October 2007 - Porsche Club of America – Northeast Region

Tales From The “One Lap of America”
Copy By Win Perry
NER provided a special treat for attendees of PorscheFest
2007. After a gorgeous day on the lawn ogling all
the concours cars, it was time to retreat to the cool and
shade of the Larz Anderson carriage house, and listen to Mark
DaVia and co-driver Drew Wikstrom entertain us with accounts
of their unprecedented four consecutive victories in the uberendurance
event, the Cannonball One Lap of America.
The One Lap of America evolved from the infamous Cannonball
Run of the early 1970s. This was basically an outlaw,
coast-to-coast road race dreamed up by Brock Yates. When
the heat from law and order types got too intense, the event
morphed into its current form — legal, but still wholly crazy,
eight-day enduro tour of all sorts of racetracks across America.
Participants can expect to log between 3,500 and 5,000 miles
over eight days driving between racetracks, and there can be
anywhere from one to three tracks visited per day. If you’re
thinking of entering the One Lap, start getting used to sleep
deprivation!
The rules seem pretty simple. You can drive just about
anything you can register for the street (except motorcycles).
However, you have to run the entire event on one set of street
tires (some exceptions allowed for bona fide punctures and the
like), and you must carry any spare parts in your vehicle or in
a utility trailer towed by your vehicle. The twenty or so timed
events include just about everything: the wet skid pad at The
Tire Rack, dragstrips, quarter-mile ovals, and famous tracks like
Infineon Raceway and the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Each
event is a time trial with the total time for three consecutive
laps or runs counting. One some tracks, there are runs in both
directions. The winner is the car that has run every event and
has the shortest cumulative time.
Porsches are popular cars with One Lap, but there were
Corvettes, Vipers, Nobles, Subaru and Mitsubishi rally cars,
trucks and a motor home. Unfortunately, this last was disqualified;
some of the tracks wouldn’t allow it to run — too big and
heavy! Mark and Drew’s car is a silver 2001 996 Twin Turbo, with
some special modifications. For starters, the engine is tuned to
about 630 crank horsepower and has no muffler. In addition,
the suspension is pretty built up. Using standard Michelin Pilot
Sport PS2 tires, Mark can generate 1.04 G on the skid pad. The
996TT’s four-wheel drive is a huge advantage. There are plenty
of competitors with more power than Mark, especially the
Vipers but, given the requirement for street tires, they just can’t
put their power down that well. In addition, Mark has found
that cars running more than 600 hp at the wheels are plenty
fast, but tend to blow up before completing the eight days.
An otherwise well prepared and highly tuned Noble literally
melted its motor on the first day!
As co-driver, Drew has become a master of packing. This year,
Mark stopped pulling a utility trailer to reduce drag, so a lot of
kit has to fit into the car and be unpacked and repacked quickly
at each track. This improved his over-the-road mileage from 18
mpg (with the trailer) to 25 mpg (without). Now we all know
that gas has gotten more expensive, but the real gain is fewer
stops for fuel. Each stop at a gas station is ten minutes less
sleep that night. It apparently adds up.
Mark brought lots of slides and video clips showing the action
on both famous and deservedly obscure tracks selected
for each year’s One Lap. These included Miller, Mid Ohio, the
Autobahn Country Club, and a track called Hallett Raceway
(in Jennings OK) which includes a 160 mph straight (on street
tires!). In addition we saw footage of nameless dragstrips and
even a dirt track oval.
After Mark and Drew were finished speaking, there was time
for audience questions on car set-up, strategy, and how to
prepare for something this big and long. Then it was back to
our cars on the Larz Anderson lawn, and drives home in the still
very summery evening heat. I expect a few revved up listeners
gave the local constabulary something to watch.
Drew Wikstrom and Mark DaVia
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N O R E A S T E R