Muddy 25 hours

Much smaller operation this year with just 2 cars. Smaller crew too, but most of the experience crew returned and the 40 car had mostly returning drivers from previous years. The 35 is a new to the team car with similar performance to the 40.

Lola Lives! Long live Lola!

Wet and very windy race start. There was a lot of sliding on track (by everyone) but very few big incidents. One of the Honda Civics in E0 had a race-ending incident with another car, but that was the only contact-related DNF that I am aware of over the entire race. There were not more full course cautions than previous years with dry weather (safety cars at 6pm, midnight, and 6am are for corner worker shift changes).

On the 40, pit stop laps were very consistently 5:00 to 5:30 minutes for driver change and 10 gallons of fuel. Going back paddock to change 4 tires added about 3 minutes. Both cars frequently had about 0.5 quarts of oil added each stop. Stints were long, around 2 hours or more because of cautious driving for the conditions. Radios in the 40 were intermittently not working and the fuel gage was unreliable so the drivers mainly judged when to come in and frequently could have stayed out longer. On a dry track, stints would be 1 hour 20 minutes, but we had some that were 2 hours and 15 minutes and only took 9 gallons of fuel.

Into the night, the 91 (a spec E30), 99, 15, and 35 were the major competition. All of them were pretty quick and except for the 91 which had mechanical problems, all of them ran mostly flawless races.

I laid down at 5:30 am when we had a 4 lap lead. When I got up at 7:15 am, we were down 2 laps. Apparently the electrics to the fuel injectors died in T14, so Tao coasted into the pits (Ron always takes the first pit stalls). Ron diagnosed the problem as a blown fuse in about 15 minutes and they were back out. Unfortunately, the cause wasn't found and the car died twice more on track and had to be towed back in, killing any chance of a podium.

The 35 was fighting for 2nd when a botched stop at 11:15ish resulted in a penalty: driver overshot the stall, then reversed instead of letting the crew push him back. The marshall reprimanded them for that, but then he sped out of pits on the exit and got a drive through penalty for that. It was the *only pit stop hiccup the entire race.

Headlight lenses on the 40 were drilled open because they were not sealed in back and were collecting mud inside. Of course Ron happened to have a 6 inch sheetrock hole bit that was perfect for this modification.

This Pescarola was the best sounding car of the race. I hear her mother was a mudder.

I am not sure how finishing without a rear deck lid may have affected the aero on the Ligier.

It was nice to see the Praga have a good race for once.

Over 6 gallons of oil went into this car during the race. Tommy Lo was really excited to have the water repellency on his windshield when he was stuck behind them during a full course yellow.