Daily Journal - Saturday, May 13, 2000

Finally we reached the last day of the 2000 One Lap of America, at GingerMan Raceway, in Michigan. As usual, the morning session was a bit slippery, so i drove cautiously and finished 5th Overall. The insanity which is One Lap began to set in as the pressure built up, and Paul Gerrard in the RENNtech was the first of the top 10 to go off track trying to get everything they could out of the car. In addition, Paul hit a cone, which set him back to 35th Overall in the morning session. Minneker in the Mallett corvette also spun out but did not hit a cone, and finished 19th Overall - this placed us once again 5 points behind Mallett going into the afternoon session! The last two events (as we ran an extra event to make up for the one we missed the previos week at GingerMan) were going to be intense!

And intense they were! The first session in the afternoon was a normal 3-lap deal, which again overstresed the brakes and caused them to fade by the end of the session, as they did in the morning. We again finished 5th in the first session of the afternoon, as Ed Dellis in the Lister spun out in the same corner as Gerrard and Mallett in the morning - between turns 5 and 6, the "toilet bowl". The very last session was the most intense and what would ultimately overthrow the entire balance of the top 5 finishing order - one and only one very intense lap! Sean Roe was in the lead before this session in his Hennessey Viper, but overcooked it in the same spot as Gerrard, Minneker and Dellis, spinning out and hitting a cone. Although normally this would only have dropped him back 10 or 15 places, since there was only one lap, that 10 seconds lost in addition to the 10 second cone penalty placed him 91st Overall, losing over 400 Overall points. The result is that the Hennessey moved from 1st Overall to 6th Overall, bumping the top 5 up one spot, and myself to 4th Overall (Mallett beat us by a few spots in both afternoon sessions with really fast runs!).

The overall winner was Brian Smith and Spencer Geswein in the Dodge/Michelin-backed Viper, followed by Paul Gerrard and Dan Kary in the RENNtech SL600. Third place was Chuck Mallett and Jim Minneker in the supercharged 435 C5 Corvette, we were 4th, and 5th was Reed Kryder and John Bender in the Lingenfelter C4 Corvette.

J.M. again drove the Eclipse and had good solid runs, finishing 52nd Overall in the morning, 53rd in the first afternoon session, and 47th in the last session. Overall the Eclipse finished 75th Overall, which is quite impresive considering that they missed three entire days of competition!

This was certainly one of the most competitive and intense One Laps I have ever participated in or even heard about! Everything changed in the last day as every driver gave it all they had to run faster than their competition. I personally had a really great time spending the week with Reg Riemer in his awesome Toyota Supra, and it was certainly much more fun than spending the week in school... :)

Til next year, all the best, and drive safely!

- Emmanuel Crouvisier