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What’s that silly little Mitsubishi doing at the head of the
pack, in front of those no-holds-barred exotica? Winning,
that’s what! With two 1st place and one 3nd
place finish the previous day at Heartland Park, Brock Yates
staged us first in today’s session. How funny is that? No
one else was laughing besides us, however.
Being at well over 5000’ about sea level, the EVO is hungry
for more boost. So is Paul. I say “No” and let it run down
on power. We’re doing so well, why risk things now? Even
down on power, the EVO wows the audience and surprises
ourselves by coming in 4th overall behind the
Porsche 911 Turbo, the PVO Viper and (just barely) the GT3.
Bryan Smith, the hired gun behind the factory-backed Dodge
Viper is smiling because he didn’t loose to the 4-door
Mitsubishi today.
So are the ECU engineers from Dodge who were brought along
to support the Viper and the RAM entries. In this picture,
they are recalibrating the ECUs for the higher altitude.
In the meantime, I just sat down and admired the hitch on
our EVO. It’s on there so tight than we can’t remove it.
So it becomes a “racing hitch”. Cool, huh?
The garages at Pikes Peak are nice and clean with plenty of
room for people to spread out. The whether is also
reasonably cool so people aren’t too cranky yet. Wait ‘till
you see what 40 deg hotter temps and a few more days of
sleep deprivation does when we get to Las Vegas Motor
Speedway!
I had spoiler-envy the moment I saw the unit on DaVia’s 996
Twin Turbo. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Paul
assures me that if we had something like that, we’d be
quicker and cooler. And more popular with the ladies as
well.
Just another nice picture of our fire breathing little EVO.
It looks a lot cooler when there are no GT40s, Vipers or
Porsches in the background, doesn’t it?
And we’re off to California. That’s a 1300 mile drive— the
longest leg of the entire One Lap trip. We have 24 hours to
get to Sears Point. That means we need to average about
55mph. Doesn’t sound like much until you realize that you
need to sleep, eat, relieve yourselves and gas up during
that time.
Paul greases up the axle on our the little trailer that we
borrowed from a kind soul at the Tire Rack. The one we
reserved from U-Haul turned out to be too big. Hurray!
Before we started to fall asleep, we actually got a few
hours in there to enjoy the sights. Some of which were
downright spectacular. Colorado is a beautiful state. To
bad the altitude makes your car so slow!
I don’t remember the name of this pass but it was something
like 10,000’ above sea level. That kind of altitude, while
pulling a 750lb trailer and a fully packed car made for some
pretty painful driving up mountains. What do you think
we’re driving? A diesel?!
What out for falling rocks. From what Paul tells me,
several people die from this yearly. My eyes are wide
open. For the time being at least. Getting sleepy…
Getting very sleepy. But still enjoying the views.
90octane? That’s disgusting. I’m tempted to mix it up with
some of the c16 that we are tugging but I just swap maps in
the XEDE instead.
This is Paul batting his arch-nemesis, the Grease Gun. This
will be a common sight for the rest of the One Lap
adventure. He always looses the battle. This will be the
cleanest we ever see Paul.
Only 1000 miles to go! Oh crap. It’s getting dark and both
Paul and I are having a hard time staying awake. And the
Mountain Dews aren’t helping!!
This is a good picture because it describes accurately what
our eyesight is like for most of the trip. Blurred and
confused. It’s amazing that we came out of this thing
alive.
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