We're all rooting for you back from HQ! Go get 'em!
Photography by Tom Suddard and Andy Hollis
By Tom Suddard and Andy Hollis
How much time does it take to prep for the Tire Rack One Lap of America Presented by Grassroots Motorsports? Months? Weeks? Days?
How about hours? Yeah, seriously. After months of discussion, logistical challenges meant we finally met our entry for this year’s One Lap, an electric 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, in the parking lot of the event’s host hotel.
Hey, at least it was delivered with a full charge! Of course, we didn’t come completely unprepared: Months ago, we chatted with Bryan Herta Autosport, the team behind Hyundai’s winning Pikes Peak and IMSA efforts, to get some advice on prepping our Ioniq. Two key recommendations? Track brake pads to replace the street-focused stock parts, and more negative camber up front to improve tire longevity. Plus, One Lap rules require branded tires purchased from Tire Rack, meaning we’d need to change tires, too.
Brakes were easy: We should take this opportunity to give a huge shoutout to Porterfield Brakes, who made us a set of pads in their R4 compound. Why R4? Two reasons: First, Bryan Herta himself recommended it. And second, it’s a known quantity and a true race pad that isn’t horribly abusive to rotors.
Camber, somehow, was even easier: Andy did some digging and realized that the answer was right in Tire Rack’s catalog, Eibach part number 5.81260K. At $26 per pair, this set of camber bolts would theoretically fit our Hyundai and get us at least another degree or two of negative camber.
Two easy solutions, now for the hard one: Which tires should we install? One Lap rules are fairly open, requiring only 200tw or higher—but only one set for the entire week.
With a two-and-a-half-ton vehicle, we knew optimal tire choice would be key to making it through the week. So that meant no chance for the sticky Super 200s we ran the last two years.
Instead, a more endurance-focused tire with solid wet performance was the criteria. Continental ExtremeContact Sport 02 and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S are our typical go-tos, but the former doesn’t come in 21s and the later is at the end of its life cycle. Michelin already has its successor in the pipeline, and we’ve been dying to try them out. The only hitch is they are currently only offered for OE fitments, not a full generic replacement line.
Michelin themselves told us we’d be in uncharted territory mounting such a tire on our 5 N, but our curiosity got the better of us and we selected one of the five OE versions of the new Pilot Sport S 5 in 275/35-21. The Porsche ND0-marked Panamera variant was for a vehicle close in weight to our 5 N, so that’s what we mounted up. Mistake or genius move–it will make for a good story either way.
Andy and I went to work, spending the registration day doing all we could to improve our chances of surviving a week of racing. Our friends at Tire Rack set us up in one of their bays with a scissor lift that is used for scanning wheel wells for fitment confirmations. We quickly got the pads and camber bolts installed while handing the wheels off to Tire Rack’s pro installers to mount up the OLOA 2025-branded tires. While we waited, we had the opportunity for a quick tour of their bespoke heat cycle and tire shaving operations, as well as the entire tire picking/shipping process. More on that in a separate piece.
With fresh rubber on the car, we hustled back to the host hotel to get stickered up and teched. Ten feet out of the door, however, we were greeted with a dash full of warning lights, the most prominent of which telling us we had an issue with the braking system–oops. Fortunately this turned out to be an easy fix: After a bit of trial and error with our scan tool, we were able to put the car into brake pad change mode, clear the codes, and drive off in a happy Hyundai. After a quick tape measure alignment to set front toe (0 degrees) and a few minutes applying the required One Lap decals, we passed tech and no longer had a street car: We had a race car!
And wow, did it feel good to finally have our car finished. We spent a few hours walking the parking lot, taking in the sight of nearly 80 cars spanning the One Lap spectrum. We joined them all for the driver’s meeting, grabbed some dinner and went to bed at 8:00 pm: We were ready for a long, long week of racing. Hopefully our Hyundai was, too.
We're all rooting for you back from HQ! Go get 'em!
Woot, thanks for the write up!
What is that thing in front of the 911? [I don't mean the truck.] Is it a tire trailer made out of a donar car?
Yeah, just a tire trailer.
Oh, and if you're wondering how deep the car enthusiasm goes in our family...special shoutout to my cousin Zane, seen here driving in his very first One Lap! He's co-driving in his buddy Danny's E36 M3, proving you don't need a new supercar to still get the full experience.
Tom Suddard said:Oh, and if you're wondering how deep the car enthusiasm goes in our family...special shoutout to my cousin Zane, seen here driving in his very first One Lap! He's co-driving in his buddy Danny's E36 M3, proving you don't need a new supercar to still get the full experience.
Danny kicked ass today in the autocross, placing 18th!
he's on Scott Robertson's Discord, where he posted the video from that run:
Thanks for the write-up!
Did you measure how much front camber you ended up getting?
We (5 N owners) would really appreciate it if you could share more details about the setup in the "IONIQ 5N Track Group" on Facebook.
In reply to timurrrr :
Correct.
and do we get 1 set or 2 sets of the bolts? (Front only or front and rear)
No exact camber measurement--we didn't bring a gauge because we knew we still wouldn't get the 3-3.5 degrees of negative camber we'd like at a minimum. Eyeballing it, it's around two degrees. We'll try to borrow a gauge at some point this week and confirm.
We installed one bolt in the upper hole of each front strut. Nothing in the rear--front shoulder wear was our primary concern. If we'd had more time, we'd have found or made camber plates and/or lower control arms, as those are usually more durable and offer way more adjustment, but the bolts are a decent alternative and easy to test.
If you haven't seen it yet, this is good background on camber: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/articles/how-to-go-faster-by-adding-negative-camber/
In reply to Tom Suddard :
That's for the detailed reply. This helps a lot for my setup this track season. Good luck!
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