“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.”