Matt's December Update: Ending the Year at 25 Hours of Thunderhill
Whew! It’s been a whirlwind of a racing year. It ends this time at the ‘longest endurance race in the United States’, NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill. It was my 4th time in the race and a first with Team Black Swan Search. An absolutely lovely group of people and personalities that have all, in some shape or another, made my 2021 season possible. For the team and the rest of our four drivers, it was their first 25-hour experience! Here’s the highlights of how our 2nd in-class result unfolded in 439 laps, 1,200 miles, and 17 fog-shortened hours.
Team Black Swan Search with drivers Matt Million, Ryan Keeley, Greg Gomolka, Kasra Ajir, and John Artz take the #62 BMW Spec E30 to 2nd place in the E3S class and 16th of 36 overall.
Along with this month’s update, look out for a ‘2021 Season In Review’ article soon!
MY STORY
A quick catch-up; my name is Matt Million, I’m a 21-year-old aspiring professional racing driver and full-time university student from San Marcos, California. I’ve been racing since the age of five spending the next eight years karting across the southwest. In 2014, I transitioned to sports cars in Spec Miata developing in the Mazda Motorsports ladder through Teen Mazda Challenge up to successes in Spec MX-5 Challenge in 2018. In 2019, I became a 25 Hours of Thunderhill class winner and in 2020 a long-held aspiration of racing touring cars in Germany was first realized. For 2021, my season is NASA Western Endurance Racing Championship where I drive for GOneppo Racing in a BMW Spec E46. We’ve now clinched the E2 championship title with two wins and five podiums. I’m in my final year of studying global business at CSU San Marcos with a goal to enter professional motorsport given the right sponsorship funding and opportunity.
I love sharing these experiences with hopes that those who read them can find value in following my journey. Thank you for the support!
HOW IT CAME TOGETHER
My journey to the 2021 edition of this race unknowingly began at a cold Willow Springs in February. I spend the weekend helping Oceanside Motorsport’s many Spec E30 drivers find a bit of pace through data coaching. It reconnected me with friends and acquaintances like John Artz and Ryan Keeley who I got to learn more about their 2021 plans and ambitions. It’s frankly incredible that showing up to a single race meeting with no other goal but to help coach and reconnect with people can lead to awesome opportunities. Genuine, caring racers who I’ve developed the honor to call some of my best friends this year.
The ‘meat’ of the 25-hour program started to develop in autumn. Neil Daly, racer and owner of Oceanside Motorsport, was planning a serious effort with his Spec E30 in the E3S class. John Artz, also racer and owner of the partnered Team Black Swan Search, was planning his own effort too. Since the 2020 edition of the race was cancelled due to the pandemic, both gentlemen had real ambitions to go win in-class. We had a small civil war brewing!
Decided to enter the 25 Hours of Thunderhill has to be the most challenging grassroots-level race in North America on multiple fronts. Not only do you need a car and crew capable of going twice-around-the-clock plus two full test days, it takes a not insignificant budget to pursue which isn’t always available in grassroots paddocks. However, it’s an immensely attractive event full of unique challenges, intense camaraderie, racing heroics, and incredible stories of endurance racing triumph and tribulations. Thus, the stage was set. Both men now focused to build their arsenal and go head-to-head as friends and competitors to win E3S against whoever else showed up in the competitive ‘spec’ class!
WELCOME TO THUNDERHILL
The grass was lush green, the air was beautifully temperate, and John and Kerri Artz had just pulled into the Thunderhill Raceway paddock midday Wednesday to unload for their team’s first 25 Hour. They worked to unload their humble setup as the open-cockpit prototype team next door was fabricating an entire pit building with an army of people. The contrast in this race is unparalleled and very entertaining!
The bulk of our team arrived late Wednesday. I flew from San Diego with our mechanical and engineering crew; Ryan Lindsley, Mark Farmer, and Pete Bush of the renown BIMMERSPEED group. The same people who delivered my World Racing League double victory at VIR in September. We couldn’t have enlisted the help of better people!
QUALIFYING
Golden hour. Friday at 4:30pm is truly when the festivities begin. Qualifying for the production classes (E0 through E3S) got underway in the twilight sky I very much love. As lead driver, it was my responsibility to set the qualifying lap before handing off the car for Keeley and Ajir to get additional night laps in before the race.
My mission was clear. Set a lap I considered to be unreachable by the rest of the class as early as I could. One small compromise stemmed from a lack of clarity on our car’s weight. We suspected anything under a half tank of fuel could be underweight as we worked to add plates to the passenger seat. To be safe, I’d qualify with a full tank. Not great for performance, but ensuring legality is usually the right call!
Cool winter air, new Toyo Tires, and a more spacious track since ES and ESR cars now had their own qualifying session after the production cars. One warm-up lap in and the first flyer gave me an indication of our weight issue; setting the same personal best I had on worn out tires in the morning. That 2:07:9 wouldn’t be enough for pole. Another lap in and 2:07:6. Again, not what I felt was representative of myself nor the tires. Incredibly, I had enough open circuit for another flyer. I radioed in that it was my last regardless if my time improved or not. But it had to. I felt a small sense of frustration in myself that I couldn’t pull out my potential, and this set the tone for a magic lap.
It wasn’t one or two corners of gain, it was all 14 corners where I squeezed tenths from. The Spec E30 is a strange car at the limit. The suspension hates quick inputs, and it takes increased patience to get the most from one. I had to ‘set’ the car far before I was ‘turning’ it. Combined with using a few inches of each corner and bettering my pedal transition times with input smoothness and across the line. 2:06:7. Now that was a lap time I knew was enough. And if it wasn’t, there wasn’t anything left I could’ve done in the moment! Indeed, it was pole. Better yet, it set us 23rd of 36 overall in a car which should’ve been 31st. Watch the lap by clicking here!
RACE DAY
It didn’t take long on race day to discover our biggest fear. The fog. It had been forecasted yet stayed away all weekend up until Saturday morning. It cleared a few hours before green flag at 11:00am but would it come back in the night? Didn’t matter for now. What mattered was a clean, undramatic opening stint which put us ahead of the class and on the right sequence. The parade ended and I strapped in excited but locked to this task.
The ceremonies subsided and I gazed forward past the ten rows of cars ahead. It makes a lot of sense to have an experienced driver starting this race. It’s astounding the types of shenanigans I’ve seen on lap one here previously; a mixture of different driver skills combined with a dauntingly ‘open’ race plan means some teams are pushing hard and others not pushing at all. There’s plenty of jitters to sort through at the beginning of 25 hours I suppose also!
We take the green and before I can even reach the start, there’s a puff of smoke as one of the race leading Radical's spins and parks in the middle of Turn 1. Being in the middle of a 40-car field leaves not many options. I make the split-second choice to go through the dirt as keeping on the circuit was a higher risk of running into other avoiding cars. I nearly take his wing endplate off but reenter cleanly in disbelief this can happen so early. I’ve lost a spot or two but know how long this first stint is. After a couple of laps easing up to pace, I make decisive moves on the E3S-leading Miata’s and regain top position. And after another six-or-so laps of putting in a rapid pace I break free of the class and reset to the team’s game plan.
My opening 1-hour-30-minute stint flies by and I’m handing off the car to team owner John Artz with a half-lap lead over the class. Time to find lunch, debrief with our group, and try to rest a bit ahead of my first proper double stint in early evening.
We entered the ‘meat’ of the race; not focusing too heavily on the timing monitors, but instead working to improve our pit stops each stint and rotate through our five drivers before I began a long night alongside fellow young driver Ryan Keeley. For our team comprised of multiple smaller groups (BIMMERSPEED as car chief and main crew, Black Swan Search providing spotters and pit helpers, various others with specialties like data acquisition), I was very proud of how the teamwork came together. Each immensely motivated to make this year’s 25 Hour count, as for most of them it was their first ever! With the plentiful experience of BIMMERSPEED’s Ryan Lindsley with Mark and Peter, it synchronized the procedures and helpers. And with my previous three trips to race this event, I worked to ease the comfortability of our drivers.
5:00pm came around. We decided to double stint Greg Gomolka as his pace was quite good and it would Keeley and I more time in full darkness. It was tough to contend with our friends and rivals in the #14 ‘Pink’ Spec E30 from Oceanside Motorsports. While the ultimate pace might not have been in their favor, the driver lineup was arguably quicker and more acclimated to these events and their pit work was extraordinary. Many months of practice went into cutting down their fuel time and refining each aspect of the pit process. Very tough to match! Thus, we sat around 3rd-or-4th in class with a deficit of about 3-to-5 laps.
Ryan Keeley was expecting to start his first stint, with the firm plan to begin our ‘high pace’ night run and catch the #14, when it came to haunt us. The fog returned! Within a matter of five minutes at dusk, the track had become engulfed in thick white clouds to the point of race officials bringing out the red flag. The visibility was gone and it was getting better no time soon.
An emergency driver meeting was held at the tower as team’s tarped their cars on the front straight entering ‘parc fermé’ conditions. The race finish would be pushed from 12:00pm to 3:00pm and we’d eagerly await the paddock alarms to sound telling us we were going back to racing. But it was 6:00pm and the fog wasn’t leaving until morning. The Black Swan Search crew ate hot chicken soup before slowing finding their rest places. Our BIMMERSPEED gentlemen wouldn’t be sleeping and were ready to awake us when the time came.
I found a small semblance of comfort in our driver RV and attempted to sleep. Very, very odd to force oneself to sleep at 8:30pm when I should’ve been in the car racing for the next three hours! It was cold, wet, and we made the mistake of turning off the heater.
One restless night had passed and the sound of blaring cop sirens filled the paddock. “Drivers! We will begin moving from the grid at 5:00am! Get to your cars immediately!” It was 4:30am. The driver who took the red had to restart which meant poor Gomolka was getting Navy Seal treatment as he went from sleep to racing in twenty minutes!
The race restarted with most of the fog subsided. This was far earlier than anyone expected to go back racing. I had expected a 10:00am start time so this was a pleasant surprise! Gomolka soon pitted to hand off to Keeley who began his double stint in the twilight dawn casting over the circuit. He put in a fantastic three hours; steadily gaining small chunks of time on the class leader and nearly gaining a lap on his own.
9:30am - Strapping in for the next four hours
9:00am. Six hours of racing remain. Keeley is finishing his second stint. We heavily considered keeping him in for a third as he continued to gain little by little on the #14 Oceanside Motorsports car. With roughly four stint lengths of 1-hour-30-minutes left, crew chief Lindsley made the executive decision to swap drivers now in order to get my three stints in and have Keeley fresh for one last charge to the finish.
9:30am. The stop was smooth and undramatic. The race context was entirely different, but it reminded me of when I boarded Keeley’s Spec E46 for my herculean, miserably humid three hour stint at the WRL race at VIR earlier in September. My role was to put in a clinical couple of hours to hopefully move us onto the lead lap, but to do so I’d need to claw back four minutes in four hours. It’s a unique mentality in these races; when you’re not launching from the pits to battle for position, but working as hard as possible to get your teammate into that position for the final hour. I love that.
I was having a blast. The crew was able to change the left-rear tire this stop so the car felt… mostly fine. Always a unique compromise of grip each stint in these ‘production’ classes since we can only change one tire per stop without incurring a penalty. Some stints the front is hooking up great, others it’ll wash out every corner. I dealt with the latter in this one! But time flew by as I remember taking back one lap from the #14 with relative ease. Fun!
The second stint was not. The left-rear tire was heavily worn when I came in for my first stop. As Mark and Peter prepared to change it, they noticed the right-front was showing cords. They made the right choice to change the RF instead, but it left me in a world of struggle to compensate an unwieldy sliding rear. I kept pushing and a vibration worsened lap after lap. Eventually the car felt as if it had rocks as tires. 2:08’s became 2:10’s and slowing as I just couldn’t hold the rear end through Thunderhill’s many long corners. Lindsley and I desperately wanted the tires to hold out until my next fuel stop. And it nearly did! Three more laps until I entered my window pushing 2:12’s holding on for dear life. The tire let go and began deflating across the Turn 5 ‘bypass’ and I was headed in early! Luckily no other dramas incurred as I brought it back safe.
I nearly decided to swap with Keeley a stint early. The car felt so terrible on the shredding tire that I lost a lot of energy and confidence trying to hold on. I stayed in. And it was absolutely the right choice.
It’s honestly insane how quickly my outlook changed. It became a completely new car with the replaced tire and my enthusiasm was back. 2:12’s became 2:07’s immediately. The closest I’ve felt to the racing version of ‘a second wind’; everything flowed so naturally and I was running qualifying times without any additional effort. I ran across the class leading #14 and passed to put us within two laps. Even with the heavily shortened race, we could have a chance by remaining utterly persistent and attacking! Roughly halfway through this stint I got the radio call from Ryan Lindsley telling me to back off a few seconds in order to extend the 1-hour-30-minute pit window. Sometimes you get to show your potential; other times you have to listen to your team and put their best interest ahead of yours!
At the end, I handed off the car back to Keeley after spending four hours in the cockpit. I was surprised how much energy I still had! Rehydrating the best I knew how, we watched Keeley take the baton and rise to the closest we’d been since the start; less than three minutes behind the lead from over ten minutes at its furthest. But as the time ticked down, it just wasn’t likely. One of the other Mazda Miata teams in podium contention had to serve a 5-minute penalty and thus we solidified 2nd place behind our friends in the #14 Oceanside Motorsports entry.
While it wasn’t the full 25 hours, it was honestly more exciting to see the energy light up in the team once we crossed the line. For nearly all of them, they had just successfully finished the grueling 25 Hours of Thunderhill in their first attempt - on the second podium step in the E3S class no less!
It was an honor to compete for John and Kerri Artz’ Black Swan Search team. To be provided the opportunity to race and assist John, Greg, Ryan, and Kaz complete their first was a great leadership experience for me and I truly enjoyed it. Ryan Lindsley and the BIMMERSPEED crew put on a show of expertise with clinical strategy and stops all race, and a special thanks to our volunteers who made the pit stops, food, spotting, and fun environment possible.
REFLECTIONS
To keep this brief, I’ll just say this was a fantastic closer to my 2021. This year was one of tremendous personal growth. I felt the highest highs and absolute lowest lows at some points of the year. I had to define, and redefine, what I wanted to be and why I was doing any of this. Through it all, some of the best performances of my career occurred as well as forming relationships with seriously great people in motorsport. It wasn’t easy at times to continue, but I’ve never been so happy I stuck to it.
It all culminated at this year’s 25 Hours of Thunderhill. I’d built strong repour and many friendships over the year with nearly everyone that contributed to Black Swan Search’s effort. It felt like I’d found a true racing family before we even began the race! On top of that, it was one of the first races I was drafted in as the ‘professional’ component. Where my experience, expertise, ability, passion, personality all made a difference in the process of my inclusion on the driver squad. I’ll continue to look back and smile on how the small areas of progress culminated to this moment.
To Kerri, John, Ryan, Greg, Kaz, and everyone who has believed in me; I want to keep making you proud!
IN CLOSING
Thank you for reading and supporting my motorsport journey. Whether it be through these updates, social channels, or in-person, the small interactions truly make a difference. Using my motorsport path as a means to create value for others is very important for me. If you enjoy these reports or are interested in supporting steps toward professional racing, please get in touch! Stay up-to-date on mattmillionracing.com and my social media. And until next time…
Matt Million
San Marcos, CA - 12/28/2021