Competing in the 2022 Tire Rack One Lap of America

One Lap: The Mental Game

Properly tightening the loose nut behind the wheel can make all the difference between a top result and a week of frustration. The first step is seat time.

Becoming one with the machine takes practice, and this springtime event tends to dish out a variety of conditions. You’ll want plenty of dry running time to dial in car control reflexes and mental focus, but you’ll also need to be dynamic as the weather changes. Cold tires, hot tires, wet tires–know how to adapt.

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

Learning to drive classic rain lines is a key skill that pays dividends on any wet track. When the grip goes down, driver prowess becomes a much more important factor than vehicle potential. Plus, there may be some nanny settings you’ll want to experiment with to reduce risk in sketchy situations.

Of course, nothing beats a firsthand recon trip to some of the tracks on the year’s route. Become familiar with the elevation changes and blind turns you can’t easily analyze from a video or sim. Develop shifting strategies and note braking points. This research will build muscle memory and bring you right back in the moment when you hit that track again during One Lap.

Why sign up for this? There is no other amateur motorsports event more grueling than this one. Simply driving all over the country for a week is a logistics nightmare. Now do it in a track car. Add to that the stress of performing at a high level on course with no practice and every lap scored. This is a multidimensional risk/reward equation that has many solutions, most of which involve a healthy dose of drama. And therein lies the real event.

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

We knew Andy Hollis took things seriously, but we had no idea just how far something could be taken until we joined him for One Lap. Andy doesn’t have the fastest car, and he’s not the fastest driver on grid, either.

What Andy does have is relentless devotion to optimizing his race effort, and it’s paid off for him over more than a decade of One Lap. Whereas other teams were guessing on setup changes, tire pressures, fuel stops or even where to sleep each night, Andy had testing data to answer every question without wasting time and energy.

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

He also came prepared with a spreadsheet of hotels and a strategy for food and sleep that ensured he was never hungry or tired. One Lap is a war of attrition, and Andy puts as much emphasis on the driver as he does on the car.

Case in point: Cracker Barrel, which we were told would be our one sit-down dinner of the week. As we exited the highway, Andy filled us in on the off-limits portion of the menu. Basically, if it wasn’t scooped out of a vat, it wasn’t allowed. One Lap only has time for racing, sleeping and eating, and waiting on food doesn’t qualify as one of those three activities.

Neither does waiting for a table, as we learned that evening, so we walked back outside, got in the McLaren, and had fast food again for that evening’s dinner. That meant an early night at the hotel, which Andy took advantage of–he was asleep before 8 p.m., because watching TV in a hotel room doesn’t count as racing, sleeping or eating. Andy shows a near-religious devotion to a winning One Lap plan, and we watched it pay off for him.

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

One Lap was grueling, but it also reminded us that the great American road trip is alive and well. While crossing more than 3500 miles, we encountered a broad spectrum of places and people, and we were universally treated with kindness and hospitality. Even if you don’t have a bright-orange McLaren, we highly recommend hitting the road and seeing as much of the country as possible.

Car Prep: Fast, Reliable, Comfortable

Selecting a car for this event depends a lot on your goals. If you’re a Lap Pup, bring something that’s comfortable on the highway yet has good stock power, brakes and handling. You’ll be spending most of your week on the road, so you’ll need to be able to sleep in the car and not be stressed while driving transits.

If you’re going for a class win, you’ll likely be putting some significant aftermarket upgrades into play. And that means pre-event testing is key to event success, since you can’t rely on the factory engineers to have sorted the full package. The farther you stray from stock, the more risk of breakage you incur.

Looking for an overall top-10 finish? Now you’ll need something with a very strong power-to-weight ratio, brakes that can bleed off all that energy, and race car-quality handling. This can either be bought or built, depending on your skills and budget.

Photography Credit: Driftpoint Media

There are very few vehicle preparation restrictions since the fundamental risk/reward premise of modifications modulates their value across the whole week. Stiff suspension? Good luck with that on the pothole-strewn U.S. highway system. Loud exhaust? Have fun trying to get some rest.

If you do choose to go heavy on the mods, bring spares, tools and knowledge to reduce the impact on your effort. Regardless of your approach, you’ll also want to bring along gear for the transits: a radar detector, phone and mount to run Waze, plus another device to study video for upcoming tracks and broadcast your exploits on social media.

The One Lap car prep rule book is very sparse with one notable exception: tires. You get one set for the whole week. Period.

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

They have to get you through all of the on-track usage, as well as be capable in a variety of weather conditions. Uneven wear due to aggressive camber? Live with it. Chose a dry-focused tire? Have fun transiting in that rainstorm. The one exception is fitment of a spare in a road hazard damage situation, but only with the blessing of event officials.

All tires must be purchased from event title sponsor Tire Rack and are branded “OLOA” in the sidewall as verification. This keeps out one-off specials supplied directly from a motivated manufacturer.

The bulk of the field chooses tires from the Max Performance Summer category, with the Michelin PS4S and Continental ExtremeContact Sport typically getting the nod. These deliver solid performance for three laps on track yet are very capable on the highway.

[Tire Test: Continental vs. Michelin on a McLaren MP4-12C]

Photography Credit: Tom Suddard

Those with an optimistic view of the weather forecast may opt for something from the 200tw Extreme Performance Summer category. In the dry, these are typically a few seconds faster per lap on track. But wear may be an issue, and they don’t channel water very well at speed. This traditionally translates into poor performance on the wet skidpad and is a major risk on both wet tracks and highways.

The one 200tw outlier is the Yokohama Advan A052, which is quite strong in the wet at lower speeds and/or shallow water. About a dozen teams chose this tire with varying results. Toyota Supra drivers Andrew Brownfield and Justin LaChausse topped the wet skidpad results but corded a tire later in the week due to uneven wear. The BMW Dinan X3 M driven by Randy Pobst stopped wearing its Yokohamas mid-week when the rains came for three straight days. Good thing, as there was almost no remaining tread.

[200-treadwear tire test | Falken RT660 vs. Yokohama A052 vs. Nankang CR-1]