This weekend was the 49th running of the Illgen Enduro, this time a 4-hour affair at Thunderhill.

The only endurance race I’ve ever driven in was the wacky “24 Hours of LeMons“, a play on the world-famous french race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  In LeMons, however, there is a spending limit of $500 on the car (i.e, they are all crapcans that aren’t likely to be able to make it through to the end of the race, in other words, “lemons”, and our race took place on the tiny “road course” at Altamont Raceway.

With the help of the LemonLappers team though, we were able to win that one.   But it wasn’t so clear that my Go, Dog. Go! Racing team, with me, Rod McLane, and Ali Naimi, would be able to win this one.  Because we were running in the “O” class, which stands for Over, which consists of all production-based cars with an engine larger than 1.7L.  In other words, a supercharged Corvette would be in the same class.

In reality, the two entries in O that were really overdogs for us were a pair of Panoz GTS Coupes.  As long as they kept running, I thought they’d easily win, and we’d be battling for the “best of the rest.”

One of the things that make enduros different from a regular SCCA sprint race is that you have to do pitstops.  Our races are normally so short that we never stop.  But the rules for this race require that each team makes two pitstops of at least 5 minutes each.  Given that we had to make two stops, I figured we’d have three drivers.  The question was … how far can this car go on one tank of gas?  Could it make it 1/3 of the 4 hours on one tank?  I really didn’t know, although my back of the envelope calculations said it could.

Unfortunately, I discovered during the regional on Saturday that my fuel gauge didn’t seem to be working right.  So, we’d be driving until either it was time to change drivers (roughly 75-80 minutes), or until the car started sputtering.  We’d just have to see how it went.

We spent the afternoon on Saturday getting the car ready.  Fresh front brake pads and rotors went on, and we moved Rod’s seat and radio harness from his Miata to my car.  His seat was a better fit for all three of us.  Unfortunately, Rod was still pretty scrunched into the car and Ali and I had to stretch a bit.  Next time: a seat slider.

To complicate matters further, to save money we decided to run the race on some tires that Ali already had, Kumho V710s in 225/45-17.  I normally use the Hoosier R6 in 245/40-17.  The narrower Kumhos looked a little funny on the 8.5″ wheels, but I didn’t think it would really be much of a difference.

The track was open for qualifying from 9:00-10:30.  I went out first on a set of scrubbed tires to get the feel for the difference, and not surprisingly, there wasn’t much of a difference.  They definitely felt a little bit slidier, if that’s a word, but generally okay.  I ran a few laps and then came in to hand the car over to Rod.  At that pitstop we discovered that the tires build up pressure a lot more than the Hoosiers, so we bled them back down to a more reasonable level.

Rod took a bunch of laps and then handed the car over to Ali.  At that time we put a fresh set of tires on so that they could get a little bit scrubbed before the actual race.

The race started after only a 1 hour break.  We’d decided that I would start the race, then Rod, then Ali, same order that we’d practiced in.   I snarfed a hot dog and got ready to go.  There were 37 cars in total, 12 of which were in our class.  We had qualified 14th overall, and 4th in our class.  In front of us in class were the two Panoz GTS Coupes, and an MX-5 Cup professional racer.  I actually felt we’d have a shot at the MX-5 Cup car but not at the two Panoz’s.  But Ali was confident that the two fast cars would break, that we’d beat the MX-5, and ultimately win the class.  Who knew?  Anyway, all around these cars on the grid were a whole bunch of Spec Racer Fords, just to complicate matters.

This is a 4 hour race, and in the driver’s meeting they’d told us not to try to win the race in the first turn, but … guess what happened.  Two pace laps in which the guy in the Spec Racer next to me really wanted to be NEXT to me all the way around, and then the start … and of course, there was racing, and a wreck.  3rd on the grid was a Van Diemen sports racer.  Somehow it got sideways, probably “with help,” and then another car (an RX-7, I think) ended up T-boning him in the side.  We went full-course yellow a few turns later, but it seemed like I was out there with a bunch of rookies.  A saw at least 1 pass under the double-yellow, but some cars didn’t stop racing on that 1st lap for 3 more corners!  Fairly pathetic.  We had a clean restart, but then went full-course yellow again on lap 9 to retrieve a disabled car.

After that restart, I had a great race for several laps with whoever was driving the MX-5 Cup car (I assume it was Ara Malkhassian). Really enjoyed it.  We passed each other several times between lap 11 and lap 38, when our car sputtered in T6 as it ran low on gas and I pulled into the pits at the end of that lap.

At this point, we were in 3rd place overall.  I hopped out of the car and Rod hopped in.  Ali fueled the car while I held the fire extinguisher.  The rules are that those two jobs must be done by people in full fire-safety gear, and we didn’t have anyone else to do it for us.  So Rod got in, and Sterling (Rod’s Dad and crew chief) got him all buckled up.  And Ali and I just stood there, watching the fuel TRICKLE into the car.  It was very frustrating.  We knew we needed to get it full, but it just took absolutely forever.

Ultimately, we sent Rod back onto the track after putting in only 10 gallons in 12 looooong minutes.  The stop was required to be at least 5 minutes, but those extra 7 minutes just killed us.  Put us 3 laps behind of where we should have been … and the car wasn’t even full of fuel!

So, out goes Rod.  He ran some very fast laps, and basically just stayed out there until the car started sputtering again 30 laps later (note to self … roughly 3 laps/gallon).  He didn’t have the luxury of having any full-course yellows like I had at the start to extend the stint.  Ultimately his fast lap was only 0.9 slower than my fastest lap, and that in a car that he had never driven before, that he didn’t fit in very well, and on far more “used” equipment than I had.  Really nice job.

He managed to move up from 29th position overall (that’s right, we dropped from 3rd to 29th on that stop) to 16th before he had to pit for more fuel.  This time, while Sterling helped Ali get into the car, I fueled while Rod held the extinguisher.  This time we were able to get the car totally full in only 8 minutes, by just using a funnel without our filler hose.  Those 3 minutes above the required pitstop length still hurt us though.

Anyway, Ali returned to the track in 25th place and moved up to 18th before time ran out after we completed 101 laps.  He too ran very quickly, turning in laps as fast as Rod, with brakes that were nearly totally spent and tires that had nearly 100 consecutive hot laps.  I guess I picked good teammates!

Bottom line is that we spent 10 extra minutes in the pits, and at Thunderhill that’s worth 4 or 5 laps.  We finished 4th in class with 101 laps, but 2nd place completed 104 laps.  I’m not big on “what-ifs”, but it sure looks like if we had our pitstop act together, we could have finished 2nd.  As it turns out, the one Panoz GTS that completed the race ended up the overall winner, completing 106 laps.  So it’s conceivable that we could have won this race.

Well, it was a learning experience.  I’m really proud of the fact that the car held up great, even with undersized, untested tires, with two drivers who had never driven the car before, and with a faulty fuel level gauge.  It stayed fast and consistent from beginning to end.  We didn’t make contact with anything, and nothing broke.  Despite our inefficient pitstops, altogether, no doubt it was a successful enduro debut!

We had Rod’s ChaseCam bullet-cam in there, hopefully recording most of the race successfully.  Perhaps I’ll be able to get some of that posted soon.  The full official results are posted here.

And with that, the 2008 season is over!  Looking forward to a really fun 2009!

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Race Reports, SCCA, Updates.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.