1st in class, 3rd overall. We ran a clean race, and everything ran like clock work. I went out first, had a great start, and put distance on many competitors. I went into fuel conservation mode for much of the race; shifting at 6500rpms, and short shifted into 4th gear between turn 6 and 7 and kept it there all the way until turn 12. This allowed my stint to get us to the two hour mark, which put on the 3 pit stop strategy. I had a great battle w/ Craig Silver from Silver Martini, in their NB Miata, which should have more power. I lead him for dozen laps, he eventually got past me, and I chased him hard for another 10 laps, then got around him eventually, and we both ended up going in for fuel. We did have the rare occurrence where the entire race was red-flagged due to lightning in the area. We finished 1st in class and14 seconds away from 2nd overall. The 2nd place car with five minutes left on the clock broke, during that fine minutes we closed the gap and finished on the same lap. During the nightly mechanic checkup we found out we had a broken lug stud! A rear wheel bearing started giving signs it was time to go. We also burnt through an entire set of front Hawk "Endurance" brake pads! :O
Day two we were not so lucky. We knew no matter what we would not be able to make the 3 pit stop strategy, so we figured might as well run harder and faster, knowing we would be doing 1 hour 30 to 1 hour 40 minute pits. I started again, and had a relatively uneventful hour forty five in the car, ran pretty consistent 1.51 and 1.52 lap times. One driver went out and start saying the brakes and handeling where very weired. Turns out that same rear wheel bearing we swapped out the night before, that axle busted right at point of the axle nut! We swapped the axle and got the car back out in 30 minutes. Another driver said the windshield was getting hard to see out of, which turned out happened to be because the car ejected the oil fill cap!!! Even with those two unfortunate visits into the pit we finished 4th place in class, 7th over all.
$2,500 was raised for Brainerd's local Sharing Bread Soup Kitchen.
Official results can be found: here.
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