BUTTONWILLOW, CA - JUNE 14, 2020
Matt Million and teammate Sean Neel take Technik Competition to an E2 class win in the NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship (WERC) 3-hour round at Buttonwillow Raceway.
NASA SoCal returned to racing for the first time since March, and one of the feature races was NASA’s 3-hour WERC race during Saturday evening. The beginning half would run in the fading daylight, and second half into the darkness. This was effectively the second race of the season, with race one occurring at Willow Springs in February. It was Matt’s first race with Technik Competition this year.
Technik Competition competed with their same BMW E46 that took E2-class honors at the 2019 25 Hours of Thunderhill. Supporting Matt and Sean this weekend was longtime Technik mechanic Spencer Wright (car chief), Jesse Rugge (fuel and crew), Owen Oliver (fuel and crew), and Peter Czajkowski (spotter).
Both drivers took turns getting re-acclimated to the car on Friday afternoon testing. With lower temperatures scheduled for race day, the data collected was ‘worst-case scenerio’ in terms of driveability and times, with both drivers happy with the balance and the car performing well despite minor engine compression loss sustained in prior races.
The first on-track running for Saturday was the NASA WERC qualifying session. With Sean scheduled to start the race and complete the first stint, Matt had a few objectives as the qualifying driver. “Obviously aiming for pole is priority. But feeling that I could leapfrog cars in E1 and E0 on the grid gave me an extra push. I wanted to give Sean the best starting spot possible as well as separate him from the rest of the E2 class”. Matt took class pole position in the session and P8 overall, with the nearest competitor in P12 overall.
The enduro began at 6:20 PM local time, with the sunset scheduled at around half-distance. Sean ran a clean opening hour and maintained the class lead with a couple second gap behind. Second in-class was able to close the gap and make a pass but Sean was able to take it back and retain the lead.
Sean entered the pits a little before half-distance for routine driver swap and fuel. The stop took about one minute and was nearly flawless. No penalties for fuel spill or pit speeding meant the race was still on. Matt ran behind class rivals HQ Autosport (with a BMW 128i) and Racing Ruined My Life (with a BMW E30) for the first half of the stint as they were on a different pit strategy. Matt overtook one until a pass on a lower class car put Matt on the outside of a dirty Riverside corner and had to take evasive action. “I didn’t think the grip would be that low around the outside of there! I had to do a bit of dirt driving but kept the car fully under control and rejoined to only loose a couple seconds. Frustrating but it happens sometimes when pushing, I learned from it and kept my head together!”
Matt closed the gap again within a few laps, but both cars were now within striking distancing of the leading HQ Autosport car. The Racing Ruined My Life car went for an unsuccessful move into Phil Hill, slowing both. Matt performed a three-wide pass for the lead into Sweeper and retained the lead for the final 40 minutes. Both competitors ran into issues with fuel; one with fuel mileage issues and the other serving a fuel-related penalty.
Matt eased to victory in the E2 class by one lap over HQ Autosport. This marks Technik Competition’s 3rd win in its past 4 consecutive starts.
“It’s very cool to return to racing with a win for Technik. As a team, we prioritized fun and organization this weekend. I knew we had the ability to find success if objectives were clear and met while we had a good time doing them. It worked, can’t ask for much more! It was a rad weekend!”
Thanks to the people at Technik Competition, as well as NASA SoCal, Hankook Motorsports, Aether Apparal, and Racetech USA.