Driving racecars kicks ass. But the non-driving aspects of racing-preparing the car, repairing, transporting, storing and funding it-can kick your ass right back. Staying ahead in this fight is crucial to enjoying the sport. The happiest amateur racers do short sprint races. On the rare occasion that something major breaks, the car goes on the trailer and the beer comes out.
Not all racers share this relaxed mentality. For those masochists, the race isn't over until both the car and the people have broken down completely. They are endurance racers and, every December, the most deranged among them gather near the California/Oregon border for the world's longest, coldest and most treacherous road racing event: the 25 Hours of Thunderhill.
Dig back in your old SCC pile and you'll find Josh Jacquot's article (June 2004) on the inaugural running of the event in '03. To recap, it was cold and muddy, and a late head gasket failure took his team out of contention. I've run the race twice with even worse results. It's not just the inevitable mechanical snafus that make it frustrating.
The driving itself is not the balls-out, hammer- down stuff found in a sprint. The track is too hostile for that. Between the hack journalists in Spec Miatas and hired guns in prototypes, the speed differential between cars is well over 30 seconds per lap. It's downright chaotic out there. With so many random ways to lose, it's hard to put your heart into this race. And yet some teams dominate year after year. In order to see how they do it, I signed up with one of the most successful outfits in the event's history.
The PDQ Motorsports team has won their class three out of the past four years (the one loss coming the time Jacquot was in the car). They're led by Mike Quan, a firefighter from Northern California. From the moment I signed up, I started receiving daily e-mails. There were status updates on the car and reminders for me to fill out paperwork, and prepare my helmet for the HANS device neck restraint system and new radio. It was clear this team were super-organized. But I didn't realize how militant things were until I showed up at the track.
Quan introduced me to the team and explained the command structure. Modeled after the fire department's Incident Command System, Quan set up two crews. This way, the guys could go back and sleep in the motorhome between shifts. Assigning each team member to a crew (instead of cycling randomly through everyone) meant the same people worked together throughout the race. Everyone knew their specific tasks at each pit stop. With penalties ranging from a fiveminute stop for spilling fuel to disqualification for a crewmember being injured, sticking the pit stops is crucial.
The whole team consisted of a bunch of friends and racers. About half were from the shop Auto Innovations, located in Milpitas, California. Crew one was led by Derek Ramsey. His fuel guys were Orlando Cagatao and Russell Hill, with Pat Wong, Mike Ponce, Albert Oh and Jared Lieban handling driver changes and maintenance. The chief for crew two was James Chin. Shawn Hughes and Jimmy Chilcott handled fuel, while Humberto 'Curly' Ortiz, Dan Franklin, Mike Trebol and Lee Lepper covered everything else. This may sound like a lot of people for one car, but these are only the guys in the hot pit.
There was a complete compound set up in the paddock. PDQ partnered with Team Cobalt California, a Koni Challenge team run by the Lepper family. They brought their toterhome, which, combined with another 40-foot enclosed trailer and two motorhomes, made for an impressive base. Aside from the sleeping quarters, it housed a spread cooked by team mom Robyn Lepper. From chili to cheesecake, the 25-hour buffet looked like it belonged on a cruise ship, not in an enclosed hauler.