By Greg Glassner
CP Senior Correspondent
What is your idea of an ideal vacation week?
Some folks would like to lounge around the pool or at an oceanfront resort.
The more adventurous might opt to climb mountains or backpack in Patagonia.
Diehard car guys and gals might dream of something like the annual Tire Rack One Lap of America, which called on Dominion Raceway in Woodford last Thursday.
One Lap was created by the late Brock Yates, a legendary automotive journalist and sometime racer. The infamous Cannonball Run, which inspired several major movies, was also his brainchild.
The Cannonball Run featured drivers of various skills racing coast to coast over public roads in a variety of vehicles to see who arrived in California first.
In addition to being a potential recipe for disaster, the Cannonball Run also attracted radar-gun wielding lawmen like a dog does fleas, explained Brock Yates Jr.
“After the Cannonball stopped for obvious reasons, he started this in 1984,” Yates Jr. explained during the event’s lunch break at Dominion Raceway.
“The early ones evolved into Cannonballs with participants racing from Boston to California.” Then they started adding time/speed/distance challenges, regularity runs, and, in 1989, daylong stops at race tracks, Yates added.
“Nobody died and everybody had a great time.”
The 2017 event started in Indiana and involved stops at tracks in Watertford, Michigan, Memphis (Tenn.), Grissom Air Force Base, Road Atlanta (Ga.), Sebring International Raceway in Florida, Carolina Motorsports Park (S.C.) and Dominion in Woodford. From Virginia, participants drove overnight to Gingerman Raceway in Western Michigan. Cumulative lap times determined the eventual class winners
“Every year we go to different racetracks and include drag strips, road courses, skidpads, and oval courses. This year we will have covered about 3,500 miles in eight days and they must do it all in the car they compete in and on the same set of tires,” Yates said.
Cars ranged from Corvettes, Porsches, BMWs, Vipers, Camaros, Mustangs and Nissan GT-Rs, to less likely vehicles such as pickup trucks, Volkswagen diesels, a Volvo station wagon and an open-cockpit Arial Atom.
Drivers hailed from the northeast, midwest, far west and gulf states. One team comes from Switzerland each year. This year there seven teams from Virginia among the 86 participants.
“Team Slick,” which consists of Denny Schlickenmeyer of Williamsburg and his two sons, Graham and Josh, and their 2015 Chevy Camaro, was one of several family teams.
An active Sports Car Club of America racer, Schlickenmeyer said he did several One Lap events when his sons were in school and unable to tag along.
“They both said, ‘Daddy, we’re going to do that some day.’ Now they both have gone to college and are in their 20s and gainfully employed,” Schlickenmeyer said.
Seeing an opportunity to bond for eight days, they all took turns at the wheel on the long afternoon and evening drives. Dad drove all of the track events though. That may change next year.
On the leg from South Carolina to Woodford, they were able to spend the night at home in Williamsburg instead of a hotel and arrived at the track well rested and with relatives and family friends in tow.
Because of heavy rain Thursday. Plans to compete for lap times on both the oval and road course at Dominion were shelved. In the morning, the cars splashed around on a very soggy road course and after lunch they took another three timed laps on a track that was just damp.
Then they packed up and drove to Michigan.
What might be an ordeal to some was a lark to the hardy One Lap of America participants.
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