2006 One Lap of America

Joel put on a driving lesson on the fast track at Road America. A racetrack has a race line that gets the cars around the fastest, and a rain line that has the best adhesion. The paving on the race line fills with sticky rubber, but also gets greasy from oil and fluids. Add rain to this line and you skate around the track. The rain line is a compromise of running around the outside of curves, where there is no rubber filling the pores of the paving, and crossing the race line in the right place to get lined up for the next curve’s outside edge where there is good traction. This makes for a totally different race course when you mix in the correct places to do threshold braking, downshift, and steering inputs.
 
In the first session Joel was fifth overall. This is a horsepower track with three acceleration straights. Bugly has no shot at a fifth overall in the dry against all of the horsepower at this event. But in the rain it is the twin -turbo, all wheel drive Porshes and their 500 to 700 horsepower along with the 500 horsepower Subarus.
 
The word spread quickly about how ‘off line’ Joel was, and how much faster he was going through the corners than any of the other cars. Joel spent time over lunch with a dozen competitors trying to show them the safest places for them to mix in the new rain line ideas with their understanding of getting around on the slippery race line. He also pointed out the hair raising areas where he was hanging the back out with no margin for error before being in the grass at high speed. None of the other drivers were going to try Joel’s entire line, but all of them were excited at the results of their afternoon runs using some Joel’s ‘rain line’ tutorial. Fortunatly, non of the cars that had an off course excursion at Road America were trying any of the ‘rain line’ ideas at the time they lost control.
 
In the afternoon session Joel said he was going to be much faster. In the past when he has said that with the GT40 under him there were usually long slides, off track excursions, grass to pull out of radiators, and an occasional collected orange cone from still being on the brakes long after he was beyond the last turn-in point for a corner. In Joel’s defense he usually has a big grin on his face, and is headed right for the wrentches to impliment the changes to the suspension or the brake bias based based on “all that he has just learned”. So the afternoon session was going to be interesting. 
 
Everybody wanted Joel out in the first run group with the big horsepower. He past the 1100 horsepower trick blown chevy powered Viper that was expected to win the overall. He got by the other big guns, but the best ‘after action’ story was from Mark in the 700 horsepower, twin turbo, all wheel drive Porsche. Mark and Drew won this event in this car for the past two years and will go on to win again this year as the only three time winning team in the same car. They are an amazing combination. Mark said that Joel in the stock Subaru was closing on him so fast  that he moved over to keep from slowing Joel down. Mark said that once Joel was by he was gone.