Hey everyone!

I just wanted to tell everyone here that Emmanuel Crouvisier and I recented completed the Racemark Challenge, a two day tune up event for the One Lap of America. We drove my 1992 Nissan Skyline GT-R from LA to Dallas, tested one day at the Motorsports Ranch, watched the Speedvision Cup Touring race and part of the ALMS race at Texas Motor Speedway on Sunday, then went on to Amelia Island Plantation near Jacksonville, FL where the Racemark was based for two days. We only just got back to our hometown of Chicago yesterday morning... It was a long roadtrip, to say the least. I'm sorry if I didn't meet any of you at Dallas- we were feverishly searching for some MkIV Supra people who had graciously invited us to test at the Motorsports Ranch the prior day to thank them and then were sidetracked, talking to Chuck Mallett (of Mallett Corvette fame) and Jerry of Realtime Racing (the pit crew chief) whom I had met a few years ago at King Motorsports. I'm sure I'll meet up with y'all soon enough next time since I spend so much time in Dallas. FYI- everyone at the Speedvision Cup seems to HATE the Toyo T1-S tires they have to run. These look like the regular street T1-S, shaved, not exactly an R compound. If there could be a step down from the BFG G-Force R1, I guess that would be it... Not too many teams are worried about brakes anymore- since there's no grip, brakes are a secondary issue now!

Thanks to the efforts of everyone at MotoRex Inc., APEXi USA, XS Engineering, Northstar Motorsports and Nissan Motorsports USA, we were able to continuously shake down the car for both long distance travel and multilap circuit sprints. Things are MUCH better than last year (it really couldn't get worse than two engine swaps in one week), but there is still alot of tuning to finish up before the car is ready for One Lap- on both engine and chassis.

That being said, we still finished 2nd overall, and first in our class. We were actually neck to neck with the Brumos Porsche 996 TT initially, but we pulled away early on points on the second day. Interestingly enough, we completed over 4400 miles on this trip- not including track mileage. We were also the only ones to actually drive to the events and drive from home and back home. We were also on street Michelin MXX3 tires, whereas the winner was on Hoosier race slicks. True to our road racing bent, we were absolutely horrible at the two drag racing events- the strength of the car gave us a good E.T., but we lost in the first round of the bracket racing. Thank goodness we had built up enough points on the Porsche TT prior, since he got the maximum points for winning the bracket event! If anyone is interested, the results of the Racemark Challenge can be found here- http://www.onelapofamerica.com/Racemark/Ra...RacemarkFrm.htm

This year's One Lap will be very interesting- we're starting from Watkins Glen, then MIS and a drag event at Mid-Michigan Motorplex, then Heartland Park, Motorsports Ranch in Fort Worth, continuing on to Road Atlanta, then VIR and finally back to Watkins Glen. This will again test the reliablity of not only our tuning, but Nissan's engineering reliablity. If any Nissan fans or S2000 people are around the areas that the One Lap visits this year, please come on by to say "Hi!"

 

Congratulations Nick, a very successful (and long) trip. Your write-ups are very good considering how hard it is to track all the goings on during a competition. Hopefully you can record a note or two during the One Lap events so we can read about it later (does not appear there is time for reporting during). Look forward to your reports.