The GECCO
December 9th, 2013, 01:14 PM
The 25 Hours of Thunderhill is THE premier amateur endurance race in the country. Held over the first weekend in December, many pro teams use it as a test for the 24 Hours of Daytona.
I was honored to be invited to drive with a team of local racers in this years event. The Sector Purple (a reference to an F1 drivers fastest section of the lap) Racing team lineup included team owner and national champion Kyle Watkins, regional champions Robert Ames and Daniel Williams, and, well, me (with not much of a resume for anything with four wheels, yet I caught the owners eye during some recent local racing and testing).
We decided to enter the "E2" class with a Mazda Miata. The Miata is really an E3 car, we were employing a strategy similar to running a middleweight superbike in an open supersport class, trying to win based on fuel mileage and managing tires and brakes. The bigger, heavier and more powerful cars would undoubtedly turn better lap times, but with the rules limiting participants to only one tire change and 10 gallons of fuel per stop, they would have to stop nearly twice as much as we would. Also, their heavy cars would require at least one change of brake pads, where we intended to go the entire distance on a single set (this required dialing a lot of rear brake into the car which makes it rather....interesting....to drive). The biggest factor of this strategy is to simply stay on the track, stay out of trouble and not abuse the equipment.
It paid off. We ran in the top 3 for the first half of the race and took over the lead after the lead team spent several laps in the pits dealing with a mechanical issue. With about 6 hours to go the second place car was about 4 laps back, but running 4-6 seconds per lap fast than we were. Between the difference in lap times and pit stop necessity, etc, there was lots of number crunching and nail biting going on in our pit. We thought we were sunk until they had an unexpected (to us) brake pad change with about two hours to go. I got in the car with about an hour to go with instructions to "bring it home clean". It was a pretty long hour, and I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire with my lap times as I was being VERY careful with traffic and on some thoroughly shagged tires (we did the entire 25 hours on two sets of tires).
We won the E2 class! Over the 24 hours and 51 minutes of the race we covered 627 laps, 1793.2 miles at an average (including stops) of 72.2 miles per hour. We burned 170 gallons of fuel, eight tires and four drivers. Can't wait for next year!!!!!
I was honored to be invited to drive with a team of local racers in this years event. The Sector Purple (a reference to an F1 drivers fastest section of the lap) Racing team lineup included team owner and national champion Kyle Watkins, regional champions Robert Ames and Daniel Williams, and, well, me (with not much of a resume for anything with four wheels, yet I caught the owners eye during some recent local racing and testing).
We decided to enter the "E2" class with a Mazda Miata. The Miata is really an E3 car, we were employing a strategy similar to running a middleweight superbike in an open supersport class, trying to win based on fuel mileage and managing tires and brakes. The bigger, heavier and more powerful cars would undoubtedly turn better lap times, but with the rules limiting participants to only one tire change and 10 gallons of fuel per stop, they would have to stop nearly twice as much as we would. Also, their heavy cars would require at least one change of brake pads, where we intended to go the entire distance on a single set (this required dialing a lot of rear brake into the car which makes it rather....interesting....to drive). The biggest factor of this strategy is to simply stay on the track, stay out of trouble and not abuse the equipment.
It paid off. We ran in the top 3 for the first half of the race and took over the lead after the lead team spent several laps in the pits dealing with a mechanical issue. With about 6 hours to go the second place car was about 4 laps back, but running 4-6 seconds per lap fast than we were. Between the difference in lap times and pit stop necessity, etc, there was lots of number crunching and nail biting going on in our pit. We thought we were sunk until they had an unexpected (to us) brake pad change with about two hours to go. I got in the car with about an hour to go with instructions to "bring it home clean". It was a pretty long hour, and I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire with my lap times as I was being VERY careful with traffic and on some thoroughly shagged tires (we did the entire 25 hours on two sets of tires).
We won the E2 class! Over the 24 hours and 51 minutes of the race we covered 627 laps, 1793.2 miles at an average (including stops) of 72.2 miles per hour. We burned 170 gallons of fuel, eight tires and four drivers. Can't wait for next year!!!!!