wood. Wood, zipties, and duct tape – isn’t
that how all in-car camera setups are built?
Fast forward to Saturday morning at Watkins Glen. We went through our usual
preparations, setting the boost, refueling with race fuel, setting the tire
pressures, etc, and lined up to run according to our pre-assigned car number
(5th). You see, before the race, Brock et al assign a car number to every team,
signifying how they would guess that team will place at the end, and that is
your starting order for the first time trial.
In the morning session at Watkins Glen, the cars were ordered as such: First
was Brian Smith in his team Chrysler PVO Viper SRT-10, second was Ron Adee
in his MTI 427+NOS Z06, third was Paul Gerrard in a RUF RGT (pro driver in
pretty much a stock Porsche GT3), fourth was John Boos in a DRM 427 Z06, and
then lil ol’ me in 5th. Brock decided to put 5 cars in each run group,
so I started at the back of the first run group. I was hoping to be in the
2nd run group to get some more time for the track to heat up, but this turned
out to be to my advantage (more on that later).
At One Lap, each time trial works like this: you exit pit road onto the track,
do one warm-up/reconnaissance lap (well, almost one lap), and stop at the start/finish
line. They usually put five cars in each run group, and each starts when given
the green flag – they try to space us out as far apart as possible. When
given the green flag, you drag-launch the car as well as possible, then you
do 3 timed laps, and when you cross the finish line the 3rd time you’re
presented a checkered flag. After that, you typically get most of one lap to
cool the car down, exiting this lap at the pit entrance.
The morning session at Watkins Glen was pretty good, except that I didn’t
work my way to totally pushing wide open throttle through the esses. The esses,
a very important part of this track, basically connect the two parts of the
back straight, and are surrounded by intimidating guardrails very close to
the track edges. Oh, and in a fast car you’re doing 100-140mph as you
accelerate through the esses. Thank God it didn’t rain here – that
would have been very scary, throttle steering between guardrails uphill at
triple digit speeds.
My cumulative 3-lap time in the morning session would have netted me a 4th
place finish, but John Boos hit a cone and got a 10 second penalty, which flip-flopped
our positions and netted us 3rd place. I was lucky to be in the first run group
rather than the second, as the Lamborghini hit the wall near the laces of the
boost and left some radiator fluid on the track, which undoubtedly slowed down
the people in that run group at least slightly (the session was not red-flagged).
I’m sure most everybody wanted to cry when they saw that beautiful car
banged up like that. Somehow he lucked out and it was only minor mechanical
damage, and he was able to fix it before the second session. It’s not
every day you see a crowbar go through a Diablo’s quarter panel to try
and distance it from the tire.
Before the second session at Watkins Glen, I turned up the boost just a bit,
and decided to just grow the balls to go flat out through the esses. I knew
the car could handle it, so I just had to convince myself that I could. At
the start of the second time trial, my launch off the line kind of sucked as
I fell off boost. Oh well, nothing I could do but drive my best around the
track and make up for it. Overall, this session felt a lot faster than my previous
one, mainly due to much higher speeds through the esses and the following straight.
The g-Force TA KD’s just barely had enough grip through the esses – on
lap two, which I think was my best lap, the rear end of the car actually stepped
out slightly on the power in 5th gear at ~130mph. In the middle of the esses,
right between the guard rails. Nice. Then, immediately after that on the same
lap, I noticed my exhaust gas temperature gauge was reading too low (700C instead
of ~850C), which worried me a bit. My first thought was blown head gasket,
but the water temperature was still perfect so that wasn’t it… so
I did my best to keep that off my mind and just race. I recall at least one
mistake that I made in the 3rd lap due to this distraction, but I’d guess
it only cost me a second or less so it’s not a big deal.
The second session, overall, definitely felt a lot better than the first, and
it’s an incredible rush to be driving a 600+hp car on street tires at
The Glen – especially through the esses. I ended up getting 4th overall
in that session, with a significantly faster time than I put down earlier.
At the end of the first day, Brian Smith was leading, Ron Adee was in second
place, and John Boos and I were tied for fourth place. Paul Gerrard was just
a few points down from us though…
When we opened the hood afterwards in the garage, we found the problem that
caused the lower exhaust gas temperature – my turbo-to-manifold bolts
had started to back out, and the hot gases burned a hole in the stainless steel
gasket. Shit, where do you get a T04 turbine flange stainless steel gasket
on a Saturday afternoon? I looked through my contact list of people from the
online Supra community that had emailed me for One Lap help along the way,
and started calling people.
Ryan Pinkus from Ohio called around and tried to find one but had no luck.
Then I noticed Bob Westwater on my contact list was in Indianapolis and has
a T78. I gave him a call and he said his car was down anyway and he didn’t
at all mind lending us his turbine inlet gasket. Sweet! Now that we had a worst
case scenario set up, we continued to try to find a new gasket, going from
truck stop to truck stop, Dodge dealer to Dodge dealer, etc… (A lot of
diesel truck turbos use the same T04 turbine flange). No luck. Then an hour
later, Bob called us back and said he found the correct gasket at an International
Truck dealer and that he already bought a couple, so we should just head to
his house in Indianapolis on the way to IRP. Coolness.
First, though, we had to go to this year’s only checkpoint stop, the
Summit Racing retail store in Akron, Ohio. Good, I needed a new air filter
anyway. We quickly ate our free boxed lunches, bought the new K&N, and
were off to Bob’s…
We arrived at Bob’s at 1am, waited a few minutes (!) for the turbo to
cool down, and then took it off the header to replace the gasket. (Sorry about
those burn scars, Clint…) Of course, our 9/16” wrench didn’t
fit in the tight space for one of the turbo bolts, but that was soon rectified
with a hacksaw and grinding wheel. We got the turbo off, removed the 10% of
the gasket that was still there, installed the new stainless steel International
truck turbo gasket, put the turbo back on, and went on our way.
I went to sleep in the passenger seat while Clint drove around for a bit, testing
the car and doing some 18psi pulls to make sure everything was okay, and then
we went to a Denny’s to eat some breakfast (it was about 4am at the time).
Denny’s sucks. Too bad they don’t have IHOP’s around here…
So we get to the track at about 5:30 and set our alarms for 7 o’clock
(gate opening time), recline the seats as much as we can, and try to get some
sleep… (We parked in front of the gate in everybody’s way so they’d
have to wake us up, heh). 7am rolls around, our alarms go off, and the gate
is still closed… only now there are a few other One Lappers asleep in
their cars around us as well. 7:30 rolls around and STILL nothing. WTF? Then
I had an epiphany: Indiana’s on central time, and we’re not. Sigh.
Try to go back to sleep for another few minutes..
Finally the real 7 o’clock comes up and they open the gates, and we happily
go in IRP’s lovely grassy paddock and unpack. The fuel tank is empty,
as we’re prepared to put in race gas, but the track officials still haven’t
opened the race gas pumps. Roy Hopkins of the ///M5 team and I decided to go
walk the track at around 7:15, and when I got back to the car at 8:15, Clint
was done installing the camera mounts but we were still running on empty and
there was no race gas. Then I heard “will the first 20 cars please line
up at the grid” over the intercom. SHIT! I’m out of gas! Jim Connell
and his son had just showed up to watch us run, and we borrowed an empty fuel
jug from the Thunderbird team and Jim went to fill it up with pump gas at the
station down the street. Meanwhile, I asked Brock Sr. what to do, and he got
the track officials to open the pumps and delayed the start of the first run
group by a few minutes while we pumped it in. He said “I’m not
gonna have one of the leaders DNF just because the track people are running
late.” What a guy. Thanks Brock!
I don’t like Indianapolis Raceway Park. Whereas Watkins Glen is a beautiful,
flowing, challenging, adrenaline pumping high speed track, IRP is a boring,
drab, thrown together road course. They didn’t even fully construct the
very back section of the track – it’s just a big parking lot with
the race area marked off by cones. Very nice. And IRP has lots of walls too.
Like the two walls on both sides of the front straight (which is actually a
_ mile drag strip). Maybe I’m just biased against it because I never
do well at this track, or maybe it really does suck, I don’t know.
Anyways, once I got the race gas in and had the car setup, we did a quick warm
up lap and got ready to start. The first session was a bit challenging as I
hadn’t practiced this track before (except for two 3-lap time trials
in last year’s One Lap), and I didn’t go as fast as I possibly
could have through the blind back section. This session got us a 6th place
finish, and even the second session where I thought I did much better, was
still a 5th place. Shoot.
The skidpad competition at the Tire Rack was in a few hours, and it looked
like rain was about to hit that area. Your time (or skidpad grip in this case)
counts whether it’s wet or dry, so if somebody gets there before you
and runs in the dry, and you run in the wet, that’s the way the times
stand. We rapidly drove to South Bend, emptied the car, and got on the skidpad.
A real small, 200ft skidpad that we ran in both directions.
Averaging the better of two laps around the skidpad in each direction, we ran
1.016g, which was a 4th place finish. Stupid understeer – I couldn’t
throttle steer at all around that little skidpad. Paul Gerrard in the Ruf Porsche
won the skidpad event, and told me afterwards that he unhooked the front swaybar
for more oversteer. I wish I would’ve done that.
The drive from the Tire Rack to Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin was a short, relaxed
one, and we actually got a lot of sleep at the Plymouth Inn. It was raining,
and the outlook for this morning’s track day at Road America was also
gloomy – rain. Road America is an awesome, four-mile course with some
of the longest straights of any race track in the country, so I was really
hoping for dry weather to take advantage of my car’s great high speed
acceleration.
Woke up Monday morning in Elkhart Lake and headed across town to Road America.
No need for race gas – it was still raining. I turned the boost down
to 16psi and headed to the track with the _ tank of gas we had in the car.
We actually left some of our stuff in the hotel room after asking for a late
checkout. We pulled into this little cramped garage with room for maybe 8 cars
and emptied our remaining supplies, and found out the driver’s meeting
was in that same garage in a few minutes.
Brock Sr. led the meeting, and informed us that due to the weather, there would
be only one time trial instead of two, albeit with for timed laps. There would
be a stop-sign strategically placed right before the kink, to try to protect
people from hitting the wall in that very dangerous section of the track, and
corner workers and camera watchers would be policing us to make a complete
stop. No complete stop - DNF. And before the session, even before our one warm-up
lap, we would get two extra recon laps behind a pace car. Brock was really
trying hard to protect us from wadding up our cars at this very challenging,
dangerous wet track.
After the two extra recon laps, I was a little bit low on fuel, and the Sizemore
team with the Corvette was kind enough to give me a couple gallons of race
fuel they had in their trailer so I wouldn’t risk going lean. Although
I was leading Gerrard in the points, and was thus told to go ahead of him,
I let him go ahead of me as I knew he would own this event.
As I write this, I still don’t know the official results from Road America,
but I’d bet that Gerrard won it. All I know so far is that I’m
happy that I managed to run at 9/10ths in the wet and keep the car and myself
in one piece – and I probably didn’t do too terribly bad. We’ll
probably know by the time you read this.
Road America is one of my favorite tracks in the country. It’s a tough,
four mile circuit with not only long straights, but lots of fast, sweeping
corners that dare you to go through them flat out. In the dry, it’s a
dream. In the wet, a bit more of a nightmare for a 600hp turbo lagging street
car like ours… but fun nonetheless. I can’t wait to see the in-car
video from our TurboPimports ghetto-fab camera mount.
In today’s wet conditions, I turned the boost down all the way (~15-16psi)
and softened the rear shocks to reduce oversteer. With this setup, the car
would actually sometimes catch traction in third gear, and for sure in fourth.
The track surface was very tricky, sometimes real grippy and at other times
more like ice. I tried to follow Paul Gerrard’s advice to stay off the
dry line in the corners and try to find the coarser looking surface and put
my outside tires on it, and that seemed to work pretty well.
The car stayed in check for the most part, except for one occasion where the
back end stepped out on the downhill braking zone for turn 5 – I had
opposite lock dialed in for most of the braking zone, from about 100 down to
about 25mph approaching that corner. That could have ended less optimally but
I somehow kept it together. In retrospect it probably at least looked pretty
cool. :).
About an hour after leaving Road America – in fact, right before the
Illinois border, we heard a loud clunking noise under the car. Something like
a tire blowout or driving over a chunk of metal. Then silence, and the car
still drove straight. WTF? We pulled over and looked under the car, at the
wheels and tires, etc, and everything looked fine. Got back on the highway,
and the first time we had to brake moderately hard, the car swerved to the
right.
“
Does your car always violently swerve to the right under braking?” asked
Clint. Umm, no. The next exit was the Illinois Welcome Center, and we decided
to inspect the car again at their parking lot. Look at the brakes and they
seem fine upon initial inspection, until I noticed that the front left rotor
was a two-piece rotor. Literally. The big-brake kit I have uses an outer cast-iron
rotor and an inner aluminum hat that attaches to the hub – and these
two items are bolted together by twelve allen-head bolts. Or at least should
be. When I looked through the front left wheel at the rotor, all of the bolts
had sheared off, and the rotor was no longer concentric with the center aluminum
hat or wheel hub.
At least I thought to bring along new brake rotor hardware in case this happens.
NOT. Who would expect this? We took the opposite rotor off as well to maybe
steal some of the hardware from that one to install onto the left side so we
could limp to the next track until we got some more brakes. No dice – the
other side’s rotor was almost as bad, with 6 of the 12 bolts sheared
off and the rest seized in there. This failure doesn’t seem to be the
product’s fault, but rather my own. I installed these rotors myself,
and tightened the shit out of these bolts, not knowing that their torque spec
is only 10ft-lbs, so as to allow for rotor expansion at high temperatures.
Oops.
At this point, to continue in the race, was only one option – remove
the front brakes and limp with rear brakes only to wherever we can fix it.
But what could we stick in the front calipers to keep the pistons apart? And
where would we get replacement brakes (or fasteners/bolts)?
Luckily we were at the Illinois Welcome Center, as the people there were extremely
kind and helpful. First, a fellow by the name of Jim came by and asked how
he could help. When we told him we needed something to insert into the brake
calipers in place of the rotors, he said he had some 2x4’s in the truck,
and brought us some. With those 2x4s installed, and the brake bias adjusted
to full rear, we were able to drive the car again. That having been said, I
never realized how weak and useless rear brakes really are. No amount of pedal
pressure could lock the rears – it just couldn’t be done. Just
pulling the handbrake seemed to double the amount of deceleration we were able
to achieve.
The ladies at the welcome center came out and asked us what we were looking
for, and suggested a few race shops and hardware stores in the area. They even
called around for us until they found a specialty hardware store just a few
miles away that had the exact fasteners we needed. Evidently, Rockford, Illinois
was the ideal spot to have such a failure, as the city is famous for being
a large nut and bolt manufacturing town. A couple hours later, we left Rockford
with the brakes back together and everything good as new. We’re just
a few hours behind and won’t get a chance to get a whole night’s
sleep in Tulsa, that’s all.
As I write this, we’re in a large pack of One Lappers in southern Illinois,
about to cross into Missouri. Like last year, we’re going to Shane Duvall’s
house in Tulsa tonight, although it’s a refreshing change not to have
to fix anything this time. Jordan and Jerry are coming up from Dallas tonight
as well, and they’re picking up my stock brakes from CTC Motorsports
and bringing them to us so we can carry them around the country as backups,
just in case..
I’ll do my best to be posting daily updates the rest of the race… sorry
it took a few days to get this one posted. It’s just been a little more
crazy than I thought it would be so far. More importantly, I’ll do my
best to move up in the points and get that podium finish we’re shooting
for. Wish us luck!
Andi Baritchi
OneLapSupra.com
Monday, May 05, 2003
8:35pm
