Luke Russell of Rü Motorsports and Doug Wilks of Top Speed team up for the 2006 Tire Rack One Lap of America presented by Car and Driver. What is the One Lap of America? It’s 100 of the fastest, weirdest and wildest street legal cars on the continent. The idea is to do racing time trials during the day at one, or sometimes two, motor sport’s facilities. After the days activities, you pack up all your things and drive your race car on public roads, all night, to the next day’s event. No support vehicles are allowed. All tools, luggage, tents, spare tire, food, etc., must be loaded into, or onto, your race car. This lasts for 8 days straight and is both a trial on man and machine. Luke Russell from Ft. Myers, FL is a two time One Lap participant. His co-driver will be Doug Wilks of Top Speed in Alpharetta, GA, a premier tuning and auto shop. Luke’s first attempt at the One Lap of America in a Subaru station wagon ended positively with a 12th place finish, 2nd in class. Luke’s second attempt in a Subaru STi ended negatively. Pushing way harder than he should’ve been to get an overall win at Shenandoah, Luke managed to get the car airborne twice on a wild ride that ended with an unfortunate meeting with a tire wall. Luke was running 5th overall and could have easily cruised to a class win. Luke has learned his lesson and promises to drive sanely in 2006. Doug will be providing something Luke has never had before. A co-driver with mad tuner/mechanic skills. They plan on road tuning the car before each track event for optimum results. While they won’t have the car with the most horsepower (actually they’ll have a little over half the horsepower of the top cars), they plan on maximizing available horsepower to their benefit. With proper tuning, setup, reliability and smooth fast consistent driving – they’ll be able to compete with the big boys. Since One Lap ’05, Doug has been busy rebuilding Luke’s car, while Luke has been busy getting track time at the various venues on the ’06 schedule. Those include a wet and dry skid pad at the Tire Rack, an asphalt oval in South Carolina, a drag strip in Indiana and the following road courses: Autobahn Country Club, Mid America Motorsports Complex, Virginia International Raceway, No Problem Raceway, Roebling Road, Putnam and Road America. Thanks to Top Speed for their help and sponsorship this year. Thanks to TurboXS and Rota Wheels for their continued support as well. Also thanks to various forum members that have helped along the way – your advice and help is always appreciated. Luke Russell (From Luke Russell's Post on Nasioc) what is that coming out of his mouth? that's what he does when he is finished smoking the competition. p.s. fear the stache
End of May 6th Results. http://onelapofamerica.com/history/2006/results/showResults.shtml?y=2006&res=OVL_CUM (6th Place overall, 1st Midpriced Sedan!) Good Job Guys!!!!
The cannonball / one lap of America is a really cool event in that it allows for a wide range of cars to run competitavely against each other. I see there's a Porsche Cayanne S and a Beetle TDI in the field this year. neat-o
May 7th Results. http://onelapofamerica.com/history/2006/results/showResults.shtml?y=2006&res=OVL_CUM (TopSpeed 4th overall, 1st in Mid priced sedan.) Some pics from a guy on Nasioc.
Luke driving like a mad man. Luke & Doug getting their 1st in midpriced sedan. and 5th place trophy. Top 5 in midpriced sedan.