First, do the event with a very close friend that you trust enough to drive at high speeds on the public highways, so that you can lie down in the back and get some sleep. Otherwise you won't be able to sleep wondering if he's going to kill you.

Agree to a pact: driver behind the wheel drives at his own comfortable pace, and he also pays the speeding ticket(s). No peer pressure to go faster than comfortable, but the driver must slow down if the passenger is uncomfy with the speeds. Otherwise, you'll hate each other for the whole week.

Prepare your car to finish, not to win. You won't win. The official rule for car prep is: "there are no rules." If you enter the $40K-and-up Luxury Sedan class, be prepared to race against some guy in a $125K Mercedes or BMW who just spent 3 weeks attending a driving school at each track in his Euro-spec BMW 5-series RennWagen with a DTM Touring Car engine installed in the bay with DTM suspension and all-wheel-drive and Hans Stuck co-driving. Besides, winning gets you a trophy and a mention in Car and Driver. Do this event for yourself, for the experience, for the fun, and you'll be a winner regardless of the results.

When you do see that DTM car, go check it out. There will be some incredible street machinery at this event. Your jaw will drop to the floor.

Don't plan on getting a hotel. Prepare to live in your car 24 hours a day for a week, using truck stops for showers. Any hotel sleep time is a God-given gift and you don't know when God is going to feel generous.

Since you're living in your car for a week, time to put aside those anal-retentive ticks like "no eating in my car" and "no used tissues on the floor". Give your co-driver a lot of social leeway...

...but at the same time do your best to take care of your own personal hygiene and social mis-graces. Your wife has gotten used to your bad habits and accepted them; your (current) friend has not.

You can't switch any tires throughout the entire event unless you destroy one. You will be driving across the country, sometimes in rain. Don't buy shaved racing radials or you'll end up against the guardrail in the rain like the new C5 Corvette did in 1997, only a handful of miles from the start.

Have an extra mounted full-size spare just in case.

Bring a box of disposable earplugs. Not 3 or 4 sets, a box full. You'll need them to sleep, both in the car (driver's listening to music) and at the tracks (noise).

If your car doesn't have an MP3 player, install one, and each load your favorites lest you be left to listen to Junior CountryBoy halfway to the Left Coast (unless, of course, you both like Junior CountryBoy...)

Leave the CDs at home. This was a good idea 10 years ago, but now they just take up space.

Another important rule: driver picks the music, passenger sleeps.

Go to Sears and get one of those basic mechanics' tool kits that come in the small carry pouches. No, not that one, the smaller one. You will want "basic" hand tools. Besides, you'll get VERY tired of taking things in and out of your car at every event (the cars must be emptied before they go on the track and, of course, reloaded afterwards.)

Don't try and pack the day of departure. You and your co-driver should spend time the previous weekend (or sooner!) to bring everything you are planning to, including your clothes bag and kit bag, stuff it in that little car and go driving for 6 hours. Make a list of everything you don't touch in those 6 hours and remove it from your car. Your living space is at a premium, and you'll appreciate not having that laptop, and GPS, and CDs you thought you'd get around to listening to, and the Walkman, and the every "whatever" you figure you'd just "toss in there."

Bring tissues, a roll of TP, sunblock, and a small First-Aid kit.

Now that you've pared everything down, you and your co-driver should map out exactly where everything goes inside the car. Take the afternoon to remove and replace EVERYTHING in the car (down to the floor mats) at least three times. You're going to be doing it twice a day for a week, better get used to it and on the same page.

Bring a tarp. At each event your stuff will be on the ground. There *will* be rain.

Make sure you both know where everything is, and that anything the driver may need is easily accessible. It's really a pain in the ass to get woken up in the middle of the day and asked "where is...?" or "can you reach over there and get for me...?"

Once the car is ready to go, leave it alone for the week. Don't drive it to work and run the risk of damage or other new problems. Leave it packed and ready to go; it will make the week leading up to the event a lot less stressful for both of you.

Bring a single current-year Rand-McNally road atlas and a list of your car dealerships nationwide, as well as the main 800 Customer Service number. That's all you need. Everything else takes up valuable space. Even the extra stuff in the glovebox (empty it out!).

The event organizers give you awesome trip notes, down to the tenth of a mile. Thus, the weekend before, go find a DOT-calibrated 1-to-5-mile stretch of road and calibrate your speedometer. All road trip notes are in miles and tenths of miles, and the last thing you need is to wonder if your mileage is off and "should we have turned back there?"

Get a cheap battery-powered (NOT solar-powered!) calculator and Velcro it someplace for the driver to be able to get to. Have another piece of Velcro so the navigator can use it while he's not sleeping. You'll need it for route calcs (think you can do it in your head? Try basic math after no sleep for three days...)

Have some frequent flyer miles or a good high-limit credit card with you, just in case. Be mentally prepared to leave your car and fly home.

Take every opportunity to eat a good sit-down lunch or dinner somewhere. It's well worth the 30-45 minutes a day. Treat yourself to off-the-beaten path restaurants; you can eat at a Denny's when you get home. Experience America.

Bring a camera, a small video recorder, and a notebook. You'll want to record things you see, smell, feel, and taste. You're about to drive across this AWESOME country!

Take some time to look around and smell the roses. We have an absolutely breathtaking country, and if you get too serious about this gig it's going to fly right by your window and you'll miss it. The best part of the One Lap is not the track events, it's the drive. The drive *is* the One Lap; everything else is a 3-hour nap break while your co-driver runs the events.