It is that time of the year again!!! The 2013 One Lap of America race is upon us. Tomorrow begins the festivities with the traditional sticker day at tire rack in South Bend, IN. Leh and Doug rolled out today in the TopSpeed rig with the fresh 2013 OLOA car all loaded up.

As some of you know we are 3 time consecutive defending champions at OneLap and are shooting for our 4th overall win in a row. It is going to be a tall order this year with some of the competition that is coming out, but we are going to give it our all! There are several very nasty Vipers coming out as well as some very serious gutted caged GM cars, not to mention the list of GT-R rivals such as Speed Concepts, Forged Performance and several others. Word is that Forged has put a face lift of sort on their sponsored OLOA car. This will be the 4th year in a row we have raced against them so we are very excited to see what Catesby brings to the table this year.

That all said, It has been a crazy few weeks here at TSM preparing the car for the event. The plan was to start on the car early this year, however with the drastic growth here at TopSpeed Motorsports, the shop project continued to get pushed to the back burner so that customer cars could be made a priority. After T2K13 the problem only got worse. So with 3 weeks left before OLOA we all looked at the bone stock 2013 and decided we better get to work!

I couldn't be more proud of my team and specifically my right hand man Doug Wilks. Together with some other key people on our staff, Doug tackled the project. The goal obviously was to make our 2013 BE close to as fast as our 2010 full road race build we knew on the front end that this was going to be a challenge, however with the stiff competition that is showing up to OLOA this year we knew it couldn't be far off.

The main difference in this years build is that we wanted to balance the car with factory front fenders vs. bolting on aftermarket wide fenders and huge front tires. One of the hardest things to do with a GT-R is get the front hooked up as good as you can the rear. Balance in the car is very important but that is not easy to achieve with a staggered tire setup on the GT-R platform. Putting the meaty front tire on the car is a very effective way to give the front more grip both mid corner and under braking. The problem with that is it requires aftermarket body panels which just aren't that desirable for a dual purpose car.

We spent countless hours dissecting and planning in order to make sure we had all of the components to give us the best shot at achieving that balance. We worked with things such as spring rates, sway bar/settings, custom damper valving, ride height adjustments, aero components, and even brake pad bias in order to put together the fastest combination available.

This past Monday was the day the rubber met the race track. All of our theory was about to be tested by Professional Grand-AM and ALMS driver Leh Keen. Here at TopSpeed, we believe that track tuning is just as important as your ECU tuning if you plan to track your car. No different then spending say 50k on a big turbo upgrade then just picking it up without it going on the dyno. Also very similar it takes the right guy to help track tune a car. You need a driver (tuner) that is comfortable pushing the car past its limits in order to find where and how it is deficient.

Monday morning came around in Savannah, GA and the track was wet, but we started testing anyway. The team kicked into high gear making adjustments, running laps and then re-adjusting to learn exactly how the car responded to each input. We spent literally hours on a private track making changes and learning exactly what the car liked. I have to say we learned a ton trying to find as much grip as possible with the 295 front tires. I am very excited to relay that knowledge to our customers and continue to help the community enjoy their GT-Rs even more.

The end of the day yielded a time that was just FOUR TENTHS of a second off of our fastest time ever at Roebling Road Raceway in the Gray TSM GT-R. We were very pleased with these results, especially given that the Gray car set it's best time early in the morning with optimal track conditions and it was well into the day before our new 13 was given the chance to rise to the challenge. We are confident that given the same track conditions the times would have been even closer.

More details and specifics will roll out through the week of OLOA 13 but for now this beauty is on her way to South Bend to defend the TSM title!

As usual we will be posting pictures and results here in this thread as well as having a LIVE VIDEO FEED! The feed will be live tomorrow, I will post in here every time the guys are online to take questions or show you guys what is going on at the track.

THE OLOA PACKAGE MOD LIST:

ENGINE/TRANNY

-TSM SS1 3.8ltr Custom Compression Engine
-TSM Pro Eight Turbos
-TSM Pro Series Intercooler
-Shep Trans Stg3 Transmission
-HKS Transmission Cooler

EXHAUST

-AMS Cast Downpipes
-TSM Resonated Y-Pipe
-Akrapovic Slip-on Exhaust System
-TSM Catch Can (recirculating version)

SUSPENSION

-JRZ Custom Valved JRZ Silents
-TSM Adjustable Sway bars
-Whiteline Endinks
-Whiteline Camber Kit


BRAKES

-AP Racing J-Hook Rotors
-Race Technology Proprietary Pads (staggered TSM Setup to be released)
-Goodridge Braided Brake Lines
-Torque RT700 Brake Fluid

AERO

-TSM Custom Wing (variation to be released)
-AJRC Type A (modified) Splitter
-TSM Custom 2013 Canards
-TSM Custom Wheel Wickers
-TSM Custom Scavenge Fender Vents
-APR Side Skirts
-Top Racing Dry Carbon Hood

INTERIOR

-Recaro Sportster CS Seats
-Recaro Sliders
-Planted Bases
-Mines Steering Wheel
-TSM Roll Bar/Harness Bar
-Schroth 4pt Harness

Wheels/Tires

-HRE P43SC Wheels (Matte Bronze)
*20x10 +35 Front
*20x12 +30 Rear
-Michelin Pilot Super Sports
*295/35/20 Front
*335/30/20 Rear

TUNING

-Cobb Accessport
*AP-NIS-006
-Custom Tuned by TopSpeed Motorsports