Tight, narrow, technical tracks dominated these two days of competition on the 2019 One Lap of America. Motorsport Park Hastings (MPH, get it??) in Hastings, Nebraska is deceptively much longer than it looks when you first drive into the facility. What looks like a big karting track is actually a 2.15 mile, 14-turn road course. Flat, tight, and fast is an apt description, minus the word fast in our case, as the skies opened up the minute the first run group took to the track, and the rain didn’t stop until we left. At least the robins were enjoying themselves, slurping up the worms fleeing the sodden earth. Standing water in several portions of the track kept on-track speeds down, especially with the pontoon-like 315 Michelins on our Challenger Redeye. Driver Mike Musto limited the engine to the 500 hp setting and did his best to keep it on the track surface. On the upside, the track served a wonderful BBQ lunch in the clubhouse, and the coffee was good.
Upon our final session at MPH, we hit the road for our longest transit of the week, a 595-mile drive to Blackhawk Farms Raceway in South Beloit, Illinois. The route book said to follow the signs for Interstate 80 “for a long time,” and those words were no exaggeration. If there was ever any doubt at any approaching exit, the correct answer was “Stay on 80.”
South Beloit is actually just inside the Wisconsin/Illinois state line, about halfway between Janesville, Wisconsin and Rockford, Illinois. This was a really scenic facility; it looked more like a country club than a race track. The track itself spans 1.9 miles with roughly 7 turns. Turn 3 is a long, sweeping right hand corner that leads to a knk and a chicane, before dumping into the sweeping left turns 4 and 5. It’s hard to build speed when turning for so long, and this track favored lighter cars that can carry higher speed through the turns. Wet conditons in the morning finally led to a dry afternoon session and it was awesome watching the Challenger thunder down the front straight. By 4:00 pm we were back on the interstates. Destination: Bowling Green, Kentucky and the National Corvette Museum Motorsports Park.
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