Zauskycop

A Week in the Life of a One Lapper - Day 8

8 days a week goes the song and that's what it feels like on our last day. After getting the results from the afternoon runs at NCM, it was a brisk 5.5 hour trip to South Bend on the last leg of the OLOA 2015. We found it strange that, after only a week, a 5.5 hour trip could be considered brisk!

The last hour on the road was a familiar one as South Bend was hit by a significant rain shower and once again the Z was treated to a free car was courtesy of mother nature. But thankfully we pulled into the event hotel, checked in, and joined the quickly growing party at the hotel bar. That was where the fun began. Everyone was commiserating around, meeting up with people they had barely seen on the road, exchanging stories, laughing and finally unwinding after 3400 miles. Thankfully none of us were driving anywhere that evening so we just....unwound.

It was a short night of sleep after a long evening, and everyone rolled into their cars. The group was generally divided into 2 camps. Those who were done driving for the week, and those who had to drive in a circle as fast as they could while feeling a bit "under the weather". Thankfully Jason had the skid pad today, and I only had to unpack the car, and repack after it was all done.

Due to the rain the evening before, we arrived at the Tirerack to a semi damp pavement. We still had plenty of time to go as first thing on the agenda was the "Survivor photoshoot" where a picture is done from a crane of all the cars that survived this years event. Everyone was directed to a place, all the participants stood by their cars and after an hour of placing cars, it was all over in 2 minutes. A bit disappointing but looking around and noticing that a full 25% of the cars that started the event fell out due to some reason or another. This, I was told, was a fairly large amount of cars that didn't finish and we counted ourselves happy to have had such a reliable car as the 370Z.

Now all the cars went back to paddock an started lining up for the final event, the "Dry" skid pad. As I said earlier, the pavement was still a little damp, but we quickly saw that turn to a dry line, and finally just dry by the end of the session. The cars were lined up with the lowest placing car running first, and proceeding up the standings until the leader was the last car to run. Most of the placings were already determined before this event, however some of the overall standings could change, so people were taking this very seriously. Due to our overall standing, we lined up 17th from last (of 45) which was actually 16th as one of the GTRs fell out previous to NCM, but had so many points we couldn't catch them in the standings.

Jason arrived to the skid pad as it was somewhere between a dry line, and totally dry. So fairly good conditions to see what the Z could do. All that our Z had for suspension changes were some camber arms, a front swaybar, and our tire setup. Normally the 370Z comes with a staggered tire setup of 245 width tires up front, and 275s in the rear. Due to the constraints of room inside the car on the transits, I decided to go with a "square" setup and put 285s on 18 x 10 inch rims all around.

We were VERY happy to see that the car pulled a 1.004 Gs on the skidpad! This was enough to place us 14th overall, and JUST out of 13th, and was a great way to close out the event. It was hard to believe, as we packed the car for the ride home, that this week was over.

The event closed out with the awards ceremony amongst thousands of rims and tires inside the Tirerack facility. It overwhelming smell of rubber mattered little to all as we gathered for one last meal together and listened to Brock Yates Jr hand out all the awards for the top finishers, and some of the more special awards given out. We were happy to take home the award for First Place SSGT2 BB, and will proudly be displaying that on my mantle, but for some reason, a trophy seems so much of a sidenote to the entire event. All the miles, the transits, the tracks, from impromtu gatherings to finding a steakhouse on the side of the road. This and more will be soaked in as there is still a 2 hour drive home from South Bend...heck, that is just a drive around the corner now!