What it Takes: 25 Hours of Thunderhill 2019 Report
Will celebrates our victory in epic style, with me filming below!
Achieving something special in any sport often has deeper roots than a headline photo can tell. That cover image of the celebrating athlete or team, attempting to comprehend what they just pulled off. They can tell a thousand words, and in this case, a thousand moments. This is our tale as I witnessed it. Both in that moment, and the many moments that built the bedrock for that single shot.
Though, I can only speak from my angle. A single component on the larger effort. Still, there’s an incredible story to be told! In December 2019, Technik Competition won the E2 class of NASA’s 25 Hours of Thunderhill in absolute stunning fashion. It’s my first win at the race in three years of trying, and the first for Technik and our crew (many of whom have been trying for a decade or more!) Our volunteers, car chiefs, and drivers worked together to claw back an impossible number of laps over a full day of racing, only to secure it in that crucial 25th hour. If you’re a racing fan or love a good story of struggle and triumph, this is for you!
The variety you come to expect at this event!
For context, the NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill is an annual pro-am endurance race taking place each December at Thunderhill Raceway Park about an hour north of Sacramento. The event has gained notoriety over the past decade as a staple grassroots twice-round-the-clock challenge that brings together teams and cars from all walks of life to the difficult, unpredictable rolling hills of Willows, California. It isn’t on the same caliber of professionalism or flat-out competition as the Rolex 24 at Daytona, but it attracts a notable share of driver talent and partial factory teams quite frequently! With minimal circuit lighting, minimal room for error, and speeds ranging from Spec Miata to Ligier JS P3, it’s clear why the race motto is ‘Survive the 25’! And in 2019, the race was just that. Survival in the purest sense.
In an effort to save words, here is my condensed backstory with team Technik Competition. The team is comprised of three leaders; Peter Hopelain, Sean Neel, and Matt Kehoe whose primary roles are team leader, car management, and technical details respectively. The car is an ‘02 BMW E46 which has been racing for about 5 years, and has acquired a beloved nickname of “the tank” from me! She’s a sturdy piece of kit, chugs like a tractor, and rarely falters!
Buttonwillow in June - My ‘evaluation’ with Technik
In April, I attended the Long Beach GP as I usually do, but my first without a full-season of racing planned for the year. I bump into Will Rodgers, an old racing friend currently in NASCAR, who told me about Technik’s need for a young driver on their 25-hour effort and thought I’d be a good fit. The following month, I came to Auto Club Speedway to meet and support them during a NASA WERC series race. We got along, and clearly thought I must’ve brought special luck as they won their first race of the year! From there, they evaluated my driving at Buttonwillow and after that went swimmingly, we headed to Thunderhill for an intensive 2-day tire and data test. Because it was June, the temperature was 100 degrees at 9 o'clock! I lost a few pounds of water weight, but we got the data we needed! We had our final shakedown back at Thunderhill in September to reveal the livery and confirm the car was ready for 25 hours. It was brought back to our prep shop Hi-Tech Auto in Hollywood for final details and shipped back up just in time for December!
When I met them for the first time, something felt different. This was a volunteer-driven, passion-run program that just performed a 30-second pit stop flawlessly while the other teams took minutes, all while joking about it in the process. Everything was next-level professional and fun. Crossing the line first after three hours of competitive racing, you would’ve thought they just won Powerball. I was in awe with this group and the potential they just showed. After my first test in the car, they decided to have me as a part of their team. They would’ve had a difficult time pulling me out if they didn’t!
With a tendency to check the weather app like a bad habit, the forecast never seemed intimidated by me! Rain for Friday and Saturday with a chance on Sunday. Not to mention it had been raining over the circuit for days before. What would usually scare most teams, we felt prepared and ready for anything. Our car had more miles underneath it than many street cars its age. It was tested, perfected through the years, and prepared with care by car chief Spencer Wright. Led by a 14 year veteran of this race, Peter Hopelain has seen his share of everything at the event. Two-thirds of our crew was returning from previous years and much of the core volunteers spent 5-6 weekends guiding Technik’s endurance season and testing. It might be an amateur team, but since joining them it’s become clear to me why they’ve grown so strong so quick; an ability to unite stupidly talented, dedicated people to a common goal. When pro teams begin hearing more of Technik Competition, our members will be hot commodities!
Thursday; Realizing how high of a level we’d need to perform at to succeed!
I arrived at Thunderhill on Thursday with teammate Will, and I still thank him for the recommendation! It was cold, overcast, and damp. A perfect practice day to get Sean and Kehoe comfortable with on the damp track, as well as become familiar with the headlights they'd need to recognize in their mirrors. For this edition, 45 cars spanned the entry across seven classes. A slight numerical drop from prior years, yet one filled with well prepared efforts. Our category seemed to be one of the strongest. Of seven in the E2 class, six were regular competitors of Technik's in the NASA WERC series. Most notable was TAPG Motorsports, a team built from Toyota’s Arizona Proving Ground employees with loads of development time under their belt. We had sufficient data on what we'd be up against, and we knew our performance couldn't be good, it had to be extraordinary.
For Friday, priorities heavily shifted to off-track details. With showers forecasted and track data gathered on Thursday, we didn't have a need to run laps. Driver change and pit stop practice gave us plenty to work on. It very well could've been this day that tipped the race into our favor! Five of our six competitors spent that day running laps and we observed with a close eye. Sitting down with Technik's data chief Bennett, we hovered over our monitors and noticed encouraging signs. Adjusted for conditions, fuel load, and traffic, the times being set by our rivals were well within reach. Unlike some of our competitors, Technik focused on increased reliability rather than performance during the year. And the next session wasn’t ever going to be our strong suit.
Friday; hectic, disappointing, awfully wet. It built the collective spirit needed to do what we did!
Qualifying began at dusk and the rain was nearby. After a tense hour of debate over whether to run slicks or wets, our answer came mere minutes after the start. It poured, and Will was out warming his slicks hoping to get a lap in before it soaked. A frantic change to wets was needed and completed. However, our wets were really intermediates, tires meant for transitional wet periods, not for mock tropical monsoon conditions! Will did his best, and handed off to Hopelain to experience the conditions we'd face tomorrow. One lap was enough to handle, and I got my turn to see why. We were blind, with our defroster system failing to activate right and I couldn't see five feet ahead! Qualifying 5th in class was the least of our worries; we needed to repair our sight at all costs. We secured a garage spot to escape the rain that night and our crew worked past 3am rigging a makeshift 'hot air blower' to solve our condensation blindness. Most of the components for it came from nearby Walmart! Though the effort was incredible, we had no clue if it was actually effective until we were on track and racing. Collectively, sleep wasn't very good that night.
As a driver, however, I had to get a good sleep. And thankfully I did! The air was cool and breezy. A weather front was arriving just in time for pre-race festivities, meaning the circuit would have a nice soak before the green flag. Because of this, I was designated as starting driver. I came to our pits to find the car not there. I soon found the answer.
Those two hours before was as organized chaos I've seen our group deal with! Dyno and weight adjusting to make certain we met regulations, checking and rechecking our pre-race "to-do's", as work still continued on refining our defroster system. Not to mention moving around our large crew on the assignments! Grid opened for pre-staging and our car was a tad late but without too much drama. Before a race, each racer has their own routines, 'superstitions', you might say. One of mine is getting suited early and relaxing in the car, it calms my nerves and mind. Naturally, it was odd to be sat with helmet on under our tent wondering where the car was!
Race start - I’m in there somewhere!
Tense moments before the race, but I’d never felt more calm!
Climbing into our car on grid was the first time I'd seen it since midnight. The new switch-gear was perfect! One short explanation on which blower button did what and soon it was race time. I loved those minutes alone in the cockpit, that smooth engine idle and hypnotic rainfall waiting for pace laps to begin. I hadn't felt so at peace and focused all weekend! My mission was clear; keep all four tires on the black stuff, methodically rise up the order, and hand it off in one piece. Race start, I'm 5th in class and 26th overall with a wall of spray ahead. I gained considerable ground in the thick of it! It was logical to assume teams had their best rain pilots in, but not a guarantee. I moved into 4th within a few laps and soon 3rd as many cars hydroplaned off T8 and caused a FCY. I made it through, helped by our legendary spotter Justin calling it loud as it happened! A well timed restart pass moved me to 2nd and I entered my groove once more. The weather began to dissipate and dry, but the action did not! I was split 3-wide by a bundle of prototypes in the latter part of my second stint, what very well could've been our last! In all though, the opening two hours was bang on target. The car was flying, we were in a great position, and the team was jazzed.
Cooling down, I learned co-driver Sean had an out-lap moment and was mud-bogged for some minutes. Not ideal, but these things happen. It's a 25-hour race, what's important is that the car is together and our team is positive and motivated to fight back. During the next stint, Kehoe was quickly a collateral bystander when two in-class cars came together in T14 and was off-circuit for a bit. Brutal moments came to pass as Kehoe emerged driving under his own power and into the pits. The impact to our rear-right corner was big, but unbelievably had no real effect on the car. Another few inches and we easily could've had broken suspension! As it turned out, it was that type of damage sealing the competitive fate of 2018 class winner and rival, Moorewood Creative. In all, we lost 12 laps to class leader TAPG Motorsports. But it could've easily been far worse. Technik had 20 hours to claw back, and needed at least a 1-minute gain every hour. We knew that to win, there was no room for error. Pit calls and stops would need to be flawlessly efficient and our drivers would need to push with a bit of risk!
Watching TAPG enter their pit box as I suited up
The following five hours was a blur. I didn't get back in until 8pm, and like most racers, spent much of the time nervously pacing between pit wall and our data room! The race settled into a rhythm and ran clean. We successfully pulled off the first in-race 4-tire stop, with NASCAR guns blazing and crew executing. Stop times between 20s-30s, and from start to finish only took us out of the action for 1-2 minutes. Unreal considering our rivals were lucky to do it in 3! There was too much unpredictability on track to rely on it as our primary method of gaining laps. Therefore, our stops could net us one minute some hours without having to apply extra pressure on drivers to perform. Still, we were flying. Our eyes didn't drift far from the radar screen, and that wonderful dry weather was soon ending. It was time to get in!
Fuel and driver change action with 16 hours left; a minute later, we returned to the action with 4 fresh wet tires!
The rain was visible in the floodlights as I suited up. Will was just completing his first double stint on slicks. Laps of tense radio feedback later, we could take no more risk on those tires. It began to pour right around 8 and I was slotted in. Another impeccable stop in torrential rain and I was out on wet tires in a jiffy! I vividly remember that outlap, passing three cars on the outside of corners and exclaiming "great call, great timing!" over our radio. I was fired up.
That stint was incredible. An hour-and-a-half of flow. So many teams were caught out by the rain and were late to pit or had less experienced drivers. I felt I was passing everyone! The biggest joy was chasing down 2nd in-class, Slipstream Racing's Mazda MX-5 Cup. I started my stint with a radio call of "90 seconds behind" and was motivated to hear it fall! Every other lap I'd get a message of "7 second gain that lap" or "30 seconds behind now, keep pushing!" and it was exhilarating! Soon our competitor came into view and with one swift play on traffic, we took 2nd. Our race was beginning to shape back around! At least for that moment.
Lit up like a Christmas tree! Soon, my lights would be covered in thick Willows soil!
My second stint that night had some difficulties to say the least! In terms of our position on track and progress on the leader, we didn’t lose too much. What did change though was the weather. While the air became dry, the circuit did not! Prototypes continued to suck water from the surface and spew it all over my windshield. Not usually a problem, but with the rain gone they began to spray more mud than water! Halfway into that stint I was effectively driving by braille, blindly searching for apex reflectors out my side netting. Good thing I had a lot of laps previously at Thunderhill! Judging how and when to pass traffic became extremely difficult, I was unable to properly assess distances to cars or any fine details. It was miserable, and I voiced my troubles to the team to make windshield scrubbing an absolute necessity! Combined with a fast growing mind and body fatigue, I was quite ravished after three hours in the dark rain! Yet, I managed to somewhat keep pace and made my fair share of slightly risky (but effective) moves that stint, continuing to put us in a better place and I’m so happy it worked out! Near the end, a FCY came out with the pit lane light not illuminated (which would mean a closed pits). We dash in and I damn near miss our box with all the blinding light reflection off the filthy windscreen! Officials warn us not to touch the car, confusing the team as we were legally able to do so. The crew chiefs argue back, and after losing a minute sitting stationary, the officials tell us to return on circuit. I paced around until the green and came back in immediately.
I nearly fell over from exhaustion as I was pulled out, but sprung to life to grab window cleaner in my effort to shave off the pounds of mud from the window as well as our headlights! No wonder I was blind, our headlights were as effective as laser pointers that final hour being completely caked with dirt.
The pit incident cost us one valuable lap, over 2 minutes. Team representatives argued our case to higher standing officials and the lap was granted back to us. It was little moments like that which tested our drive to maximize every second! I took much needed electrolytes, debriefed with the crew, and swiftly made my way to the RV. Hopping off a roller coaster and getting into bed is tough, but riding it for three hours and expecting yourself to sleep soundly is nearly impossible!
After a less-than-ideal couple hours of sleep, I woke up having no conception of time, or what our car had up to. My parents informed me that the car was fine, with no real issues of concern. Some good news to start the day! But they also told me that I slept for an additional hour or two. Our strategists were watching the radar and decided to keep the current driver in for a stint longer in order to line me up with the rain. Alright, so the job just got a bit more intense! However it was the next sentence that really hit hard. "We're still second in class, but gained 5 laps due to TAPG having issues while you slept and we're only two laps down now, P7 overall!" Out of the RV, straight to the pit wall, suited and booted. 7:30am, just over 4 hours left. Debrief with Hopelain, the current driver, over the radio about track conditions. "Car is fine, but the circuit is a railroad track. You go off racing line, you die". That's a bit odd, I thought, I'll have to see it myself! Pit stop, driver change, everything on que. Rock n’ Roll!
Tearing through T1 during early morning on a clear mission; return us to the lead lap!
The circuit was a completely different animal than my last stint. In the night, it was best to miss the slippery apexes and hook onto the grippy pavement to the outside. Now a dark and dry car-sized racing line had formed, and one tire out was game over. I had a couple of lucky moments early, quickly tuning my senses to a flow state of extreme precision. As the stint went on, the difficulty shifted from staying on the ‘rails’ to leaving it and gingerly passing traffic! We gained seconds on the leader every lap, but there was more to find. Still on intermediates with the rain lifting, we debated and eventually agreed on a switch to slicks as early the fuel window allowed. One perfect 4-tire change to dries and I was a shark chasing red water. It was the right choice, to the tune of 3-5 seconds per lap! Not long after, my target came into view cresting T9. The Toyota 86 was stuck, unable to navigate around a lower class car through a yellow zone in T10. I had to time my attack right, and it worked! Exiting the slow T12 chicane, I was carrying loads more speed. The Toyota driver hesitated around the slow car, and juked to the outside. I dove to the inside, splitting them 3-wide into the tight final corner. The Toyota driver outbroke himself and went into the mud as I watched in the mirror. We were on the lead lap for the first time since the second hour, and Technik was now achingly close to a comeback drive of the decade!
The rest of the stint went fine. I had to serve a 1-minute penalty for an infraction that occurred while I slept, but it hardly dimmed our progress as it slotted me into open track for the rest of the stint! After two hours, I handed the reins over to Will for the final three hours, ready to watch his magic! Being prepared for dry track running over the race, he set the circuit ablaze and exceeded our time targets by so much that we told him to back it off a bit! One stint later, he was closing fast when another FCY is flown and bunches us closer. Will pounces and takes the class lead for the first time in 24 hours with less than one hour left! We met Will with a roar of whistles and claps each lap he passed the main straight from then on. I was having difficulty eating breakfast with all the pacing I was doing! Suddenly, we got news that TAPG had collided with another car and was sent off track with broken steering! It was effectively now our race, but we didn’t celebrate yet. A perfect splash-and-go with 30 minutes on the clock and cheers erupted. Bring it home Will!
Will takes the checkered alongside TAPG. Mutual respect for a wild chase to the very last hour!
Hopelain jumped over the pit wall with champagne flowing, targeting the backs of our crew with precision! Will came across to take checkered flag side-by-side with our wounded TAPG rival, a classy show of respect for our immense battle. It made for an epic picture!
'That Sunday Feeling' is a phrase I coined to describe the day. Elated, proud, and woozy from a lack of sleep. Will got clearance to do a NASCAR-esque burnout on the wall, and it turned out beautifully. We took our group photos, I stumbled into the broadcast with an interview at the last possible second, and the trophy ceremony was hysterical. Technik wasn’t in the mood to use ‘indoor’ voices with the trophy we worked so damn hard to get!
One of those photos you can hear!
And there we have it. For the better part of 2019, this was my sole motorsport project. More time than I’ve ever spent bonding with a team, discussions both serious and ridiculous, media planning, logistics, track testing, whatever. Watching it come to fruition over the course of 25 hours was both totally bizarre and strangely gratifying. Maybe by December of this year, it’ll hit me that we actually won! I was only a fractional piece in our achievement, happy that my rain skills came to good use, but like everyone else had to perform their job right to make this happen. Grateful to have had this chance to showcase and grow driving skills and develop deeper insight into what it takes preparing for and winning a race like this!
Technik Competition would not only finish 1st in E2, but take an unprecedented 6th in overall standings. We beat out every E1 and E0 class car as well, making our effort the highest placed production-based car in 17 years of the event's history. Without question, our feat was aided by frequent rain showers and the deep mud that came with it, ending the competitive hopes of many teams. But while treacherous, these conditions played no favorites! By the 25th hour, we proved our bases were covered; drivers with ability and the big picture in mind, a well developed machine, crew members with spirit and a talented grit, and leadership keeping us informed and focused. Maybe a bit of luck as well! It was stunningly impressive.
Humble and happy to have been along for the ride. Onto 2020!
In 2020 Technik will race in the NASA WERC series once more to build-up their return to Thunderhill as defending winners. I've never witnessed a bunch so passionate about this type of racing and wanting to exceed at it in every possible way. They had every right to have a different driver on their team, but I’m so glad our paths collided. They’ve taken me in far beyond just driving duties, and it’s seriously wonderful to be apart of a small, yet powerfully supportive motorsport family. I cannot wait to see what the future has in store for Technik Competition.
Best Regards,
Matt Million
February 1st, 2020
For more, please check out my short film, DRIVER’S EYE: 25 Hours of Thunderhill 2019 “The First Hour”!