Teams set to battle the elements at 25 Hours of Thunderhill

Image courtesy 25 Hours of Thunderhill
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emailBy: RACER Staff | 6 hours ago

The 17th running of the National Auto Sport Association’s 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by Hawk Performance is fast approaching, and teams are in the final stages of preparation for the popular endurance race – the longest closed-course race in the U.S. — at Thunderhill Raceway near Willows, Calif.

This year there will be ample amount of options available to follow all the action live from the event. NASA will have track-side cameras, live video interviews from the hot pits, in-car cameras, and live drone shots (weather permitting).

Click here for the full entry list.

Qualifying begins at 5:15 Pacific Time on Friday, December 6. The race begins at 11 a.m. Saturday and concludes at 12 p.m. Sunday (both Pacific Time).

Live video coverage can be streamed at Livestream.com:
https://livestream.com/drivenasa/25hour

 

Wet night qualifying sets 25 Hours of Thunderhill grid

Image by NASA25hour.com
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emailBy: Brett Becker | 16 hours ago

The strategy Friday night was largely the same from team to team in the minutes leading up to the 4:45 p.m. practice and 5:15 p.m. qualifying sessions for the 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by Hawk Performance. Cars were up on jack stands and teams were waiting for the weather to make up its mind.

The forecast called for the rains to come in during practice, but halfway in, it was nothing more than a mist, and the cars remained on jacks, waiting for the right tire choice. Teams went out on dry tires and intermediates hoping to make the most of a dry or at least a drying racing line around the track, but then just after the 5 o’clock hour the rains set in and began to intensify.

Teams shuffled in and out of the pits to change tires to earn the best starting position on Saturday’s grid. Of course, at the end of a 25-hour race, qualifying position is no more relevant to your finishing position than your car number. However, it helps drivers of faster cars avoid having to dice through slower cars in the early laps, and perhaps a race-ending incident. In a rain-soaked race, that is relevant to your finishing position.

By the time qualifying was over, Team JFC Racing had nabbed pole position in its Lola B12/80 (pictured above), a former SpeedSource Team Mazda Prototype campaigned in IMSA racing just a few years ago.

Knowing the team was going to be starting the race and enduring an evening of rain Saturday night, JFC Racing team manager Brian Roberts was relieved to finally get some rain so the team could judge how the car was going to handle in the wet.

“Qualifying is qualifying. The whole focus is the 25 Hour,” Roberts said. “We thought we were going to get rain all day today and it’s dry the whole day, and we’re like, ‘How do we get ready for a race in the rain when you can’t practice in it?’”

The team put driver Tom Dyer behind the wheel for qualifying. Dyer clocked the only sub 2-minute lap time of all the cars at the year’s race. Dyer has competed in Indy Lights, the NASCAR Southwest Series, the K&N West Series and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship series.

“Tom is awesome. He did a good job. He’s basically relaying a lot of feedback for the guys for the rain driving,” Roberts said. “It’s basically taking the knowledge he has and giving the feedback to the rest of the drivers on what the rain is like. We were going to give all those guys rain time today during the morning practice but it just ended up being dry all day.”

JFC Racing’s 1m59.406s bested Team One Motorsports, which came in second with a 2m00.121s. Turn 3 Motorsport will start third after posting a 2m00.411s.

Rain or shine, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill will start at 11 a.m. Pacific Time Saturday, Dec. 7, and run continuously until noon Sunday. Teams will log nearly 2,000 miles on the 3-mile-long road course during the endurance race.

The forecast is predicting on-and-off showers with strong wind throughout the day and into the night, adding a challenge for drivers.

The 25 Hours of Thunderhill is open to the public at Thunderhill Raceway near Willows, Calif. Watch the live stream at https://nasa25hour.com/

 

25 Hours of Thunderhill livestream

Image by NASA
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emailBy: RACER Staff | 2 hours ago

Stream to the 12 p.m. Pacific Time finish of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by Hawk Performance.
https://racer.com/2019/12/08/25-hours-of-thunderhill-livestream/

TampaRacing.com thanks the people who made this happen.
-Bob

 

Turn 3 Motorsports storms to victory at 25 Hours of Thunderhill

Image by Turn 3 Motorsports
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emailBy: Brett Becker | 16 hours ago

Turn 3 Motorsports found joy in Mudville on Sunday when the team won its first 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by Hawk Performance.

The Chicago-based team had a dominant performance, leading shortly after the start and never looking back. The Radical was caked with mud as driver and team principal Peter Dempsey brought the car across the finish line with an eight-lap margin of victory. It’s the first time a Radical sports racer has won the 25 Hours of Thunderhill.

“I was in tears in the car there once we knew we had done it, so it took me a few laps to settle back down again and finish the race,” Dempsey said.

The team spent Friday night and Saturday morning waterproofing the open-cockpit car but it still lost an ECU during a rainstorm after the endurance race started. After that the car ran flawlessly, Dempsey said.The team’s drivers Eric Wagner, Dempsey, Antoine Comeau and Neil Alberico drove the car 2,016 miles, good for an 8-lap margin of victory over second-place overall finisher K2R Motorsports. Team Praga Cars/Fellner Motorsports finished third in ESR and also third overall.

 

“I didn’t come here to race anyone else,” Dempsey said. “We came here just trying not to beat ourselves, and I think by focusing everyone in that mentality probably made a huge difference.”

The endurance race started Saturday at 11 a.m. and concluded Sunday at noon. The 25 Hours of Thunderhill is one of the most challenging auto races in the country and this year’s event proved it with drivers battling rain and wind throughout the event.

E0

The next time anyone says a stock production car can’t win at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, introduce them to the MPACT Racing team. The group ran a stock Ford Mustang GT, and the only upgrade was the suspension. The car came out of the Ford Performance Racing School in Utah.

“We’re really excited. We’ve got some seasoned guys, we’ve got some first timers here, so it’s a great win,” said Rob Birkhead, president of MPACT Racing. “To take a school car first time out and pull something like this, we’re real excited.”

While MPACT won by 19 laps in the E0 class, the race was much closer, with DIG Motorsports and Honda Racing THRW mixing it up and making it tough sledding early in the race.

“We didn’t have the pace in the wet, but we knew we had the pace in the dry, so we were watching the changing conditions,” Birkhead said. “We just tried to keep it on track and fortunately luck was in our favor today.”

DIG Motorsports finished second in a Ford Mustang and Honda Racing THRW 2 finish third in a Honda Civic Type R.

E1

Team FLIR Vision Racing’s Mitjet LV 02 car had trailed Team Bullet Performance early in the race, but they took over the E1 class lead shortly before 6 o’clock Saturday evening. Shortly before midnight Saturday, Team Bullet Performance suffered contact with the Toyo Tires Flying Lizard Audi R8, and had to take the car into the back paddock for extensive repairs.

“The Mitjet is a fantastic car. It’s a real solid package, a solid racecar for doing events like this,” said John Hill, a driver and team principal for FLIR Vision Racing. “It started out a as a spec car, so everything is overbuilt, and it works really well for endurance racing.”

From there FLIR Vision held the lead, and continued to hold the class lead at the 8 o’clock hour. Bullet Performance dropped back to finish third in class, with Team El Dorado Motorsports CRX in second place at the finish.“I think Team Bullet had some troubles, so I think they were going to end up being a lot tougher competition than they ended up being,” Hill said. “But part of this race is just avoiding the troubles and luck. They had some bad luck and we were able to avoid that.”

 

E2

After 14 years of trying to win his class at 25 Hours of Thunderhill, Peter Hopeland of Technik Competition can finally raise the championship trophy over his head. The team passed TAPG Motorsports in the last hour of the endurance race to earn the victory and finish sixth overall.

“We just had to claw our way back and it just worked out. It was awesome,” Hopeland said.

The win had its challenges. The top three cars in E2 collided on Saturday, bending the rear of the BMW 3 and benching the car temporarily.

“We were really coming from behind the whole time,” he said. “Hats off to Toyota. They made us work so hard.”

Team TAPG Motorsports finished second in its Toyota 86 sports coupe, and Team Slipstream-Racing.com finished third in a Mazda MX-5.

E3

With smoke coming out of the exhaust and the radiator about to give way, driver and owner Tazio Ottis nursed the Honda Civic Hatchback across the finish line. The team had already clinched the E3 class over second-place finisher Brown/Heyer, which was the only other car in E3.

Ottis said the car started burning oil in hour six and estimates they used 7 gallons of oil during the race. The radiator gave out as Ottis pulled the car into pit row after the race. It had nothing left to give and had the race gone on for one or two laps more, they might not have finished.

“The whole point is we don’t give up. That means a lot to us,” said Ottis, who won his first 25 Hours of Thunderhill.

E3S

A team led by high school students pulled off an improbable win in E3S and gave team manager and teacher Al Angulo his first win in 17 attempts at 25 Hours of Thunderhill.

The Placer High School automotive tech teacher celebrated with the students on pit lane after they won by two laps over Lesher Motorsports in the deep field.

“I’m overwhelmed with joy for them,” said Angulo, fighting back tears. “I can’t wait to see the picture of these kids with their trophy and be able to haul that to the high school and say we kicked (butt) on some of the biggest teams in motor racing. It’s not about me, it’s about all of them.”

The students dumped a bucket of ice water on their teacher to celebrate the victory.

“They spent a lot of hours working on it, a lot of hours training,” Angulo said. “They would come in on Saturdays practicing our pit stops and to see them put it together to be here for that, it’s exciting for the school, exciting for them.”

ES

When it comes to the 25 Hours of Thunderhill, few teams have had as much success as Valkyrie Autosport. The team added to its trophy case after campaigning two cars this weekend and securing first place in its Nissan GT-R and third-place in its Nissan 370Z in the ES class. The team has six podiums in the last few years, said Giles Powell of Valkyrie Autosport. This year was the team’s first year in ES.

“It was clear we weren’t going to be able to secure position through outright pace,” Powell said. “We just had to be really conservative and wait for the luck to even out with the other teams, which luckily happened. The drivers stayed focusing on running clean and not taking chances, and we got lucky it worked out for us.”Three Thieves Racing finished second in ES.

 

GT Challenge

Frasun Racing drove to victory in the GT Challenge and took picked up a $10,000 prize from Toyo Tires for the effort. The competition was reduced by one when third-place finisher Flying Lizard Motorsports was knocked out after 255 laps and class runner-up Precision Driving Tech was out after 480 laps.

Driver Jason Fraser said even with their two competitors out, it didn’t change their approach to finishing the race, but the weather did.

“The mud on the track and all the yellows. It was a war zone out there. It really was,” Fraser said. “At that point it was survival. We still ran hard. We ran mistake-free.”
Images courtesy of Brett Becker, Doug Berger.dbpics.com, Doug Berger/dbpics.com and Doug Berger/dbpic25 Hours of Thunderhill, North American Racing