Lane's SCA - One Lap 5/13/2000 (4)

A description of the day's highlights, as posted to the Saturn Performance Club mailing list by Deebs:

Going into Saturday's events, Saturn had slipped into second place by 5 points and was unsure of whether they'd be able to catch the wickedly fast and well-driven Turbo Daytona. Saturday was split into 3 different "events" as it were and the way they're setup is a touch confusing so we'll go to the results side of things:

Pre-Session 1: The sight of the Saturn team absolutely gutting the heck out of the 01 coupe was quite a sight. They were trying to pull out all the stops in an effort to re-take the lead. Seats, interior panels, airbags, dash, radio, center console, etc. etc. were all rather hasitily torn out in an effort to drastically reduce weight. Fond memories of gutting the interior of the Deebsmobile surfaced.... During this madness we were able to slip a few of our new SPC Racing decals on the doors of the coupe. While they did increase overall mass, they are rather slippery, and should net the car a lower drag coeffecient on the straights, so it was agreed they were an acceptable modification. Pictures will be posted soon.

Session 1: The gutting of the interior seemed to have worked. The Saturn went out there and re-took the lead by a VERY small margin. Also got to see a Corvette that was smoking everywhere but from the tires and exhaust catch on fire on track. Turns out the fire started in the driver's side footwell so the driver was under a rather terrible dilemma: Stop the car = get burned, don't stop the car = race speed with a burning car. He rolled to a stop right in the middle of the front straight, tumbled to the ground and did a very good stop,drop,roll drill right out of grade school. (It worked!!) His pants (Dockers/etc) were burned off from the bottom hem to mid calf and his Nike's went from white to black. Fortunately the car and driver were quickly extinguished. In fact, the first guys on the scene were the Saturn team members who quickly grabbed the extinguishers out of both of the teams' cars and rushed to help. I'm sure the driver will be buying a Nomex suit this morning.

Lunch: mmmmm, good burgers

Session 2: The run order starts with the fastest cars first; and this rather beautiful Silver Viper, believing he had won the event, decided to do a 2-300 foot burnout IN THE GRID. Oh did we mention he had a guy ON HIS HOOD when he did it. While it was incredibly dangerous, and there was a VERY high chance that the driver could damage: his car, his pretend roadkill hood passenger, or any of the other 100+ cars/crewmembers that were filling the grid, he made it look very good and didn't hit anything. After I had the thoughts on how dangerous it was, I must admit it was neat to be at an event where 300 foot burnouts are not only allowed, they were encouraged (if the applause afterwards was any indication).

Back to the Saturn vs. Daytona:

Perhaps gutting the interior didn't help as much as we thought. Turns out the Daytona had swapped PCM's just before the first session in an attempt to run more boost on the turbo. He did and promptly overboosted the heck out of the motor the entire first session, hence his lower lap times. He switched back before the second and third sessions and managed to run fast. VERY fast. The Saturn team was dispirited when they saw his overall times, but figured they'd try to turn up the wick and see what they could do. Unfortunately they just couldn't keep up with the power/driving skills of the Daytona and its driver and slipped into second place.

Session 3: More of the same, Daytona goes faster than Saturn, Saturn takes 2nd place. While many of the Saturn team members were VERY upset at the fact that they didn't win, I remember one of them saying last Saturday when we watched the first event of this whole madness called One Lap of America begin that he'd be thrilled if they FINISHED at all, let alone placed well. For a first time out there, with a limited timeframe to build the car (7-8 weeks) and a limited amount of parts/etc, the Saturn team did EXTREMELY well in it's return to motorsports. We'd like to give a huge word of thanks to the entire Saturn team for their hard work and effort to put this together. While this doesn't mean you'll see a Saturn Formula 1 team or an LS2 in NASCAR anytime soon, it sure is a nice step for a company that sometimes seems to forget that we enthusiasts exist.