25 Hours of Thunderhill in an E30

[lafngrvy]

This past weekend I co-drove our Racecraft E30 Pro 3 car in the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. We had a lot of fun, and we finished! We even managed a 2nd in class!

We suffered 2 problems in the race. During my stint in the early hours of Sunday morning the high pressure fuel pump died leaving me coasting down the back straight to a stop just before turn 14. That cost us about 40 minutes by the time I was towed in and the crew replaced the pump. Our only other problem came about 2 hours from the finish. We stopped for fuel and driver change, and we replaced the right rear tire. While torquing the wheel one of the studs broke off. That required another 30 minutes to drill out the broken stud and put in a new one.

I was privileged to start the race and finish the race for the team, spending a total of about 5.5 hours in the car. What a great experience, and what a great crew!

Here's some photos from the weekend:



Here's the car fresh from the trailer and ready to go.




The great crew from Racecraft.




It is a really long race!




The old girl in action.

 

[MyFemurHurts]

Very cool! Thanks for sharing.

 

[vraned]

congratulations! What did you think of 5 1/2 hours on the course with the west section included?

 

[bimbill]

Congratulations Steve and Racecraft for a very impressive performance.

 

[shanon]

Was the 25hr on the original 3 mile or the new, big 5 mile track?

the big track is awesome!

 

[lafngrvy]

The race is run on the 3 mile original course. There has been some talk of running it on the full 5.5 mile course and increasing the field size, but they are limited by the length of the pits. As it was we had barely a car length for our pits, so we had to make sure we didn't pit when our neighbors were pitting.

One neighbor was running a twin engine Mini called a Twinie (the question, "Why?" came to mind several times all weekend), and naturally he spent considerable time in his pit, so we were constantly edging over into the other neighbor's space. Fortunately they were gracious and understanding.