CF Members Take on the 25 Hours of Thunderhill
11-10-2008, 05:28 PM
#1
Burning Brakes
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St. Jude Donor '08
Autocross & Roadrace Forum Sponsor
CF Members Take on the 25 Hours of Thunderhill
It's official - we'll be campaigning the only Corvette at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill!
We'll be running our Pfadt C5 and have a great team of drivers. Along with myself we've got Danny Popp, Dean Conti, and Norm Goldrich. Norm isn't really a CF member, but he is a fabulous driver, so we decided to let that slide.
Everyone came in to Salt Lake this weekend for a shake down and to work out some of the plans. Here's the Gang...
Dean, me, Norm, Danny
Our real goal for the race is to simply finish - which is easier said than done. Since Nationals we've been working to add 25 Hour reliability to the car. One of the big changes was that we added C6 fuel tanks. The C5 tanks starve for fuel sooner and based on our calcuations would have had us stopping for fuel every 50 minutes or so. That's a lot of lost time and it makes it difficult to rotate drivers.
We also changed the head gaskets to lower the compression so we could run pump gas. We had the car on the dyno on Thursday and everything was running well, but on the practice day on Friday we had a TPS sensor fail. It was frustrating and posed obvious difficulties for the drivers to get good seat time.
Eventually we got the car working well and everyone got valuable seat time. We practiced driver changes, and have a good feel for what we need to do.
The only downside to all of this is now Danny has time on my home track on the same configuration they'll run at NASA Nationals next year!
The 25 Hours of Thunderhill starts at 11 AM on Saturday December 6th and ends on Sunday at noon. We've got a great staff coming together to run the fuel stops and tire changes. We have about a million things to do this month to get the car as ready as possible.
Corvette Recycling has stepped up to support our effort with an unbelievable list of upgrades and spares. Thanks to Colton and Doug for the support.
I've got a big stack of fresh race rubber in the shop thanks to Hoosier. Thanks Jeff Spear for supporting the Corvette effort.
Stay tuned for all the action!
-Aaron
We'll be running our Pfadt C5 and have a great team of drivers. Along with myself we've got Danny Popp, Dean Conti, and Norm Goldrich. Norm isn't really a CF member, but he is a fabulous driver, so we decided to let that slide.
Everyone came in to Salt Lake this weekend for a shake down and to work out some of the plans. Here's the Gang...
Dean, me, Norm, Danny
Our real goal for the race is to simply finish - which is easier said than done. Since Nationals we've been working to add 25 Hour reliability to the car. One of the big changes was that we added C6 fuel tanks. The C5 tanks starve for fuel sooner and based on our calcuations would have had us stopping for fuel every 50 minutes or so. That's a lot of lost time and it makes it difficult to rotate drivers.
We also changed the head gaskets to lower the compression so we could run pump gas. We had the car on the dyno on Thursday and everything was running well, but on the practice day on Friday we had a TPS sensor fail. It was frustrating and posed obvious difficulties for the drivers to get good seat time.
Eventually we got the car working well and everyone got valuable seat time. We practiced driver changes, and have a good feel for what we need to do.
The only downside to all of this is now Danny has time on my home track on the same configuration they'll run at NASA Nationals next year!
The 25 Hours of Thunderhill starts at 11 AM on Saturday December 6th and ends on Sunday at noon. We've got a great staff coming together to run the fuel stops and tire changes. We have about a million things to do this month to get the car as ready as possible.
Corvette Recycling has stepped up to support our effort with an unbelievable list of upgrades and spares. Thanks to Colton and Doug for the support.
I've got a big stack of fresh race rubber in the shop thanks to Hoosier. Thanks Jeff Spear for supporting the Corvette effort.
Stay tuned for all the action!
-Aaron
11-10-2008, 08:30 PM
#6
Le Mans Master
Good luck, guys! 
11-10-2008, 10:25 PM
#9
5th Gear
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I'm sure you guys have thought of this stuff but here goes :
- Do Not Hit the slower cars ... The SM's and such WILL NOT see you with the closing rates you have.
- Do Not let the slower cars hit you ... Talent levels will vary , Just because the White 944 was well driven in your last stint does not mean it will be well driven in your current stint.
- It will be tempting to outbrake people , and burn the brakes off the car.
- Practice your pad changes and manage the number of pad changes you need , Think about it , if you can skip a pad change ( or get one under full course yellow ) you might save 10 minutes. That's huge.
- Manage your fuel , 50 minutes is not very long ..... We lost Moroso one year to a much slower car that only needed about 14 stops when we needed 23.... Ouch !
- Prepare for the worst , one year @ Moroso we broke a rocker arm bolt on an SRF , only one I've ever seen break .... Another team gave us one and we only lost about 10 minutes.
Have fun guys , Few things better than a 24 hr race with good friends !
- Do Not Hit the slower cars ... The SM's and such WILL NOT see you with the closing rates you have.
- Do Not let the slower cars hit you ... Talent levels will vary , Just because the White 944 was well driven in your last stint does not mean it will be well driven in your current stint.
- It will be tempting to outbrake people , and burn the brakes off the car.
- Practice your pad changes and manage the number of pad changes you need , Think about it , if you can skip a pad change ( or get one under full course yellow ) you might save 10 minutes. That's huge.
- Manage your fuel , 50 minutes is not very long ..... We lost Moroso one year to a much slower car that only needed about 14 stops when we needed 23.... Ouch !
- Prepare for the worst , one year @ Moroso we broke a rocker arm bolt on an SRF , only one I've ever seen break .... Another team gave us one and we only lost about 10 minutes.
Have fun guys , Few things better than a 24 hr race with good friends !
11-11-2008, 08:01 AM
#11
Vetteless
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St. Jude Donor '09
Good luck Aaron and crew - I will be looking for you guys on Friday before the race to say hello. I look forward to meeting and racing with you guys!
11-11-2008, 10:48 AM
#12
Burning Brakes
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St. Jude Donor '08
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I'm sure you guys have thought of this stuff but here goes :
- Do Not Hit the slower cars ... The SM's and such WILL NOT see you with the closing rates you have.
- Do Not let the slower cars hit you ... Talent levels will vary , Just because the White 944 was well driven in your last stint does not mean it will be well driven in your current stint.
- It will be tempting to outbrake people , and burn the brakes off the car.
- Practice your pad changes and manage the number of pad changes you need , Think about it , if you can skip a pad change ( or get one under full course yellow ) you might save 10 minutes. That's huge.
- Manage your fuel , 50 minutes is not very long ..... We lost Moroso one year to a much slower car that only needed about 14 stops when we needed 23.... Ouch !
- Prepare for the worst , one year @ Moroso we broke a rocker arm bolt on an SRF , only one I've ever seen break .... Another team gave us one and we only lost about 10 minutes.
Have fun guys , Few things better than a 24 hr race with good friends !
- Do Not Hit the slower cars ... The SM's and such WILL NOT see you with the closing rates you have.
- Do Not let the slower cars hit you ... Talent levels will vary , Just because the White 944 was well driven in your last stint does not mean it will be well driven in your current stint.
- It will be tempting to outbrake people , and burn the brakes off the car.
- Practice your pad changes and manage the number of pad changes you need , Think about it , if you can skip a pad change ( or get one under full course yellow ) you might save 10 minutes. That's huge.
- Manage your fuel , 50 minutes is not very long ..... We lost Moroso one year to a much slower car that only needed about 14 stops when we needed 23.... Ouch !
- Prepare for the worst , one year @ Moroso we broke a rocker arm bolt on an SRF , only one I've ever seen break .... Another team gave us one and we only lost about 10 minutes.
Have fun guys , Few things better than a 24 hr race with good friends !
Brakes are a bit of an unknown for us. We ran with StopTechs and Pagid Yellows last year and made it though without a pad change. This year's car is a little heavier and more powerful, but we have larger StopTechs on it. We'll plan on a change (and practice it) and hope that we will not have to do it.
I think we will have a long night of passing Spec Miatas
The competition looks to be formidable this year. Several fast ES cars are entered including a V8 M3 by Fall Line Motorsports and some Porsche GT3 Cup cars. Those cars will all be at least our equal in terms of lap time capability. It will definitely come down to reliability and flawless execution. -Aaron
11-11-2008, 12:55 PM
#16
Drifting
I brought my camera last year but never took any pictures. This year I'll try to get some shots to document the event from a team perspective.
Dog
11-11-2008, 01:33 PM
#19
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Aaron ,
As we all know , it's a 1,001 little things that add up in endurance racing. Something we did that saved a lap or two @ Moroso in an SRF .... We knew we would need at least 1 pad change during the event.... Our objective was to limit it to 1 change ... Where we saved the 1 or 2 was by doing it under the planned corner worker change ( full course yellow ) @ 7:00 AM ..... The timing was perfect , we knew the yellow was coming , so when it came out , we stopped , changed pads ( practice changing hot pads ) , checked rotors , tightened wheel bearings , checked out everything , new tires and topped up the oil ...... Perfect plan , Perfect execution ..... Just one of the little things that brought our small team a 1st class / 3rd overall & 3rd class / 8th overall finish.
Whatever happens , Have Fun .... This is the kind of stuff you'll remember a long time !
As we all know , it's a 1,001 little things that add up in endurance racing. Something we did that saved a lap or two @ Moroso in an SRF .... We knew we would need at least 1 pad change during the event.... Our objective was to limit it to 1 change ... Where we saved the 1 or 2 was by doing it under the planned corner worker change ( full course yellow ) @ 7:00 AM ..... The timing was perfect , we knew the yellow was coming , so when it came out , we stopped , changed pads ( practice changing hot pads ) , checked rotors , tightened wheel bearings , checked out everything , new tires and topped up the oil ...... Perfect plan , Perfect execution ..... Just one of the little things that brought our small team a 1st class / 3rd overall & 3rd class / 8th overall finish.
Whatever happens , Have Fun .... This is the kind of stuff you'll remember a long time !
