Two iconic and very fast tracks were in the One Lap roster this year, and the action was intense. Road America, in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, is an absolutely beautiful facility that has been in operation since the ‘50s. The four-mile, 14-turn road course offers substantial elevation changes that can be advantageous to a high horsepower car. Unfortunately, the high horsepower of our Challenger Hellcat Redeye made the rain-soaked morning session a white-knuckled affair, with driver Mike Musto saying the car felt like it was on ice. He picked up nearly 13 seconds on his lap time in the afternoon, however, as the rain passed and the sun came out. On the dry track, Mike said the car was in its element, powering out of the corners and thundering up the hills. Upon completion of the afternoon session, we packed up and hit the road to Minnesota, heading for Brainerd International Raceway. From Sheboygan to Brainerd, the 460-mile transit took us through Fond du Lac, Eau Claire, and skirting around Minneapolis before ultimately heading north on I-35 to Barinerd.
Sunny skies greeted us the next day at BIR as we were destined to run the Donnybrook course configuration for the morning session. Run in that setup, the track incorporates the NHRA dragstrip and entire shut-down area as the front straight, which in total, measures a mile long and leads into the fastest right hand corner in the country. Wisely, Mike kept the terminal velocity and cornering speeds here below the limits of the car. Remember, we have to run the entire One Lap of America on one set of tires. If you trash them too early in the week, performance at the later tracks will suffer. Still, Mike was staring at 160 mph on the speedo before jumping on the brakes to enter Turn 1, balancing the car’s 4,600-pound race weight through the sweeping right hand turn, and spectators loved the shrieking supercharger down the length of the straight. The afternoon session was conducted on the much smaller and tighter SCCA course, which incorporates parts of Donnybrook, but leaves out the dragstrip straightaway. The day concluded with some drag strip action and your author behind the wheel of the Challenger. Fighting invasive intervention from the car’s traction and stability control systems, the first two passes were embarrassingly slow. With all the electronics shut off (to the extent they can be), I managed a 12.55 at 113.5 mph with the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires spinning off the line and at the first three gear changes. The Redeye engine pulls like a freight train, and the wave of torque doesn’t seem to drop off at all during entire quarter mile.
After that it was time to hit the road again on a 550-mile drive to Hastings, Nebraska. Check back soon to see how that went.
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