One Lap of America: Day 6 | Four events, four wins

By Tom Suddard and Andy Hollis

We’d finally made it: Six days into the Tire Rack One Lap of America Presented by Grassroots Motorsports, and we were driving into Road America in our Hyundai Elantra N.

We were exhausted after a brutal 687-mile-long transit, but we were also psyched: This is a bucket-list track by any measure, with more than four miles of massive straights, insane speeds, and spectacular views that earn it the tagline “America’s National Park of Speed.”

It’s simply built on a grander scale than normal race tracks.

A larger scale that, sadly, means larger consequences for mistakes. That point was driven home when Phil Wurz, running his BimmerWorld-liveried BMW M2, hit the wall hard in one of the first groups out on track.

The team had hit a deer carcass on the transit, destroying their front splitter, which meant Phil was driving in a car that handled completely differently than what he’d been competing with. No practice, no mulligans: One Lap’s format is brutal, and this BMW was the first casualty of the day.

A burning Elise and another wall hit by a silver C5 Corvette added carnage to a week that, so far, has been mostly incident-free.

Oh, and did we mention that we weren’t allowed to walk the track before competition? No pressure, Andy! Have fun taking on Road America in your Hyundai. And he did, notching a drama-free session and finishing first in class and 30th overall.

Why the lower overall score than previous days? Horsepower. Road America’s massive straights reward power more than most tracks, and we’re 500-1000 horsepower down from the fastest cars in the field. But Andy’s experience paid dividends, and he was able to keep our slow Hyundai further towards the top of the leaderboard than it had any right to be.

Morning session complete, we had another errand to run: Autocross. In addition to our track sessions at Road America, we had three chances to post a fast time at a tight autocross course set up in the infield.

Tom jumped in the car for that, landing first in class and 20th overall, before lining up for the afternoon session on track. It was in that line that it started raining, and we were sitting on grid for 20+ minutes with intermittent rain while safety workers cleaned up an incident.

As soon as the wipers went on, though, Tom was positively giddy: Rain!

This is probably a good time to mention that Tom’s never been to Road America, so his confidence was probably misplaced. He’d be flying blind with only a few laps of Andy’s in-car video to guide him. But with a wet track dangling like a carrot in front of him, he set off to have some fun.

Bad news: That wet track never really materialized. Good news: Tom actually managed to beat Andy’s times for the first time all week. 29th overall and first in class, we high-fived and set off on our transit.

We weren’t headed to a hotel, though. Not yet.

Instead, One Lap had one more track on the day’s schedule: Slinger Super Speedway, a tight asphalt oval about an hour south of Road America.

We pulled into the paddock to find a hot track but no takers: Nobody wanted to be the first guinea pig to face an unknown format and a dirty track. So we raised our hands, sending Andy out in a one-on-one battle with the other Elantra N.

After lapping our competition, we packed the car and hit the road, driving about two hours to our next hotel. Four events in one day, with wins in every single one.

We celebrated our achievements with beers at a nice local bar called “Applebees,” then hit the beds before tomorrow’s adventure: Blackhawk Farms, the last track of the week. Hopefully our streak will continue.

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