Mazdeuce - Seth does One Lap 2019

And the test tires showed up today. Continental ECS. 

Plan right now is to run these for testing/daily and then get another set for the event unless I somehow get convinced that I should spend the money to be on the Michelin PS4. I know the PS4 should be faster, but I'm not sure it's going to matter. 

I have been eyeballing thoes for a while. I should order a set. 

Let me know how you like those tires, as they're currently the most likely candidate for when I put summers on the BMW in a couple of months (just in a somewhat larger size). 

Packing philosophy question for the experienced folks out there... is the time/space worth having an actual jack in the car or is life better with the small scissor jack that comes with the car (with a place to hide it under the floor) and a jack stand or two?  I can't foresee having more than one end or side of the car up at a time and any hassle that not having a real jack around would would be offset by not having to deal with the thing twice a day and making more room for storage in the trunk.  But... experience is a way better tool than just assuming.  Curious as to what everyone has dealt with. 

In related news, we just finished sending Brock the rest of our entry fee.  C-Team Motorsports is officially 100% in!  Looking forward to meeting all of you in May.

mazdeuce has had to jack every car he's ever been in at OneLap... and none of them were planned ahead of time.

I think the only time I haven't taken an aluminum hydraulic jack was when I took a miata... and that time we still took two jack stands with the scissor jack.  Getting the car up in the air quick, is really nice if you're short on sleep.  I've started packing it in a duffel with the handle removed/broken-down.  It's not too heavy.  I've also used the AL jackstands from Harbor Freight, which are half the weight of parts-store jack stands.  If you can't stand lifting the jack or something in/out of the trunk... you could toss it in the rear floorboards for the transit to make the lift easier.

Welcome to the circus, look forward to seeing you in South Bend!

In reply to onrails :

I think it depends on the car. I don't think the Cadillac even had a jack, so I needed to bring something, and I did spend a fair bit of time hammering on things under the car. The Civic had brake issues both years so we needed it for that, and that whole wall thing last year. 

This year I'm contemplating just taking the scissor jack but also taking two jack stands (I usually only bring one) because there is a fair chance that I'm going to be under the car trying to re-apply the splitter at some point and two jack stands will make me happier for that.

I don't think there is any single good answer so long as you have some way to safely rotate tires around the car and you can climb under it without getting smushed. Of the 80 entries there will probalby be at least 50 floor jacks, so as long as you do your heavy lifting when everyone else is around you'll be able to borrow one. 

Problem with that is what if you break down while not at the track?  I'ma huge fan of being self sufficient while on a road rally like this.  You need to bring a minimum tool bag and one of those tools must be a floor jack.  I wouldn't trust a scissor jack...

I went back and found these from 2017... 2018's pack was substantially similar, iirc

Everyone hates my chairs, except me... but I've also planned to do OneLap... in a miata... twice (I'm 1 for 2 on that, as it stands).  Also, the above clearly doesn't include my helmet, clothes, nor camera equipment... which may vary by person.

I'd recommend trying to consolidate your gear, but not overly.  You want to keep the weight of any item down around 25#s, so it'll be easy/fast to lift by one person.  Same goes for item size... ~ 24"x18"x10" means nothing's too bulky/awkward to grab by a single person.

If you do have some kind of mechanical, out on the road... make sure you stop somewhere safe, but where other OneLappers taking the same route will see you.

If (when?) I do One Lap again, I'm going to pull my tire trailer behind me.  In god's name why would I pull a tire trailer behind my 996 Turbo?

Well, funny you asked, let me tell you... 

I can carry a full sized spare on the tire trailer.  I can carry all my tools in the tire trailer.  I can mount a bike tray on the tire trailer and carry a bike on One Lap.  I can carry luggage in the tire trailer.

When I get to the track, all I have to do is unhitch the trailer and the car is ready to go.  No unpacking, repacking time wasting nonsense.

Totally worth it, even for cars that have far more luggage space than a 996...

docwyte said:

If (when?) I do One Lap again, I'm going to pull my tire trailer behind me.  In god's name why would I pull a tire trailer behind my 996 Turbo?

Well, funny you asked, let me tell you... 

I can carry a full sized spare on the tire trailer.  I can carry all my tools in the tire trailer.  I can mount a bike tray on the tire trailer and carry a bike on One Lap.  I can carry luggage in the tire trailer.

When I get to the track, all I have to do is unhitch the trailer and the car is ready to go.  No unpacking, repacking time wasting nonsense.

Totally worth it, even for cars that have far more luggage space than a 996...

I agree. Same premise applies to auto crossing. Simple  and effective.  

Thanks guys!  Super helpful and the pictures are worth a thousand words.  One of the jobs in the next weekend or two is to stop staring at the snow and head out into the garage to start figuring out the packing situation to make it as painless as possible.  I think I'm going to give the scissor jack a try and see if it goes high enough to get a jack stand under the car.  If that works I think I'll go that way.  Ideally it will only be used a couple times to rotate tires side to side.  Not modding the car at all and I've run full tanks of gas at a time so it's a pretty validated track package for the short amount of running that One Lap does each day.  

Plus, like you said, there's plenty of floor jacks that will be available from other generous souls if we get in a pinch.  My goal is to have the trunk full and the interior empty.  We'll see how it goes!  

onrails said:

  My goal is to have the trunk full and the interior empty.  We'll see how it goes!  

I'll suggest one tweak to that, since it looks like it's two of you in a sedan; and assuming you're not going to tote a trailer.

Put the "track only" stuff in the back, and put a priority on having "emergency gear" (triangles, some tools) available without packing.  That way, when you roll up to the hotel, the trunk stays closed.  Then, in the cabin carry anything you'll want to use for the transit and/or anything that will come in to the hotel with you:  clothes, electronics, snacks.  Ideally (again, I'm going to make a couple assumptions) this will fit in some kind of backpack, and some kind of 'smallish' rolling suitcase.  That way there's no question about jostling things in the trunk to get clothes, and it's a simple "dump stuff from the cockpit into {thing}, and grab the roller from the rear" exit from the car into the hotel.  Similarly, it'll be a similarly clean/easy exit from the hotel in the morning... which becomes important by Wed.

I'm a semi-minimalist traveler... and I realize I'm "outside the norm" on my packing philosophy in some ways here... but I'll probably be packed into some kind of clothes duffel, and then an electronics sling/backpack.  It'll probably be between 60-70 liters of total bag volume between them.

std cavs (standard caveats):  caveat emptor, ymmv, iirc, imho, etc

Along with that, we've generally done hotel bags in the back seat so that arriving at a hotel requires minimal processing power. Park the car, grab bag, walk inside, go to sleep. 

The other thing that we've found useful is the "overflow bag" in the back seat. This is an open bag that gets chargers, snacks, and whatever is floating around the cabin when you get to the track and is likely to be needed when you get back in the car. We clean it out maybe twice during the week when we have down time at the track, but otherwise put everything that's not a tool and not a hotel thing in it. It allows you to have that semi chaotic organization that alway develops on long road trips. 

what is this back seat you speak of?

Ha!  We're definitely trading better performing "smaller, lighter, more efficient" for comfort by taking the SS.  Loving the big trunk!  After paring down the list and loading up today, it looks like if one of us uses a soft-sided suitcase or duffel bag, we can get just about everything in the trunk.  The picture is all of it minus the duffel bag and a second lawn chair.  The cooler fits nicely behind the drivers seat for drinks/snacks on the transits and the scissor jack does a nice job getting the car up high enough.  Plus it's got a hex end instead of a built in handle so our battery impact raises it up quickly.  A stack of Michelins with OLOA2019 on them showed up just before we started loading so we were able to get our full size rear spare in there too.

I'm just uncomfortable using scissor jacks.  They're just not stable, particularly if the ground is uneven and they're prone to collapsing.

In reply to onrails :

Solid packing job. I always tell everyone that off track is about saving 10 minutes. Pack up 10 minutes quicker. Save 10 minutes at dinner. Get into bed 10 minutes faster. Those three 10 minutes mean that you get a half hour more sleep. The closer you are to hanging out with us at the spoon end of the pack the more important that half hour gets. I hung out with the Toyota team last year and their biggest complaint was that they were required to travel in a caravan. Every time they stopped 15 people had to order food. 15 people had to get back in the cars after the slowed person finished. 15 people had to check into the hotel. They were getting over an hour less sleep than us a night. 

We always try to pack in such a way that when the car comes off track the trunk lid comes up and the co-driver starts packing. By the time the driver of that session has his fire suit off and his shoes back on the trunk lid is closing and we're ready to go. You get pretty good at it by the end of the week. 

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

We were a 3 man team last year in Sleepyhead's Acura TL.  We had it down to 6 minutes!

What I mean is the driver would come off the track and the trunk lid would come up.  The other two could pack the car and be completely rolling out of the venue in just 6 minutes.  This meant that the track driver focused on getting of his suit while the other two of us packed the car with everything going in its same place.  The car was generally a exact puzzle meaning it only all fit one exact way.  The first transit driver would then get behind the wheel while the co-pilot would up electronics and set the new way-point.  

We would then stop at the first available gas station and top the tank.  Load up with the preferred snacks.  For me this was 2 large Gatoraides and a couple packs of peanuts.  

One of my favorite things about One Laps that I didn't expect is it becomes a full week of "operational efficiencies."  Like Seth mentioned, you really have to manage the time in order to make up some time.

Bring your own large coffee cup.  My morning routine at the hotel breakfast like a Hampton Inn was to fill my own large coffee cup.  Grab an apple and an orange.  They have bread for toasting.  Grab a couple pieces of bread, some p-nut butter packets and some jelly packets and hit the road.  Eat this either in the car on the way to the track or eat it later at the track.  

In reply to onrails :

I see room in the trunk.  Bring a good jack.  

John Welsh said:

In reply to onrails :

I see room in the trunk.  Bring a good jack.  

I see they still have the factory rear trunk separator thing over the spare tire well?  Does it have the spare tire in it too?

I picked up a bunch of useable trunk space yanking that out, and putting stuff inside the spare and between the spare and the rear trunk bulkhead:

plus it means that much less you have to take out of the car each day 

I have seen Seth and Tim post more times than I can count about the efficiency that you require to survive OLOA with some sanity.  Even doing online recon before our rookie OLOA event we knew that was a thing and still...

The first day at the track will boggle your mind. I distinctly recall Matt and I debriefing about how the car was behaving, I'm still in full gear just starting to pull off my HANS and we see cars that were on track the same time as us already exiting the track to begin the commute. It's a distinctly different atmosphere from a normal track day/competition event. We adjusted strategy quickly and within a couple days we had it down to where the car was basically packed and ready to roll by the time the other person was out of their gear. Turns out there's plenty of time to debrief when your spending 600 miles side by side the rest of the day.

I can tell you that having Tim mentor us was a great benefit. I A.) have an idea what to expect and 2.) have an idea how to cope with it. John and I both I think had a great eye-opening experience to the point that I feel confident I can make it the entire week next year. 

@John, hell yeah we were efficient as berkeley! 

Our car has split tire sizes, so we're bringing two spares.  The front spare and scissor jack are bolted down underneath the false floor and will most likely stay there unless they're needed.  Rear is in the upper left of the picture.  I fabbed a bucket that fits inside the wheel that can be reached from the pass-through in the back seat to put driver equipment in.  One of the fun things about this has been finding the little efficiencies all in honorable pursuit of more sleep.  If only my kids would follow that philosophy!

For docwyte and John Welsh - there was a fair amount of debate between ace mechanic and foolish driver about the jack.  With foolish driver arguing for the floor jack (though admittedly not too hard) and after putting the car up and down a couple times and lifting the floor jack in and out a couple times we ended up deciding to stick with the scissor jack.  The picture is still minus one bag with a weeks worth of clothes in it and a lawn chair.  With those included it packs in pretty full.  Certainly we won't venture under the car unless the jack stands are in place and the load is off the jack.  But... if it lets us down we fully expect you guys to be there with shame sandwiches for us to eat.  Plus now if we see someone down in the Spoon End of the grid with us that needs to be helped out, we'll have plenty of room in the backseat with just the cooler back there.

Now for comfort, we could ditch the lawn chairs and just sit in the car, but the ability to sack out in something other than what we're spending so many hours in to begin with is pretty attractive.  But - small is not bad within reason.  Sleepyhead... are those two tiny bags in your picture your chairs? 

onrails said:

Now for comfort, we could ditch the lawn chairs and just sit in the car, but the ability to sack out in something other than what we're spending so many hours in to begin with is pretty attractive.  But - small is not bad within reason.  Sleepyhead... are those two tiny bags in your picture your chairs? 

I guess that might depend on who you ask?  I think I've also heard them called "Field Resourcefulness Exercises", "Origami Death Traps", and "Why am I looking at people's Elbow's?"
You can get yours here

They are a bit tippy, and encourage a particular stance when sitting, but they shave down both weight and volume over the post-2000 'lawn chair' designs.  ymmv, caveat emptor, try before you buy if you can, etc

they won't be along this year, because of logistics... but I will have this for naps

also, thanks for posting the pic of your trunk / and John's comment... we managed to catch that the lodging list was live before it was posted on FB

I just found someplace with shade to catch naps. I wasn't picky. Then again, after 2.5 hours of sleep, ANYWHERE looks good for a nap.