It’s hot as hell and I’m not looking forward to running the car.  In the morning, track temps are already approaching 100 degrees.  In the afternoon, they’ll be well over 120 deg.  Ugh.  During the first session, the car does good, placing 4^th overall.  And 1^st in class, as always.  The car is an animal on the in field of the track.  The only place it looses time is around the overall where it tends to get a little squirmy.  It’s abundantly clear that it needs more downforce in the back.  To make matters worse, the car is also running too hot, which means that Paul is lifting off the gas down the front straight.  Dammit.  The altitude also hinders the cars boost response, which makes it a little soft between gears, especially between the 4^th to 5^th shift.

All the racer boys pit and discuss the finer aspects of the track.  “Damn, it’s hot!” is said quite often.  If you look closely, you can see Mary from Car & Driver magazine shooting pictures of the boys in a natural state of red mist.

Don’t smile too hard, Mr. Dave Murry.  The overheating EVO is only a tick behind you and your cool-running GT3! 

Appearantly, the Viper is also running to overheating problems as the PVO engineers scramble to take control of the situation.  The Viper is also dumping a lot of oil into its makeshift catch can (a Aquafina bottle) during the run sessions.  Can you say “blow-by”?

In a fit of genius, we make a quick trip to the local hardware store to pick up some angled aluminum so Paul can make a little Gurney flap which should help settle down the rear end of the car as it comes off the banked oval.  It should also help immeasurably during the upcoming high speed tracks at Hallet, Road America and Peublo.

Paul is so happy with his creation.  Look at him beaming like a new father.

Blake Fuller might look happy but he’s actually worried that we’re coming back from the huge points lead he has on us in the Mid-Price sedan class from our miserable showing at the wed skidpad.  Keep on smiling Blake ‘cuz by the end of One Lap you won’t know what hit ya ;)

The ridiculous heat affects the performance of more than just cars.  Check out this “sea of humanity,” as Paul calls it.

Everyone seeks refuge in the shade. 

Back to the track for the second session.  It’s over 120 degrees and I’m fearing for our super-stressed 2.0L.  So, before Paul took off, I made some changes to the XEDE map.  First, I lowered boost to just 25psi.  Second, I hooked up a switch that, when flipped, would drop boost to 20psi.  Given the temps, I encourage Paul to activate low boost mode if temps start to creep up.  Thankfully, he does.  Unfortunately, even in low boost, coolant temps still rocket out of control, forcing numerous mercy lifts of the throttle during the run session.  Still, Paul comes in 4^th much to my surprise.

As soon as today’s sessions are over, I call up Mitsubishi Motor Corp. headquarters and request a little maintenance at the nearest Mitsubishi dealership.  Always helpful to us, our friends at MMC quickly oblige and arrange for us to go to one of the dealerships in Las Vegas where a whole race crew of techs are ready and waiting.  By the time we get there, we have whole list of what we’d like to get done:  Compression check, coolant flush and getting our AC working again (it stopped working during the first day).

The AC quickly gets fixed.  The culprit?  A burned wire at the AC connector.  The boys quickly fix it.  At the same time, they drain the coolant and fill ‘er back up with water and Water Wetter.

The compression test shows that the motor is just peachy.  The numbers are perfectly consistent (and low given the altitude).  We’re ready to rock!!!

Enjoying our now-function AC, we head on off to Pueblo Raceway in Colorado.  For most of the drive, the temps exceed 100 degrees.  It’s so hot that even the AC struggles too keep things cool. 

Just one of many pictures of our EVO at some obscure gas station in the middle of nowhere.  One of the challenges of running One Lap was to calculate exactly how much fuel we needed in order to arrive at the track on an empty tank so we could juice up with the c16 we tote around.

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