After winning class last year in his first attempt at the grueling event, US based Australian racing driver Tom Drewer has been called back for this year’s TIRE RACK One Lap of America (May 5-12), the successor of Brock Yates’ infamous Cannonball Run of the early 70s (immortalized by movies Cannonball Run and The Gumball Rally).
Billed as “the toughest eight days of racing featuring the fastest street-legal cars on America's most challenging racetracks”, the 2012 One Lap of America spans ten states, nearly 3,500 miles (over 5,500km), and visits nine motorsport parks. No support crews are allowed and competition stages include a number of disciplines including skid-pad, autocross, short-track oval, road-course and drag-racing.
Drewer (Adelaide, AUS), an American IMSA Prototype Lites Champion, will be driving with 2011 US GT Champion Steve Loudin (Chicagoland, IL) in a 4260 pound, 425 horsepower Hemi powered 2008 Dodge Magnum SRT-8 automatic station wagon.
The Tricel Honeycomb / NARRA / American Outfitters / Frankenstitch Promotions sponsored car is affectionately known as the ‘Hemi Hearse’ and fittingly the team is entered as ‘The Undertakers’. They will race against ten other teams in the SSGT2 Big Bore class, including a factory entered Roush Performance Stage 3 2013 Ford Mustang. A total of 75 cars will compete in this year’s event.
Drewer was due to drive with Loudin last year until a family emergency resulted in Loudin withdrawing his entry and Drewer gaining a seat in a 400hp Chevrolet Corvette LS-1 powered 1987 Porsche 944.
Without ever sitting in the car prior to the first competition stage, Drewer finished with 10 class wins and 5 top fifteen outright results to take the Vintage Foreign class win and 21st overall with co-driver and car owner Joe Browne. The 2011 One Lap was won outright by Le Mans and Rolex regular Leh Keen, driving a Nissan GT-R.
Loudin also has One Lap experience, finishing 4th in class in the 2006 event, co-driving a similar SRT-8 magnum with Aaron Vanassche.
Over the past couple of years, Drewer and Loudin have shared much success on the track. Drewer coached Loudin to back-to-back series wins in 2010 and 2011, including winning the GT-2 class of the inaugural US GT Championship.
And while the pair know each other well, after spending a week together in their Hemi-Hearse, there’s unlikely to be any secrets between the Undertakers.
You can follow their progress via twitter @HemiHearse (twitter.com/@HemiHearse).
History of the Cannonball Run and the TIRE RACK One Lap of America
Devised by Brock Yates, the then senior editor of Car and Driver Magazine, the Cannonball, or ‘Cannonball Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash’ was a “flat out, no-holds-barred race” from New York City to Redondo Beach, California with competitors navigating US highways at speeds well in excess of the posted limits.
With safety advocates hot on his heels, and a realization it was only time before he might end up before a grand jury, Yates ended the event and turned his attention to immortalizing the Cannonball by writing the screen play for Cannonball Run (1976). However, the best representation of the original event is possibly The Gumball Rally (1976).
In the 1980s Yates created a “kinder, gentler” successor, in which competitors weren’t required to speed. The Cannonball One Lap of America was born. Beginning as an endurance rally with points given for following precise instructions, the event began to take on more and speed events at the competitors’ requests.
In 1992 the event found its current format, near 24 hour driving each day with competition stages held as time-trials on race tracks throughout the United States.
Learn more at www.onelapofamerica.com
About Tom Drewer
Drewer has been touted as one of Australia’s future Le Mans winners by respected motorsport commentator and cartoonist, John ‘Stonie’ Stoneham.
In his first year of North American competition Australian Tom Drewer dominated IMSA Lites 2 in 2008, taking the Championship with 11 pole positions, 10 wins, setting 5 lap records, all on unfamiliar circuits.
This gave Tom back-to-back Championships across the Pacific after he took the Australian Thundersports Sports Car Championship for West Race Cars in 2007. Drewer’s driving duties were split in 2007 with seats in both the Fujitsu V8 and V8 Giant Supercar Series, the feeder categories to Australia's premier motor racing series, V8 Supercars.
Drewer made his transition to cars in 2002, driving Formula Vees and winning the FVASA Drivers’ Championship, after a stellar karting career beginning at age 7 and once backed by triple World Champion Nikki Lauda’s airline, Lauda-Air.
Australia’s AutoAction magazine named Drewer ‘Best Overseas Rookie’ in their 2008 annual awards while prestigious Wheels magazine put Drewer in their ‘Hot Half Dozen Watch List’ for 2009.
In 2010, Drewer was asked to make the world debut of the new Volkswagen GTI by American works team APR Motorsports, and drove a Formula 3 car for the first time at Philip Island, for R-Tek Motorsports. He was also awarded the coveted ‘Granton T. Harrison Memorial Trophy’ by the Sporting Car Club of South Australia.
Last year Drewer won class in the grueling week long Tire Rack One Lap of America event, in his first ever attempt. Recently Drewer competed in at the Clipsal 500 Adelaide V8 Supercar event, driving an Aussie Racing Car.
When not behind the wheel, Drewer acts as a spokesperson for the North American Road Racing Association, their US GT Championship and Whelen US TimeTrial Championship.
Learn more at www.tomdrewer.com
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