Daily Journal - Friday, May 5, 2000

Pictures from Friday, May 5, 2000

Today I participated in the Track Time school held yearly for One Lap competitors. This was my first day in the Supra, and I am certainly glad I got this time in the car, as it is quite a challenge to drive fast. The enormous turbo on the car is incredible for top end horsepower, but it is a real challenge to get good speed coming out of most corners. As soon as the turbo really spools, it starts trying to put out over twice the power in a fraction of a second, which causes the tires to either spin or to propel the rear end sideways, neither of which are very good for getting to the next corner as quickly as possible.

The motor is running absolutely flawlessly, and we ran the car at approximately 1.1bar today (16.5psi). The new HKS coilover suspension is really nice, and at full firm is quite capable at GingerMan Raceway. Unfortunately, I can not say the same about the brakes. As is the case with most of the rest of the car, the brakes are completely stock (with new factory calipers for this year), including stock-like pads. These pads proved to be very, very insufficient, as they faded in less than one hard lap. Additionally, the brake fluid had some air in it, and once we bled that out and put on some TRD pads, the car was a bit better, but the pads still faded after about one lap. I am already on the lookout for some race pads to put on the car as things will get really scary really fast with these brakes during the One Lap, considering the high-speed race tracks we are visiting, such as Road Atlanta and Michigan International Speedway, where we hope to go over 170mph.

I took the Supra out for 2 of the 3 sessions we had today, and drove the Supra for one session to make sure everything was okay (new motor, new suspension, new brakes - all of it untested.. as is always the case, "we just needed more time!" :) Fortunately, all the new parts are AWESOME, and the car really screams. And boy does it corner! The car really came together well. Even at 15psi (due to the higher compression pistons), this thing absolutely hauls ass :) The only problem was that the upper IC pipe blew off, but afterwards I tightened the hell out of it and it will definitely not come loose again.

The competition looks really incredible this year, including a huge horesepower RENNtech SL600 driven by Paul Gerrard, whom I last saw wielding an awesome 911 Turbo in the 1998 One Lap, where he was consistently blowing everyone away by over 10 seconds every session, and having a blast doing it! There is also a Hennessey Viper (Venom 650R), the TNT Motorsports "King Snake" Viper which was recently in Motor Trend and radared at 233mph (the car has 800hp). Chuck Mallett also brought out his supercharged 435 C5 Corvette, and there is also a twin-turbo Lingenfelter C5 (also in the Motor Trend issue, but it was clocked at "only" 220mph or so), as well as a Lingenfelter C4 driven by Reed Kryder.

We also got a chance to register this afternoon for the One Lap and got the decals for both the Eclipse and the Supra, as you can see in the gallery.

All in all this looks like one really fun week!