One Lap of America 2023

2 minute read

Last year, my dad and I competed in Brock Yates’ One Lap of America 2023 driving competition. This is our second time entering this driving competition; the last time we entered was in 2019. It took a full year until we went on our third One Lap of America (2024) before I got around to processing the videos and photos from 2023. The transit provided ample time for me to work on editing last year’s footage. Eventually, I caught up, so I edited the footage from the morning when I was taking a break from driving in the afternoon. We got a nice rhythm down. After the morning’s event, I would take the first shift of the transit. Then, when we ran low on gas, we would stop at a gas station, and I would collect the SD cards to download and process the photos and video during the second transition before switching again and driving the rest of the transit for that day.

The One Lap of America official website is onelapofamerica.com. Since the event was technically a competition, the events were time trials. Each team was scored and ranked based on how fast they completed each event. The event results and rankings can be found on the One Lap of America website under History -> Previous One Laps.

We took my dad’s new 2023 Chevrolet C8 Stingray this year. We were not sure if it would arrive from the dealer in time, so we debated whether to take my brother’s Kia or my Beetle as a backup vehicle. Luckily, it did come in in time for us to prepare the car and get it to One Lap. We finished putting in the recommended miles on the car before it was track-ready during the transit to the start of One Lap.

Our car’s number this year was 37, and we finished 53^rd overall. Our goal, however, was not to place well but to have fun, complete the event, and bring the car back home, and we completed all of these goals. The competition was long, but fun. Each day, we had roughly the same schedule. We would wake up early, around 7, and then head to the track, where we would drive in two events. After which, we would drive for around 500 miles to reach the next hotel, so we could do it all again.