This is Aaron's wife Robbin - I'm posting under his name because he's racing in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill and we want to keep you up to date!
For those of you who aren't familiar with the race, it is a 25 hour endurance race held at Thunderhill in California. If you've never driven at Thunderhill, you should add it to your list. The course is a blast and has one of the most intimidating, blind, dropping turns of any road course.
Endurance racing is it's own beast. The fastest car is not necessarily the car that will win - the real trick is NOT to break. It can be hard enough to keep a car together for a weekend of 30 minute races, let alone 25 straight hours of all-out driving!
Rather than enter our C5 race car this year, we decided it made more sense to participate by joining a team that's done the race before. Aaron was invited to drive the car of Steve Rea - an LS1 powered Porsche 944. Steve has been running endurance races in the "Porvette" all season with a lot of success.
Another interesting thing about the car is that Steve is also running C5 suspension and our Competition "Pfatty" sway bars.
The race starts Saturday at 11am PST. As soon as I have an update I'll pass it on!
Robbin
__________________ aaron@pfadtracing.com Pfadt Race Engineering
888-972-2464
2315 S 2300 W
Salt Lake City, UT 84119
Aaron was chosen to qualify the car last night. He qualified with a time of 2:04 and will be gridded 10th. His time puts the team at 4th in class for the start. There was one Mustang and two other cars (BMW's I think) ahead of them.
Aaron started the race today and his plan was to drive for about 1 1/2 hours, then come in for fuel and a driver change. His guess is that their main competition will come from three fast cars in-class, and one other Mustang.
The car has been hit three times. Personally, I'm glad that Aaron wasn't driving during any of the contact! The team lost a little time because of the contact, but Aaron didn't think they were in bad shape.
It sounds like the contact was just superficial - one touch on the rear fender and some minor damage to the rear. They're still running, so it couldn't have been too bad.
As I was on the phone with him, three Miatas got mixed up and took themselves off the track. Steve was driving and reported it through the team radio. Spinning off the track is no way to win an endurance race!
Unfortunately the track timing and scoring equipment was not working properly and Aaron did not know their current position. He ran consistent 2-minute laps during his first turn driving and sounded really excited and pleased.
They were preparing to install the lights for night driving. Luckily the weather has been dry. It may rain tomorrow morning, so that will certainly make things more interesting!
They had a scare last night when one of the drivers threw the belt. It was a fairly straight forward fix, but when he went back out the car was overheating. The team lost more time trying to diagnose the overheating problem and determined it had just been an air bubble in the cooling system.
The good news is that the problems were minor, the bad news was that they lost precious time. The scoring info was still hard to come by, but Aaron thought they had dropped in overall standings maybe to 20th. With six more hours of driving in the darkness, and more daylight tomorrow, he was confident that the team could pull their way back up.
Aaron's turn in the car yesterday evening lasted about two hours and he was starting to sound a little tired to me. He had a lot of good racing! All four of the fast cars in his class ended up together and ran for quite a while. Aaron, the Mustangs, a Porsche 993, and a BMW were all dicing it up! Because of the number of cars on the track, it sounds like a full course yellow is pretty common, which kept the group together.
I'm sure Aaron has been in the car at least once since I last heard from him. Given that the race is only a few hours from the finish, I don't know if I'll hear from him again until it's over. When we run our own car next year, we'll have some kind of great way to get information out to everyone. This is frustrating!
"The night was hard on the Porvette," was the first thing Aaron said this morning.
Steve was rear-ended so hard by one of the Daytona Prototypes that the car was pushed off the track, through the gravel, all the way to the fence. Aaron described this fence as "the fence they use to keep the cows out, not a nearby racing barrier." Ugh.
That incident cost them a tremendous amount of time - not only to retrieve the car, but to patch it up and get it back in the race. The last information they had on their position was from about 7:30 this morning and they were in 44th.
Then Aaron's cell phone cut out and that's all I got! He was in good spirits and it sounds like we'll have one hell of a story when he gets back! There are only two hours of racing left and anything can happen. I'll let you know the final results as soon as I get them.
I just got home and saw the updates. Yes the car took many hits. We were thinking we needed big stickers for the car that say "This is NOT a target!" Lot's of stops to repair damage which meant a lot of lost time. My best recollection of maintenance/damaged items during the race: Front splitter gone, left front hit 3 times, radiator mount broken, oil cooler leak, fuel line leak, valve stem sheared off, mirrors/lights came loose, broken front tie rod, bent rear tie rod, water pump/belt, front sway bar mounts bent, and probably a few more things I can't think of in my tired state of mind.
Now, I think every team member and driver we had knows exactly how to fill out a NASA vehicle contact form. It appears you get better with practice.
We changed a lot of tires and burned a lot of gas. It started raining in the early morning hours so we even ran rains for about 4 hours. Oh, it was about 40 degrees with that rain. No one slept much and we all had a great time.
Unfortunately because of all of our time in the pits we didn't finish well, but we did finish which was amazing if you knew the work we did to keep the car going. I don't know how we finished since none of us went to scoring to check. I'm guessing it was about 40th out of 75 cars.
Anyway it was a great event with a great bunch of guys. I hope to do more stuff like this.
This sounds so fun and exciting. I had in invite to run with a team from SoCal. I should have taken them up on that offer.
Oli
It was definitely both fun and at times exciting. You need to add to that cold, exhausting and dangerous that might sum it up.
The event was really fun. When I get caught up a bit here at the office I'll post a better race report. Here are a couple of highlights.
We finished 8th in class. Probably about 35th overall, but we did finish!
The PorVette was being referred to as 'the tank' by all of our crew members because it was hit so many times and still kept going.
We go hit at least 6 times in the event. The first was a Miata in turn three, Troy spun and got collected by the Miata as he was recovering. Troy was later hit by a second Miata making a (futile) banzii pass. Steve got hit by a Gen 2 RX-7 in turn 9. Then in his next stint, Steve got hit in the rear by the Daytona Prototype making an overzealous pass in turn 8. John got hit by an Acura Integra at about 4:30 AM after going off in some oil/water, the Acura followed him off and hit him in the front as he was turning to re-enter the track. The final injury was sustained two laps from the end of the race when Steve was brining the car to the finish. He got rear ended by another Miata. We decided it was a fitting end to the race.
I'll have a better report with some pictures and video later.
One final note, I would like to thank Jim Pierce of Pierce Motorsports and his fantastic crew (Dan -who I mistakenly called Brian all weekend-, Timo, Art and Mark). They kept the car running the whole 25 in spite of the driver's best attempts at killing it.
A special thanks to Mel (meldog21) who came out and volunteered all weekend in the cold to keep us going. It was that type of effort that kept us going. It was certainly more cold and work than fun I'm sure, but he stuck it out for the whole race. Thanks
I was hit last March at WSIR in turn four by a Miata as I was passing! Of course the debate never ends on who is really at fault, but those Miatas are involved in more hits....
This is Steve, the car owner and I really want to also thank Aaron and Mel for their tremendous contribution to our team for this event! Mel was a fantastic help in the pits, so willing and able to help, which meant a lot of work. Thanks man!
And as far as Aaron goes, he's the man! I was firstly very happy to get his sway bars and spherical bearings on the car, which were a wonderful upgrade from the T1 bars I had previously and the stock bushings. We had much much flexibility with the rear camber, which was nice and will be very good for fine tuning the suspension this coming year. Not only that, if you've ever met and hung out with Aaron, you'll know he's a very cool, down to earth guy who's genuinely passionate about racing. What made me feel comfortable putting his items on the car is that he's actually got an engineering background, which is actually pretty rare in the aftermarket car parts world.
Now on the driving side, Aaron was also very fast, consistent and clean. I have always prided myself on having never had any sort of car to car contact in my 3 years of racing...that is up until this event. When I got pounded, Aaron was able to keep his nose clean...though it sounds like he had more off track experiences than I did, since I had none of my own doing. ;-) Sorry, I've got you there Aaron. My goal was to stay clean and he was able to do it, and still drive fast. I think he set the second or third fastest lap time of the 13 cars or so in our ES class.
I look forward to testing with some Pfadt racing coilovers next year and teaming up with a couple car team for next year's 25 Hours of Thunderhill. It'll be a good combo, a Pfadt racing Corvette and our Porsche LS951 (Porvette).
This is Steve, the car owner and I really want to also thank Aaron and Mel for their tremendous contribution to our team for this event! Mel was a fantastic help in the pits, so willing and able to help, which meant a lot of work. Thanks man!
...
I look forward to testing with some Pfadt racing coilovers next year and teaming up with a couple car team for next year's 25 Hours of Thunderhill. It'll be a good combo, a Pfadt racing Corvette and our Porsche LS951 (Porvette).
Thanks again guys!
Steve
Welcome to , Steve, and thanks for posting up
Thanks to Robbin's posts we "felt your hits" during this marathon event.
__________________
^VIR Turn 3 '08^-MungoZ06-'03 QS/ModRed - NCCC, NASA NCM Member - Z06 Fest IV,V,VI,VII
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After all, as the saying goes "If it were easy, it wouldn't be called racing". 
, Steve, and thanks for posting up 
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