Thought id do a quick uodate. We placed 16th overall. Car was amazing, trip was amazing. I’ll post a detailed review when we get home and get some much needed sleep.
That’s an awesome showing, congrats!
Am I crazy thinking I spotted a C7 corvette with one lap stickers all over it on the I-90 last night near Rochester / Syracuse?
How many people partcipated in this?
53 cars this year
Get the fuck up and show me pictures, damnit.
Damn fine showing for your first time out. Was following all the way on facebook. Nice work!
In the middle of the last race season, Mike had a conversation with One Lap veteran Tim Harper about his experiences at OLOA. Mike and I immediately decided that we had to compete in OLOA. After some research, we decided that we would finish my car for the next One Lap, which was in May of 2014. After months and months of 40+ hour weeks working on the car to get it prepped, it appeared as if everything had come together and we were ready a few days early for the event.
The day before the start of the event–
Mike and I had gone back and forth as to whether we would leave Thursday night or Friday morning for Tire Rack Headquarters in South Bend, Indiana. We decided to make the 7 hour drive on Thursday night so we could get some rest before the event. We had packed the trailer the week before, but on Thursday night I had gotten at the shop early to finish installing the left front wheel bearing which had just arrived. I buttoned that up, got in the car to hook it to the trailer, and the car would not go into gear while running. After some diagnosing, Mike and I believed that the throwout bearing had failed. With little time, we discussed prepping his STI as quickly as possible so we could leave on time. Due to a few issues including the fact that mike has very loud fuel pumps in his car, we decided to fix the clutch in the swap car. We immediately went to town pulling the motor.
We got the motor out at around 7pm and confirmed that the throwout bearing had partially pulled out of the cage and the cage was damaged. Mike got in touch with Mike at Innovative Tuning and he was still at the shop after hours tuning some customer cars. We picked up an ACT HDSS and installed it, and got the rest of the car buttoned up and packed at around 3am. With no time to spare, we got on the road by 4am and made it to Tire Rack at around 12:30. We got registered, stickered up, and headed to the hotel to get some rest.
Day 1-
Tire Rack Wet Skid Pad
We arrived back to Tire Rack HQ at 7:30 am to compete in the Wet skid pad. This event involves driving around a 200ft paved circle while they have sprinklers spraying every few feet to keep the track soaked. We went into the event with little planning as to who was going to drive when. I sprung it on Mike at the last minute that he was driving the wet skidpad as I wanted to be the one to blow my motor on the dry skid pad at the last event. Mike suited up and got in line. We hadn’t done any research as to the best way to attack this event, so Mike went out and did his best. We pulled .0669 G’s which placed us 36th, but none of the other subarus did very well in this event either.
Grissom Air Force Base.
We made the trip 83 miles south for the second event of the day, an autocross. We had some difficulty finding the correct entrance to the base for this event, so we arrived after the track walk had ended. Mike was able to run the track quickly before the first car went off, so he did not get much time to plan. This event was a best of 3 format unlike most of the other events, so Mike was able to slowly decrease his time to place 16th overall. This was the last competition of the day.
National Corvette Museum-
One Lap has a few “passage controls” that you are required to stop at and get your route book stamped. The first control was at the National Corvette Museum, 372 miles away. Mike and I took the tour of the facility and were able to see the cars that were pulled from the sinkhole. After here, we finished the 269 more miles to memphis and hit the sack for the evening.
Day 2-
Memphis International Raceway
We started the morning with a traditional southern breakfast – Waffle House.
Also, HOT! It was hot, hot, hottt. After a long Buffalo winter, the 90 degree weather was difficult to get used to. Mike and I were applying 110 sunscreen to our pasty white arms every 2 hours but were still turning red. This location was where we would be doing both road course and the drag event. The road course uses the drag strip as part of the main straight, and part of the 1.8 mile track. I drove both road course events, placing 24th overall in the morning and took 6 seconds off my ET to place 21st in the afternoon. We noticed that there was some rubbing occuring that was damaging the tire, so I went to town with the cutoff wheel.
Mike did the drags in the evening. I was extremely stressed out, as I was worried about breaking an axle. We got no practice and only get one run, so it was a bit stressful trying to figure out the best way to launch. Mike ran a 13.37 1/4 mile putting us in 20th place overall. Once this was over, we headed 409 miles south to New Orleans.
Day 3-
A good portion of the events for OLOA have a morning and afternoon session at the same track which count as separate events/points. As newcomers to every track on our route, its extremely advantageous for us to use the same driver for the morning and afternoon sessions due to one driver getting more comfortable with the track. At Memphis, John ran the morning and afternoon session and took 7 seconds off of his cumulative time over the morning session. We decided to no longer do this and we both would be running each track. This will definitely hurt us in points, but we are out here to have fun.
Nola is a fast 2.75 mile, 16 turn track with no elevation change. 16 turns is a lot to learn in a day. Luckily we had our bikes, so we got a couple laps around before heading in to grid up. Mike ran in the morning and got 28th place. I ran in the afternoon and oddly enough ran the same exact time as Mike, getting us 29th place. At this point, we are still shaking off the start of the season cobwebs. We left NOLA to run the oval track 130 miles away at Mobile Raceway in Mobile, Alabama. Mike has limited experience with ovals in the past so he ran this event, netting us 26th overall. Its now around 9pm, and we start our 391 mile drive to Atlanta, GA. During our transit, we learned that a bunch of people got food poisoning from the taco truck that served lunch-- we managed to make it out alive. A couple people ended up going to the hospital and joined back after missing a couple events.
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Day 4 -
4 hours of sleep. I am not a morning person and I don’t like the heat, so the grumpiness starts to set in. Luckily, the facilities at Atlanta Motorsports park are excellent. AMP is 2 miles long, has 16 turns, and has a lot of elevation change and blind turns. Biking this track was a lot of fun as you could get some speed and take the corners using the correct lines. I ran the morning event here and placed 20th overall. Mike ran the afternoon and placed 25th overall.
We left here immediately and headed north 147 miles to the BMW Performance center where BMW was holding an event. We rolled in late for some reason, but luckily no one was allowed to walk the track beforehand (you couldn’t even visibly see part of the track due to some slight elevation change). There were a ton of spectators here-- combined with the fact that hitting cones here meant the loss of a ton of points, I was a bit nervous. Apparently I work better under pressure, as I placed 16th overall. They wanted us to stick around, but we had a grueling 630 mile drive north to New Jersey ahead of us. Here is a good gallery of this event.
I was having a hard time falling asleep in the car, so I put on my helmet and HANS and tethered up to keep my head upright. We came upon the VW TDI who had hit a deer and we stopped. Imagine the look on their faces when they saw me on the passenger seat. I am the stig. With 4 hours of sleep the night before, we both started to fade pretty quickly. Knowing that we would not safely make it to NJ, I called up my sister in Arlington, VA and we cancelled our hotel to crash at her place for a couple hours. We arrived there at around 2am, took a quick shower then napped.
Day 5-
We were up and out of the house by 5am, as we had another 2 and a half hours of driving ahead of us. With only about 2 hours sleep, we were both not at all happy to be awake (we seriously considered skipping the morning event). In typical fashion, our 2.5 hour drive managed to turn into a 3.5 hour drive somehow and we arrived after the track walk. At this point, we said screw it and Mike went in blind to NJMP’s Thunderbolt track-- a 2.25 mile, 14 turn blur. Mike somehow managed to secure a 21st place finish overall. At this point, I couldnt give any damns about pictures so they will start to trail off. Huge thanks to Highland Design Studios for their coverage of the event. They did an amazing job.
For the afternoon session, we moved over to the 1.9 mile, 10 turn Lightning course. I drive the car to a 22nd place finish. At this point, Mike and I are just bags of meat and bones-- neither of us have any mental capacity left. This is great news, as we now hit the road for for a measly 528 mile trek to Mid-Ohio. During this time, we learned that if you have your windows down and you keep your toll ticket above the visor, the wind sucks it out of the window when you try and take it out to pay. With the trailer, that was not a cheap mistake and one we will never make again.
:tup:
:bigtup: Awesome. So awesome.
Day 6-
We managed to get a few hours sleep in before getting up to tackle the 2.4 mile, 15 turn Mid-Ohio course. This track has been on both of our bucket lists for a while, and for good reason. The track has a bunch of elevation changes which means blind turns-- making it very exciting. The day before I had noticed a very slight vibration under braking, but a visual inspection in the morning didn’t reveal any major issues. On the recon lap, I got the brakes warmed up and the front end started to shake. I was already out on track so I decided to take the lap slow and placed 32nd overall. We got the car up and found that the front rotors had warped. We have not had this issue with NAPA blanks in the past so we are interested to see how the replacement rotors last. Mid-Ohio gets the “track of the year” award due to having garages for everyone.
With new pads and rotors, Mike went out in the afternoon and secured a 24th place finish. We packed up and headed 80 miles over to Design Engineering Inc., where we had a nice catered dinner and spoke with some vendors about different products available. We then took off and finished the 277 mile drive to Gingerman Raceway. We got in at around 9pm and caught up on some much needed sleep.
Day 7-
Sleep is over rated. In times like these, I find that catching up on sleep makes you more tired. We arrived at the 11 turn, 2.2 mile track at 7:30 am. At this point we are doing much better in the event than we had anticipated and are fighting for points in our class. With rain setting in, I decided that Mike was going to drive both events today (I have never driven the car in the rain before). This turned out to be an excellent decision. Mike got 12th overall in the morning, and 3rd overall in the afternoon. This was a huge event, as we jumped a few spots overall.
This is what I look like when it rains on the last day of OLOA.
We didnt have much of a transit ahead of us, so we sat down and had dinner with our new friends, Matt, Misty, Drew, and Dylan. We have not had much time to talk as of yet, so we shared our stories from the trip. We drive the 60 miles south back to Grand Bend, and find out that everyone’s going to the hotel bar. I am not a drinker, so I was worried when the One Lap Veteran came to our table with moonshine shots (straight from a jar) which were procured from the south. Luckily he did not stay long and we made it back to our rooms for some sleep.
Day 8-
What a journey. We had been told that there was no way we would finish the event-- “Subarus always break”. In the beginning, I had to agree. The car was a fresh build with very little shakedown time. All 3 subaru’s made it through the whole event with no major issues. With the dry skid pad today, I was a bit nervous about the stock oiling system. This is my serious face.
I decided to say “f*** it” and went for it. I tied for 12th with a 2009 Viper ACR and a 2000 Corvette pulling 1.012 G’s. This put us 16th overall and second in class behind a 2010 sti.
Before we got back into NY, we had important business to attend to.
Ill have more pics, video, and words soon. Didnt want to wait too long to post the meat and potatoes.
Nice bike! :tup:
Good stuff man! :tup:
This makes me want to do something this awesome. Good work. :tup:
You guys did very well for first time runners. The mantra “subarus always break” on the one lap is fairly true. It normally eats these cars not long into the event. I’m usually the asshat that’s running around fixing everybodys stuff but I managed to come out pretty damn clean this year. I buy a new OLOA hat every year from Leslie and up until this year it has never survived the week without looking like some kind of grease-monkey urban camo scheme.
Was great to meet you guys. As you can see it’s a group of a special kind of folk, and usually you’re hooked first year round. Hopefully you will return next year, and the next, an the next. The past few years have been fairly easy trip wise, totalling 3500-4000 miles on average. Maybe Brock will push the envelope a bit next year and go out west, where sleep and food become scarce along the event duration 
Awesome.
x…
Thanks guys!
I think that people who bring subarus dont have much experience with them on track. Matt (the 2010 hatch) has extensive racing experience but very little experience with subarus–there really are a few “must do” items that many people dont. Matt was having cooling issues-- it probably didnt help that he was running his oil cooler in line with the stock oil cooler/warmer.
It was nice meeting everyone-- definitely a great group of people for the most part. I worry about brock going out west as we obviously have to run 93 and we get poor range with our tiny gas tanks (we ran out of gas in I think PA this year going up a mountain). He has already said that the natl corvette museum track is scheduled for next year, so it could go either direction. There is definitely a lot we would do differently-- if the funds allow, we will try to bring 2 subaru’s next year and no trailers.
Havent updated this in a while.
I have been DD’ing the car for the past couple months. She has almost 10k FLAWLESS miles on her since being completed, which is absolutely incredible for the amount of work that was done to the car. I have had to do nothing other than oil changes.
I did a few things to prepare for upcoming track days (if they ever happen since harvey is still broken).
Ordered an OMP TRS XL seat. It is way too big so im going to use it as the passenger seat and get something different for the driver. I REALLY don’t want to have mismatched seats but it is what it is.
I didnt like any of the off the shelf solutions for mounting seats. The planted brackets are like 300lbs a piece, and aren’t cheap. The sparco design sucks. I decided to make my own design and fabbed up the passenger side last night. It uses all 4 OEM holes, and is different than any of the off the shelf solutions I have seen. The seat is in the car now using side mounts (forgot to get a pic).
After OLOA, I needed to get some brake ducting going on to prevent the possibility of rotor warpage. After aboue 15 min on track, the brakes get a bit soft. I fabricated my own backing plates which include balljoint and tierod heat shields. The plates feed only into the hat of the rotor. I used 3" aluminum with strategic BFH re-shaping to run along/under the frame rails. I made aluminum plates to mount inside the fog-light bezels to collect the air. They arent as pretty as I had hoped but I anticipate them being functional. Everything fits under the OEM foglight covers so there is no cooling for street driving. All of the hose stays nicely tucked away from all suspension and driveline components when turning, so DD’ing shouldnt wear anything out.
This is a great thread and definitely needed to subscribe to this.
Also noticed from looking at this thread that you were the one that waved to me when I was pulling out of my work on Main near Harris hill about 2 weeks ago or so. I loved the car and now love it 50x more after looking through the thread.