Zauskycop

A Week in the Life of a One Lapper - Day 2

The storms were a'raging as we pulled into Omaha last evening to get some well needed rest after our first travel day. Good old midwest storms covered the city, but also gave a nice background noise as we got some sleep at our nice hotel. I mention that because we were laughing at the many One Lappers posting pictures of their hotels that looked like something out of a Stephen King novel! We were thankful as we fell into our beds and were awakened by a bright sunny day in Omaha.
A quick breakfast and off we went, BACK to Iowa to The Mid American Motorplex. This hidden gem south of Omaha is a beautiful flowing track with some high speed areas, and some very technical sections where setup, and handling, would be the key. Close access to major highways made it easy to access MAM, it has its own dragstrip on site (hence Motorplex) and the viewlines are great, as it is a VERY flat area where it is located.
Team Blenderblaster was still on a high from our results the day before (13th overall) but we realized that in the Big Bore class, our little 6 cylinder Z may have a very tough time keeping up with the rest of the class on an open track with their V8's! MAM boasts the longest straight that we will see this year...a fact that had us worried.
We unpacked the car again (we are definitely getting better at this), set up cameras, checked our tire pressures and did a quick review of our MAM video from our library. Deciding that Tracy would go first to get a idea of the car's handling and get some good video, the Z was lined up basically by the number given at registration. The idea was to give numbers that approximate performance, and then after first sessions, reseed cars after seeing their results. Did I mention our Z had the highest number in class?....hmmm....
Out we went with our run group. If you don't know how the One Lap is run, the cars are divided into 4 or 5 car run groups out on track at one time. The cars leave the pit at intervals and are sent out on a "reconaissance" lap after which they stop at the Start/Finish line. When they are all lined up again, the starter releases them, again at interval, to keep cars from having to pass while doing their three lap run. After their run, all the cars return to the pits and the next group goes out.
We studied the group that was assigned to us, and after some quick conversations with drivers, they moved us to the front of the group with the understanding that this is the place with they least possibility of catching the car in front, which in this case, would be the last car of the group. It took most of the first lap to warm tires and bring the pressures up, but after that the Z came into its own and we ended up catching that last car in the group anyway. Since it happened at the start finish line of last lap, it didn't hurt the time at all and we awaited our results.
Imagine our surprise when we were shown leading the class, getting a 19th place overall finish, and actually moving up to 11th place overall in the cumulative standings! It was a great run, a great start, and Jason was already anxious to get to the afternoon runs.
Jason, unfortunately, hadn't run the car since summer of last year, and even then he hadn't turned off the "nanny" control, or traction control. Understandably as he went out his first lap was a bit off the pace we had hoped for, but by the third lap he was within two seconds of Tracy's best lap times. From our distant attempt at timing him it was originally thought that he was about 15-18 seconds off of the three lap pace, leaving us a bit disappointed but knowing that he had picked up a lot of speed and confidence in the car by the third lap.
Once again, imagine our suprise when we found out he was only 9 seconds off the three lap pace, and finished second in class! It appears we are in a 2-way battle with the Corvette of Jim-Bob Racing for first place in class as our two cars have swapped places each of the 3 events, with the rest of the class a bit behind the two of us. Our results today also leave us in 16th place overall in cumulative standings.
Now we are on the road to Denver through the seemingly never ending roads of Nebraska, and after stopping for a nice steak dinner with friends of ours, Dan and Ben Schaut, we found a hotel that will save us about 1.5 hours of driving between tonight, and tomorrow morning. Team Blenderblaster and Schaut Speed Motorsports spend a lot of racing time together as we have teamed up for wins in Chump Car, raced Spec Miata together, and have even toured Southern Wisconsin Breweries in our non racing moments. We should be arriving early enough (10 pm?) to get some studying in on videos of High Plains Raceway, our destination tomorrow.
We have high hopes that Tracy can keep putting up some great times, and Jason can keep building on his improvements, and we can take the battle to our main competition! Updates as we can on the Team Blenderblaster facebook page, and of course, another daily summary tomorrow.

Tracy Ramsey