"You've got to roll with the punches and get to what's real!"
Van Halen's Jump, 1983
The truth is always stranger than fiction.
We had a easy, incident free run from Summit Point WV down through beautiful North Carolina. We had some decent results and the whole week of fun ahead... We got to the hotel just a couple miles from the track just a tick before 9:00pm.
We thought we had a big problem before we arrived... Man if we only knew!
Our "so called problem" was that we couldn't buy a six pack in South Carolina on a Sunday night. We had actually been directed to go to an unlit wrong side of the tracks speakeasy to acquire some, but when we drove by it did not appear that we we be the "appropriate demographic" to shop there. We kept going.
So, we were actually a fair bit ahead of schedule while others stopped elsewhere for proper dinners near Charlotte. We squeaked our way into Kershaw SC and pulled into the "Executive Inn" under the registration car port. All 3 of us exited the car and went in to the office. Unfortunately, none of us knew the last driver did not completely engage the parking brake and the car was not in gear.
It was 2-3 minutes of standing around while another guy was fussing over a missing reservation with the desk clerk. It was a normal wasted moment where you are just waiting for your turn... We heard a really sickening thud and when I looked our the door, THE CAR WAS NOT THERE.
It rolled with a partially engaged parking brake down a pretty steep hill in the lot, crashing into a parked Honda Goldwing, past the tipped over bike and into the motel wall! Thankfully, nobody was outside and no people were injured. Unbelievably, it missed another competitor's car and two pickup trucks, all of which would have been insanely worse. The gentleman who owned the bike was as gracious as anyone could possibly be in the situation. He and his friend made a special trip to COME SEE One Lap at Kershaw.
I have almost never felt so sick with confusion and awe. The Kershaw Police handled the paperwork with dignity and respect. The motel owner literally said this was "the best thing" that had happened there recently. Mr. Bike owner (not naming to protect his privacy) must still be in shock. My insurance company was not alarmed... I guess they usually hear worse.
To keep it in perspective, this is an freak accident with no human casualties, and some repairable stuff is bent up, but I can still barely believe it. The "last driver" is one of the best friends I have ever had and we will simply move on from this.
Apologies to all of our friends, family, sponsors and supporters for the very disappointing news. After some additional repairs in SC, The car will make it home, but it is not safe to continue in competition this year.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Day 2: home field advantage cuts both ways...
After getting into Winchester VA at 12:45am after a properly long haul from Peru Indiana, we did get sleep. We were up and rarin to go and try to get some shelter in case the weather turned poor. We got one of the good spots and it did not rain while we were there.
Summit Point is the track where I first drove on a road course in 1994. In the early days we did 2-3 events annually at the good ole Main Circuit. It is a 2.1 mile course that has a devious blend of high speed, elevation change and techincal aspects like changing camber and uneven paved surfaces. The ruddy grounds and paddock have played host to some of he best moments of my driving life.
In recent years, I've only been geting to drive it about once annually. That said it still feel like home base. To boot, my dad "Bad Bob" and our friend Steve Fisher came down to watch and cheer us on.
The pesky part is that our most aggressive rival has Summit Point for his home track as well.
Brian Hair drives at Summit Point one heck of a lot more than I do these days. He was not taking prisoners on Sunday. He turned in killer performance in the morning with a 6th place against all the big guns!
I lined up to run early because I was anxious to go. Our other friendly rivals, the Schauts had their supercharged and more aggressively modified version of our car in front of me. I figured I would try to see how fast they could disappear with more power and grip.
It was dry but overcast and chilly and the track was not only covered with dust, but also had a lot of new pavement installed just since two weeks ago when I was there for practice! Knowing my tires and brakes are best COLD, I took off with aggression and squirmed around a fair bit with the car. The apex of 6 had some new curbing that was actually falling apart lap by lap!
Dan Schaut was cookin, but I was able to keep him in sight, so I didn't think we did so badly. The result was 15th out of the entire field for that run and going intok lunch we still had 10th overall. Dan took an excellent 10th. Another highlight was getting some good video with the cool "Harry's Lap timer" iPhone app, which was useful to help Mike.
Teammate Mike ran the second session and this was his first ever time to drive summit point. He took 27th with one slight bobble into stony exit of turn 3. He brought it back alive and had fun. Monday's tracks in South Carolina will offer another chance to shine.
We are 10 points out of the top 10 holding 15th as we drive to South Carolina. We just departed I81 with no Virginia enforcement issues and if we an find some on a Sunday night, we may just have time for a beer or two before bed!
Summit Point is the track where I first drove on a road course in 1994. In the early days we did 2-3 events annually at the good ole Main Circuit. It is a 2.1 mile course that has a devious blend of high speed, elevation change and techincal aspects like changing camber and uneven paved surfaces. The ruddy grounds and paddock have played host to some of he best moments of my driving life.
In recent years, I've only been geting to drive it about once annually. That said it still feel like home base. To boot, my dad "Bad Bob" and our friend Steve Fisher came down to watch and cheer us on.
The pesky part is that our most aggressive rival has Summit Point for his home track as well.
Brian Hair drives at Summit Point one heck of a lot more than I do these days. He was not taking prisoners on Sunday. He turned in killer performance in the morning with a 6th place against all the big guns!
I lined up to run early because I was anxious to go. Our other friendly rivals, the Schauts had their supercharged and more aggressively modified version of our car in front of me. I figured I would try to see how fast they could disappear with more power and grip.
It was dry but overcast and chilly and the track was not only covered with dust, but also had a lot of new pavement installed just since two weeks ago when I was there for practice! Knowing my tires and brakes are best COLD, I took off with aggression and squirmed around a fair bit with the car. The apex of 6 had some new curbing that was actually falling apart lap by lap!
Dan Schaut was cookin, but I was able to keep him in sight, so I didn't think we did so badly. The result was 15th out of the entire field for that run and going intok lunch we still had 10th overall. Dan took an excellent 10th. Another highlight was getting some good video with the cool "Harry's Lap timer" iPhone app, which was useful to help Mike.
Teammate Mike ran the second session and this was his first ever time to drive summit point. He took 27th with one slight bobble into stony exit of turn 3. He brought it back alive and had fun. Monday's tracks in South Carolina will offer another chance to shine.
We are 10 points out of the top 10 holding 15th as we drive to South Carolina. We just departed I81 with no Virginia enforcement issues and if we an find some on a Sunday night, we may just have time for a beer or two before bed!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Day One: wet skidpad challenge and Grissom AFB Autocross
Each official start at the Tire Rack begins with the wet skidpad competition. It is a smooth 200' diameter asphalt surface with Sprinklers arranged at regular intervals in the center AND around the outside.
With the sprinklers doing their thing and with wipers running, each driver is to attack the pad for two timed laps counter-clockwise, then you turn around in the delta to take two timed laps clockwise. The highest speed you can carry without spinning out against the time over distance allows the judges to calculate the g force. Michelin makes some lofty claims about the wet performance of the Pilot Super Sport tire, and at full tread depth, this challenge is an ideal way to see if Pierre is full of Brie or not.
Brock Yates Jr. First did a demo run in the 550hp X5 M suv. Is is a heavy but powerful truck. The top seeded leaders went in order of car number.... Our car number is 18. Regardless of All wheel drive, tire width, power or otherwise, none of the big dogs was able to beat Brock's G reading.
We ran some higher than normal tire pressure, put the adjustable shocks on soft and put the car in "M Dynamic Mode". As I approached the line for my turn I was able to go slowly but saw at the steering wheel to try and put some heat into the tires. Nothing too fancy but a little quick slaloming.
With wipers swishing away I did my circles and the car felt really great considering the amount of water. Second gear was just right to balance the car. Turns out I was the first to beat Brock's number and by a fair margin!
We were happy with that and we departed for the next destination assuming that some of the smaller and more nimble front wheel drives with exotic setups would beat our number.
In the end, NOBODY beat my score and we took 1st overall in event #1,
briefly leading the entire event... As my friend at Speedco often says, that certainly "did not suck"!
At Grissom AFB, we did a full SCCA rules autocross. I would euphemistically describe Mike and I as "reluctant" auto-xers. The 3700 pound M3 may have disregarded the rain, but on dry grippy concrete runway affair, the "normal" state of affairs resumed. We managed 32nd overall in the autocross.
This placed us in a tie with two cars in the 11th-13th range.
Summit Point main circuit is my home track and I will lead-off in the batting order on Sunday morning.
We have a friendly BMW competition with some of our pals, we have tentatively dubbed "the Johnson Cup". More on that later, I suppose.
My eyes and thumbs are tired!
With the sprinklers doing their thing and with wipers running, each driver is to attack the pad for two timed laps counter-clockwise, then you turn around in the delta to take two timed laps clockwise. The highest speed you can carry without spinning out against the time over distance allows the judges to calculate the g force. Michelin makes some lofty claims about the wet performance of the Pilot Super Sport tire, and at full tread depth, this challenge is an ideal way to see if Pierre is full of Brie or not.
Brock Yates Jr. First did a demo run in the 550hp X5 M suv. Is is a heavy but powerful truck. The top seeded leaders went in order of car number.... Our car number is 18. Regardless of All wheel drive, tire width, power or otherwise, none of the big dogs was able to beat Brock's G reading.
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With wipers swishing away I did my circles and the car felt really great considering the amount of water. Second gear was just right to balance the car. Turns out I was the first to beat Brock's number and by a fair margin!
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| My car during the run... Photo by Tire Rack |
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| The incredible 93 Civic of William Chan and John Harrison: Photo by Solomon Rosenthal, Rosenthal Media |
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| Catesby Jones' Nissan GTR: Photo by Solomon Rosenthal, Rosenthal Media |
briefly leading the entire event... As my friend at Speedco often says, that certainly "did not suck"!
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| Mike Babcock about to start: Photo Cyndy Yates |
This placed us in a tie with two cars in the 11th-13th range.
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| Mike in the high-speed slalom: Photo by Solomon Rosenthal, Rosenthal Media |
We have a friendly BMW competition with some of our pals, we have tentatively dubbed "the Johnson Cup". More on that later, I suppose.
My eyes and thumbs are tired!
Friday, April 29, 2011
First day of camp... Start out on the red eye!
It's about 640 miles from Spring City to to South Bend Indiana.
Ed and I did not want to spend a whole vacation day on the transit, so we agreed to depart Thursday evening after a "normal day" at work and to say proper goodbyes to the families.
Our teammate Mike Babcock flew in on his own red-eye from Phoenix, AZ to Detroit and then to South Bend. Ed and I wanted to pick him up at the airport for a little team building moment.
One Lap is very social, and as I mentioned Mike is quite a popular fixture with the One Lap family. Our friendly rival Brian Hair had some die cut vinyl stickers made up based on the "For Norm" plate we are running to memorialize Mike's dad, Norm Babcock. Many cars in the paddock are now wearing these.
In between socializing, we discussed how to manage all of our stuff, washed the car and applied even more logos. The car is really pigged up now! On the roof, we installed the donor stickers we have collected thus far from generous friends and neighbors.
The real action starts Saturday.
Stay tuned!
Ed and I did not want to spend a whole vacation day on the transit, so we agreed to depart Thursday evening after a "normal day" at work and to say proper goodbyes to the families.
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| Annie issued stern warnings to behave myself! |
After a 11:40pm departure, we drove thru PA, Ohio and into Indiana without incident, and ultimately made the airport 30 minutes after Mike got his bag. Thru the night, Ed and I swapped driving... But Ed did more of it because I crapped out after a short stint in early Ohio. The M3's passenger front seat is better for snoozing than I remembered.
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| Mike, Dave and Ed enjoy the freezing wind of the Tire Rack HQ Parking lot |
In between socializing, we discussed how to manage all of our stuff, washed the car and applied even more logos. The car is really pigged up now! On the roof, we installed the donor stickers we have collected thus far from generous friends and neighbors.
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| The donation signature stickers begin... Thanks everyone! |
Stay tuned!
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Fuel The Cure!
I went into my decision to do One Lap of America knowing that the teams (and friends) I admire most are the men and women who have raised money for the causes, concerns and charities they believe in.
Here are some inspiring example links:
Robin Sparrow's One Lap Campaign to eliminate Prostate Cancer
Fay and David Teal's "Laps to conquer MS"
Roy, Adrienne and Nancy's work for the Ronald McDonald House
Linda Cheatham's Organ Donation awareness efforts...
I'm a very lucky guy with a great job, great friends, a healthy family and enough resources to indulge my passion for high performance driving. Motorsports and racing related activities tend to be selfish pursuits. The "exposure" we can get in the automotive enthusiast community give us an opportunity to help worthwhile charities.
This is my first self-entry (of my own car) in the Tire Rack One Lap of America. To kick it off, we are pleased to announce that we are raising donations for the Children's Tumor Foundation and NF awareness. For more background on our recipient charity, visit CTF.org but please consider donating to us so we can build a ongoing donation program.
UPDATE: WOW and WOW!
We are humbled by the generosity of our "early adopter"sponsors.
We've had online donations through the PAYPAL widget and cash donations at Quadratec where I am happily employed.
Steve C.
JG
Chuck T.
Brian R.
Bear P.
John S. (x2 !)
Tony I.
Thanks for reading and for your generous support!
Here are some inspiring example links:
Robin Sparrow's One Lap Campaign to eliminate Prostate Cancer
Fay and David Teal's "Laps to conquer MS"
Roy, Adrienne and Nancy's work for the Ronald McDonald House
Linda Cheatham's Organ Donation awareness efforts...
I'm a very lucky guy with a great job, great friends, a healthy family and enough resources to indulge my passion for high performance driving. Motorsports and racing related activities tend to be selfish pursuits. The "exposure" we can get in the automotive enthusiast community give us an opportunity to help worthwhile charities.
We are offering sponsorship levels that can suit all budgets. We are collecting during the event handing out wrist bands and signature panel stickers that can be signed and placed on the roof of the car as we go. The more stickers, the better we are doing!
For more mature budgets, we are offering event mileage (approximately 3,700) based amounts based on penny, nickel, dime, quarter and dollar per mile. Please donate what you can and help our team make a big contribution in our very first outing.
Special thanks to our very first contributor, Steve C. for his generous support!
My contact at CTF.org also posted about us on Facebook on 4/27/11
http://www.facebook.com/racing4researchUPDATE: WOW and WOW!
We are humbled by the generosity of our "early adopter"sponsors.
We've had online donations through the PAYPAL widget and cash donations at Quadratec where I am happily employed.
Steve C.
JG
Chuck T.
Brian R.
Bear P.
John S. (x2 !)
Tony I.
Thanks for reading and for your generous support!
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Testing... 1-2-3 Before 3-2-1 Launch!
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| Action Photo by Susan Dobson |
It was "stress testing" when compared to the daily on-track format that we have on One Lap. At each venue on OLoA, we have only two relatively brief sessions where we get one warm-up lap, THREE hot laps and one cool down lap.
At the driving school on the other hand, each run group gets four 20-minute run sessions daily. Over the space of 3 days, that amounts to quite a bit of track time if you drive all of each session. At the Jefferson Circuit for instance on Saturday/Sunday we could have driven as many as 76 (roughly 1 minute) laps per day!
The car is really a STOCK 2011 Competition Package (ZCP) Sedan. To prepare, we maxed-out the factory limit of front negative camber, to a spec of -1.7 degrees. On the weekend we ran the NEW Michelin Pilot Super Sports in sizes 10mm larger than the factory tires: 255/35/19 up front and 275/35/19s on the OEM ZCP Wheels, which measure 19"x9" and 19"x10" respectively.
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| Nicole Osborne of Otto's Mini posing with the car in front of the Otto's trailer. WHY? Because she looks one heck of a lot better than I do! |
Quick impressions:
On Saturday we had LOTS OF RAIN. In the WET with these tires at full tread depth I drove two complete sessions with the "M Dynamic Mode" traction control still turned on. I figured there was no point in wrecking the car on day one if my brain wasn't "turned on" yet for the season.
With these tires, we were really cooking in the wet. They are better than any high performance tires I have ever driven in the wet. In the third session, I finally stopped "cheating" and turned all of the nannies OFF. The tires are brilliant. I'm sort of praying for rain on One Lap, except I don't want all of our belongings to get wet. This is a quandary.
On Saturday we had LOTS OF RAIN. In the WET with these tires at full tread depth I drove two complete sessions with the "M Dynamic Mode" traction control still turned on. I figured there was no point in wrecking the car on day one if my brain wasn't "turned on" yet for the season.
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| It was a dark and stormy afternoon on Saturday! |
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| Jefferson Circuit: Clockwise on Sunny Sunday! |
Day two was sunny and dry!
I was able to push the tires hard for most of a 20 minute dry session and they did not get overheated or "greasy". They were very consistent. However, the Jefferson Circuit is a tight 1.12 mile course. A 3700 pound car with 414 horsepower does not fare nearly as as well as smaller, lighter and more nimble cars, such as those found in the instructor run group.
The Summit Point main circuit is also pretty tough on tires.
Being lazy and not getting adjustable camber plates for additional negative camber is a drawback here. My front tires' outer shoulders definitely took a beating. That said, Michelin has an impressive product here. Bravo!
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| ALERT: My Mom Lee Flogaus stole this Ferrari 458 and has not been seen since the weekend! If you have ANY INFORMATION about her whereabouts, please contact all the proper authorities IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner! |
Monday, April 11, 2011
Get a load of THIS!
My friend Rusty Ristine generously photographed the car in the studio at Quadratec on Saturday 4/9/2011.
The results are extraordinary!
More photos pending, but this is too good not to share.
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| DaveM3Fan's 2011 M3 Sedan, to benefit the Children's Tumor Foundation www.CTF.org Special thanks to our sponsors! |
Other VERY cool news for 4/11/2011:
The tires arrived at Otto's BMW on Friday. The Michelin Pilot Super Sports are going on the car today, as well as the track-worthy brake pads. I will tell you more about the new pads after I get a few miles on them and I have established an initial impression. They are an all-new manufacturer and compound for me, so I am excited to give them a try.
Summit Point (with the Delaware Valley Chapter BMW CCA) is this coming weekend. Photos and a full report will be issued ASAP after the event!
Stay tuned!
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