Author: brian26

Jonny got out of the car at about 7:05 am and Will got back in.  The sunrise was absolutely spectacular – there is nothing like watching the sun come up over a track full of race cars.

Team Gorilla had come in for a pit stop just before us, and it does seem that the driver got out, made a nature break and got back in – as an amateur endurance athlete, I think his is a pretty impressive performance.  After our stop the difference is still seven plus laps.

Our Northwest Spec Miata buddy’s team (3D Racing, featuring Pat Newton on lead vocals) is chasing down the Gorilla car and is within a lap, or so.

After Jonny’s fuel stop, a little before 6am, his daughter Sam and friend Kelli came out to see how Jonny was doing.  One of their projects has been to help document the race on video.  Kelli said hello on the radio and handed off to Sam.  Jonny told Sam that he would get her some breakfast when he was finished driving – Sam told her Dad to “just drive the car”.

The big excitement at the motor coach this morning is that Carrie ventured outside in her pajamas.  I don’t think anyone would have noticed, but she made an announcement – so I thought maybe it was worth mentioning.

We are on schedule with all of our tire changing and have made our regular checks under the hood.  Everything looks good.  We are at the 20.5 hour mark – last year the race was a total of something less than 18 because of the fog.  We’ve improved on that.

We are 1st in E2 and 14th overall.  Steve Gorriaran (Team Gorilla), we believe is attempting to do the race solo – this is why their pit-stops are sometimes quite long.  That car is very vast (a 99 SM that has run laps considerably faster than our Thunderhill Spec Miata lap record holder).  Team Gorilla is now 6 laps down to us in 3rd place (E2) – very impressive.

2nd place is held by 3D Racing, which is a reworked version of last years winner with our friend Pat Newton as crew chief (also 6 laps down).

The Atlanta Motorsport Group car that was rotating in and out of the lead with Gorilla and Miatacage had some sort of an off track excursion (it passed us on a hook about 2 hours ago).  When I say “us” I mean those of us waiting in the pit to service our car.

Ken Sutherland just took a load of fuel and continues to work his way through his second stint.  It’s the middle of the night and we’re driving round in circles burning gas.

Bruce had an eventful stint.  It seems that everything mostly went well, but about 30 minutes into his second fuel load, Bruce called to say that he had been punted by the #62 Atlanta Motorsport Group car.  This car has 2 drivers that both Bruce and I (well, and a ton of other people) have had issues with in the past on it’s roster, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to me.

It turns out that it was neither of those two that were the driver when the 62 car lost control under the brakes while attempting a pass.  Bruce had just passed another car and the AMG car made a try at the double – like in a sprint race. 

One of the things I like about NASA is that they actually do something about sketchy driving.  I was the lucky guy that got to fill out the mandatory incident report.  While doing that, one of my “favorite” drivers of all time, Marc Hoover, wanted to give me his opinion of what had happened – I’m not sure it’s possible for me to care less about what one guy thinks.  Marc has way more mouth than skills, and I informed him that 1) we had been through this before, and 2) I wasn’t driving the car so he could save it, and 3) that his claim of the cars having been side by side was in conflict with both the damage to the left rear of our car and the corresponding damage to the right front of his.   Marc thinks that since at that moment his car was “faster” (perhaps because it wasn’t slowing down for the corner) that his obligation to make a safe pass is not so important – nevermind that we are in the same class and 2 laps ahead….

It turns out that I even have an example of Marc’s excellent car control skills and judgement from an SCCA national at Thunderhill a couple of years ago.  Bravo, big guy.

Marc is driving the white car in the following video.

Jonny Davies is now in the car and it is getting very dark.  We are running second to The Gorilla with the AMG car on the next lap behind us.  It is our plan to give those guys as much room as they need to get around without hitting us again.  It’s a 1,500 minute race – and this ain’t “Days of Thunder” – even though it kind of sounds the same…