Rain, Car Failures Add to Drama of NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill
NASA (National Auto Sports Association – Northern California Region) held its annual 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by Hawk Performance this weekend at the Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, CA. Rain added a level of excitement to a race the overall winner of which was the Chicago-based Turn 3 Motorsports. The race was highlighted by excellent performances by a number of teams.
The Turn 3 Motorsports team put their Radical SR8 in the lead early and never looked back, even though they lost an ECU during the rainstorm Saturday night (this even though they spent Friday evening and Saturday morning waterproofing the open cockpit vehicle). Turn 3 Motorsports drivers are team principle Peter Dempsey, who anchored the winning performance, Antoine Comeau, Eric Wagner and Neil Alberico. Coming in second and third overall were K2R Motorsports and Team Praga Cars/Fellner Motorsports. All three ran the ESR class.
After the race, Dempsey told reporters, “I didn’t come here to race anyone else.We came here just trying not to beat ourselves, and I think by focusing everyone in that mentality probably made a huge difference.”
There were race participants in seven other classes. These classes and their respective winners are:
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E0-E0 was won by MPACT Racing driving their stock production Mustang GT.
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E1-Team FLIR Vision Racing trailed early in their Mitjet LV 02 but took the lead around 6PM Saturday through to the checkered flag.
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E2-Peter Hopeland and Technik Competition were finally able to hoist the class trophy on their 14th attempt after passing TAPG Motorsports (more on them later) in the 24th hour in their BMW 3.
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E3-“Old Smoky”- a Honda Civic Hatchback owned and driven by Tazio Ottis that was burning oil badly for the most of the race was able to limp across the finish line for the win in the E3 class.
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ES3-Placer High School students led the winning ES3 class team. This was teacher All Angulo’s 17th and only successful attempt at a Thunderhill trophy. He got an ice bucket bath after the race.
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ES-Valkyrie Autosport continued their recent domination at Thunderhill with a win in their Nissan GT-R. Their 370Z also took third in ES.
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GT Challenge-Picking up an extra $19k in prize money from Toyo Tires for their win in GT Challenge was the Frasun Racing team. Team Frasun was the only one still standing in class at the end of the race.
Late in the race, the top three competitors in E2 collided, causing the TAPG Motorsports entry to head to the garage for repairs from the lead. The damage they suffered was fairly significant and looked like it was enough to take them out of contention, but they were able to use enough bailing wire and duct tape (alright, not quite, but almost) to hold on for a second place class and overall finish.
Tazio Ottis said his Civic went through around seven gallons of oil. GT Challenge started the race with three competitors. The Flying Lizard Motorsports entry was knocked out after only 255 laps for a third place finish and Precision Driving Tech followed them to the hauler after lap 480.
