RSAE 2007 One Lap of America

[RSAE]

Day 6: Hallett Motor Racing Circuit, Jennings, OK

The drive from Pueblo to Hallett was long, not made any shorter by a couple of extended stops. Our first stop was a routine gas fill-up. We were making great time and travelling with a group of other One Lap cars. At the gas pump we saw at least 4 or 5 other cars, including the event organizer himself. So we hopped back into the car after filling up and the car wouldn't start. It cranked over, but wouldn't fire. No fuel. Fuel pump wasn't running. We had power at the relay at the firewall, but none at the pump. Somewhere in the mess of wiring in the car, sometime while we were filling up with gas, our fuel pump power disappeared. Super. So we spent half an hour re-wiring the fuel pump to the relay and isolating the suspicious wires. The whole stop was probably an hour, during which time we talked to 10-15 other groups stopping in to fill up and leave.

Once we got back on the road, one of the drivers (names withheld to protect the innocent) tried getting us back on track by averaging 105+ mph on the freeway (it was 11 or 12pm). We passed a lot of cars and were happy with the progress, although the front passenger was definitely strapped into the 5-point harness Anyhow, one of Oklahoma's finest passed us going the other way and wasn't as impressed with the progress. So we got pulled over for doing 108 in a 65. To make a long story short, we got off with a warning (!), but lost another 45 minutes.

We made it to the hotel at 5:30am and were back up at 8:00am to get to the track. Hallett is a really fun course, pretty well-suited to our car, and our professor (who held the track record there until just recently) gave us some excellent tips. This was the first time I'd seen the track, but we managed to finish 49th in the morning and 45th in the afternoon. I'm just going to post the afternoon session video as interest seems to be tailing off on our little adventure

(We were catching the Charger in front of us until he went off the hairpin and into the tire barrier on lap 3. It is hard to see in the video, but one second he's there, the next he's not. It was pretty minor- they drove the car away from the track with only a little body damage.)

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-damen

[Nikoror]

don't forget the other friendly police officer who pulled us over a couple of hundred yards before the hotel for making a left turn on a red light. luckily just another warning

and hallet was the track where the super modified beetle vr6 twin turbo+dsg had some electronic problems with its transmission so the driver had to get a new car... little did he know

[RSAE]

Day 7: O'Reilly Raceway Park, Indianapolis, IN

The drive from Oklahoma was long, not helped by the stop we had to make to stage a breakdown for the CMT show We got in late, but that was the last long drive of the event.

So I'm sure most everyone has already seen this video in the other thread, but I wanted to add it here for thread completion's sake.

We were lined up in the grid according to how we had been previously performing in the event, and the organizers had me in front of this idiot in a race-prepped C5 Z06. Well he wasn't going to be placed behind an old Alfa Romeo, so he insisted that we were going to hold him up and that he should be in front of us. Not really caring, we told him to go for it and he promptly pulled in front of us on the grid. Whatever, he should be faster with his 500+hp Corvette.

We caught up to the guy after the first lap, but the enormous front straightaway let him pull a lead back out. A couple turns into the second lap, we were able to get by the guy (notice he didn't give a point-by as is encouraged for the event), but he closed the gap pretty tight by the end of the back straight. Not wanting to get caught and deal with the guy again, I got carried away trail braking into the turn at the end of the straight and ran out of talent. Off in the grass and he went by for the lead. Argh.

On the third lap, we caught back up in about the same place, but I wasn't able to get by until the turn onto the back straight. Once we were onto the straight and side-by-side though, he downshifted (wtf, why wasn't he in that gear to start with?) and pulled ahead. Being brave, we got past him by trail braking (a little less aggressively this time ) into the turn at the end of the straight. We stayed ahead for the finish.

When we got back to the pits, the guy came over to tell us how much fun he had on the track and that we were doing an amazing job given our equipment: a complete 180 from his attitude on the grid. Unfortunately all that "fun" hurt our time and we finished 56/72. Oh well, it actually was pretty fun and we got some entertaining video out of it.

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-damen

[RSAE]

Day 8: Mid-Ohio, Lexington, OH

After a short 270 mile transition drive, we had our last track event at Mid-Ohio Sports car course in Lexington, OH. This place was really cool, especially given all the great history.

The track itself is really awesome, although the back straight was reeeeeeally long, which hurt our relative times. We placed 53/73.

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