klodkrawler05's One Lap Experience

People seem to like OLOA stories and we've already got 2 might as well add another right?

This is both my and my teammates first time attempting this adventure. This year we've chosen to take his relatively stock 2003 BMW M3. We had wanted to take my 2002 M3 as it's got a touch more power but weren't able to put enough shake down time into it during the off season to have confidence in it completing such a grueling trip.

A bit about the car:

2003 BMW M3

Engine:

K&N Cold Air Intake

Bimmerworld race exhaust

Stock Tune

Suspension:

Motion Control Double Adjustable Shocks

Hyperco Springs 800lb/900lb springs (hope we don't regret that)

Bimmerworld Bushings/bearings throughout

Interior:

Drivers seat replaced with Corbeau Bucket

6 point harness

4 point rollbar

Passenger/Copilot seat stock for comfort

Exterior:

APR GTC500 Wing from a C6 ZR1 modified to fit the relatively narrow M3 Trunk

Homemade Front Plywood splitter Attached to frame horns.

Wheels/Tires/Brakes:

18x9.5 Square Apex Arc-8

275/35/18 Continental Extreme Contact (we chose to go conservative here after seeing the rain the last 2 years)

PFC08 Pads Front and Rear

Frozen Rotors Cyrotreated OEM rotors.

And that's pretty much it! We've watched folks competing in this event for the last several years and finally couldn't take it any more we had to join!

If you are on the book of faces a couple of our close friends from RS motors are competing as well and a couple of our mutual friends are tagging along as media crew/support. This is where we'll be documenting as much as we can:

https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=matt%20dereus%20racing

We're planning to live stream as many of the track sessions as possible (provided we have cell coverage) and they'll also be posting daily video edits/highlights.

Well I guess now we wait! 2 days to go, We've been seeded 41st ahead of some much more powerful cars so hopefully we don't lose too much ground out of the gate!

nice, everyone has their own OneLap experience, and way of relating it. It might feel like a lot of "me too"... but sharing your own experience your own way will probably connect with someone better than someone else's.

also, this comment is so that it's easier for me to follow along

see you in a few days!

By far one of my favorite parts of any new automotive adventure is getting to meet people in person and putting names to faces that I've known online for months/years in advance!

Matt (teammate) is leaving MN Thursday to get to South Bend before Friday morning, I'm leaving my house in MI Friday morning to be to South Bend about noon ish!

See you in a couple days!

Matt finished off the prep last night,

A quick trip around the box to see if our roof rack whistled resulted in finding the rear caliper was dragging, e-brake cable adjustment and this interesting discovery:

No worries, we had spare pads anyways (although now we don't) so easy fix.

Then a little preventative maintenance, the AC compressor belt was a bit worn and it's supposed to be 90+ in Florida.

As soon as the new go-pro mount arrives today via UPS Matt will head to South bend!

Yes! Looking forward to seeing you. RS motors is the EVO guys right? I've never seen such nice guys go so fast.

Yup they're the evo guys!

Great folks, they've certainly helped Matt and I get faster with coaching and advice. I don't think we'd feel nearly as prepared for what to expect this coming week without them! (As well as all the helpful threads advice from you, sleepyhead and Chris Mayfield)

They've made more than a handful of changes to the car this year so it should be interesting to see! I had no idea 315's would fit under an evo but they made it work to help put all the new power down.

315's and more power.
And Mayfield an unnaturally fast human being. If you've been anywhere near him you're in good hands.

Mayfield was in my local NASA region and he's incredibly fast on track.

Well we arrived and are through tech and ready to go!

We packed much lighter than expected and learned we'43 the same size for nearly all driving gear which saved one fairly large bag of helmet/suit/hans etc.

So we decided not to take the roof box which we figure is one less thing we have to load at every stop (and it's a 2 man job)

Now we wait.

I thought that was dizzles car. Excited to see how you all do.

mazdeuce wrote: Yes! Looking forward to seeing you. RS motors is the EVO guys right? I've never seen such nice guys go so fast.

Ronnie is an extremely nice guy. I had the fortune to make their acquaintance back in mn.

Woot! One More!

Sooooooo jealous right now, soooooo jealous. You're all running the one-lap, I'm trying to find where a vacuum hose goes.

Cool. We'll see you on Tuesday.

Yesterday was the wet skidpad and autox at Grissom.

Interesting note about the wet skidpad the magical focus RS diffs seem to help quite a lot as they all finished well (one of them pulled almost .9g IN THE WET)

Matt did decently on the skidpad but had a bit of trouble adjusting to the wind blowing one half of the skidpad to damp conditions while the other side was standing water, grip was...not consistent.

34th overall, ok onto the next event!

The Indy guys did an awesome job with the autox! it was very easy to follow for those who were new to autox but still had enough autox skill points to reward the guys who do this a lot. Fast and flowy the main theme was give up speed early to carry it later (which is not my strong suit)

I drove the autox which runs just like a national scca event 3 runs and done. I've sat at the line on my last run needing it to be clean often enough that I went out on run 1 with the mantra of just get something clean. First run came back a 52.8. The gtr's and RS motors EVO were already in the 49's so no worries about going for FTD here

The Continental Extreme sports were the most impressive part, very sharp turn in combined with grissoms grip made them feel like RE71's up front. The back of the car didn't feel nearly as planted as it does on RE'a and was struggling to put power down but sweepers were lots of fun.

We made some minor shock/tire pressure tweaks and went for run 2. The car felt much more stable on the First 1/3 of the course so I promptly overdrove a corner backwards/sideways . Then drove angry/poorly the rest of the run. That of course didn't work. 53.0

I thought the car felt 2 seconds faster but the driver drove at least 2 seconds worse.

Run 3. Ok deep breath, go faster but don't drive like a dummy and don't hit cones!

Whew! Great success! 51.9 The car certainly had more to give but the driver refused to extract it. I'll do better next time!

That was good enough to bump up to 22nd overall with a 18th place overall autox finish.

We got on the road as quickly as we could, met up with the RS guys for a quick TGI Friday's dinner and then made it to our hotel by 11:15 with plenty of time for sleeping.

Now off to the Memphis motorsports park!

Today was our first road course day at Memphis. Watching YouTube videos it looked fairly simple (doesn't it always?)

The first corner wound up being a very fast 180 sweeper, we were fairly deep into 5th gear and doing 140mph before dipping onto the brakes.

The tight technical section is a weird combo of a fast s-curve into a rapidly tightening slower s-curve where The apexs are hidden by just enough elevation to keep it interesting. Followed by one more S-curve before careening towards a tire wall. As you approach the tire wall you make a 180 and then shoot a gap on the drsgstrip wall and run down the strip back to turn 1.

Drag racing was exceptionally mediocre we assumed we'd come in somewhere near the bottom but wound up 34th!

We failed to meet our goal of beating the Honda to the hotel so I'm chalking it up as a loss for us today

I was having so much fun talking to people and playing on the roadcourse I forgot all about snapping photos for the thread! I'll try to edit this post with pictures once I seem some surface on facebook

I've got a couple of relaxing days ahead while Matt tackles road Atlanta and sebring.

I am loving all the OLOA updates from everyone. Please keep them coming!

Since your results are on a completely different part of the page than ours I hadn't really noticed them. But then I saw how far forward you were starting today, so I looked. You friendly modest bastards are fast!

Haha thank you! We have been pleasantly surprised. Matt has driven road Atlanta before so we looked to capitalize on its scariness with familiarity.

It seems to have been effective! 13th overall this morning 14th this afternoon. I'll make a post with some photos and such a bit later after a food stop and my turn on the transit.

Feedyurhed wrote: I am loving all the OLOA updates from everyone. Please keep them coming!

I'm not. Makes me green with envy.

Bobzilla wrote:

Feedyurhed wrote: I am loving all the OLOA updates from everyone. Please keep them coming!

I'm not. Makes me green with envy.

You know you can do this in pretty much anything, right? If it's between staying at home waiting for the day when you have a "proper" car and just firing up what you have available, the answer is pretty clear. Change your brake pads, change your fluids and come join us next year.

Awesome, I'm digging all the vid updates on facebook. Gonna have to do this soon. Keep it up Brad.

mazdeuce wrote:

Bobzilla wrote:

Feedyurhed wrote: I am loving all the OLOA updates from everyone. Please keep them coming!

I'm not. Makes me green with envy.

You know you can do this in pretty much anything, right? If it's between staying at home waiting for the day when you have a "proper" car and just firing up what you have available, the answer is pretty clear. Change your brake pads, change your fluids and come join us next year.

I'd be a complete liar if I didn't say I wanted to try it in the wagon.

klodkrawler05 wrote: Haha thank you! We have been pleasantly surprised. Matt has driven road Atlanta before so we looked to capitalize on its scariness with familiarity. It seems to have been effective! 13th overall this morning 14th this afternoon. I'll make a post with some photos and such a bit later after a food stop and my turn on the transit.

I saw dizzles track time on fb earlier, he's hauling ass. I am impressed.

Don't let Brad fool you, he's been kicking my butt at local stuff since he was new enough not to know the #2 rule of autocross. "Never cinch your harness with the door open". (Rule #1 - The guy with the biggest hat is usually fastest.)

Yeah, thanks for sharing the updates. We'll see you tomorrow.