One Lap of America

When last we spoke, I was choosing tunes for a road trip. I’ve now survived that trip, the Tire Rack One Lap of America. This event was spawned from the Cannonball Baker Sea-To-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an outlaw cross-country race created by Brock Yates of Car & Driver in 1971. It inspired the movies Cannonball (1976) and The Cannonball Run (1981). The event became the One Lap of America in 1984 and transmogrified into a marathon highway loop interrupted by competition at racetracks along the way. The 2017 thrash was 3,500-plus miles and 19 events at eight different locations as far south as Sebring International Raceway in Florida and as northern as Gingerman Raceway in Michigan. It stretched west to Memphis and east to Richmond, Virginia. The daily competition varied from big road courses to autocross to one day of drag racing. The 2017 running was the first without Brock Yates, who passed away in October 2016, but One Lap will continue under Brock Yates Jr.

One Lap’s concept is the one I stole to create HOT ROD Drag Week, yet I’ve never before attended. I expected a wanker-fest. You know, the kind where guys wear their racing shoes to dinner. Ferrari- or Porsche-club kinda stiff. Hi snoot. I was completely wrong. Not only are One Lap of America participants regular folks but it was the most welcoming road-race-oriented event I’ve ever attended outside of the Optima series. The staff was completely accommodating and low-pressure.

I really wanted all kinds of suffering. The long trek and hard racing has been built up as an ironman killer, but I have to say that it’s not that bad given that most of the race cars are comfy late-models. History has shown that average Power Tour cruisers dislike more than 200 miles a day, so they’d snap during One Lap’s norm of 500 to 700. But for those of us acclimated to 18-hour days, it’s not decimating. In a typical hot rod, torture. In a brand-new Challenger SRT Hellcat, no.

That’s what Elana Scherr and I were driving—a last-minute swap from the Durango SRT that was initially scheduled. In the Hellcat I was able to score fourth and fifth positions at the road courses at Memphis and Gingerman—and that with a bone-stock car on OE tires and brake pads with 25,000 miles on ’em. It was likely the only showroom-stock car in the class. Its success is a testament to 707 hp and long straights, but also an indicator that every class is not completely cutthroat, and you don’t have to be Dario Franchitti to have plenty of fun.

Disclaimer: We did take three days off in the middle of the week to help Mike Finnegan change the engine in his 1969 Firebird, so we didn’t get the pure One Lap experience every day. But I feel I got enough of a taste of it to feed you this glaring endorsement. I really dug it and hope I can do the full pull some day. Put it on your list. See OneLapOfAmerica.com.

This is the same Challenger we trashed in Roadkill episode 38 (watch it on YouTube).

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