Just got home from the race, after barely making it out of the driveway even when chained up, before 13 hours behind the wheel commuting through pretty treacherous conditions, and after three 2 hour stints for 6 hours behind the wheel, billions of calories of unknown origin and caffeine on the order of grams not milligrams, and after 12 hours on the return trip etc....

It's still early in the reflection period to truly convey the emotions, feelings of camaraderie, feelings of satisfaction and so on, not to mention the goosebumps of seeing the Car and Driver articles showing our old car rolling some mostly slowish laps @ 2:12ish (but deadly consistent) but I'll try to give a short account of the event from our perspective.

We were running the oldest car in the field by far, with probably the most rag-tag crew and unorganized strategy of the 58+ teams in attendance. Nevertheless, our plan was to simply stay on the track, collecting laps, and see how everything shook out in the end. It's an understatement in the extreme to say that things shook out pretty darn good for us, as the only issue we had was a broken rear control arm that was quickly diagnosed and repaired with a quick high-pressure situation weld job (with textbook material preparation of course) in the paddock for a grand total of a 4 lap loss to the team chasing us for position. Thankfully we had a 5 lap margin.

Not quite like last year when we accrued a grand total of nearly 4 hours in the paddock for a transmission change, rear stub axle replacement, exhaust system repair, multiple wheel stud replacement (19 total), for a great experience, if not a great finishing position.

After a full test/tune day on Friday, we had a consultation and decided that the best strategy was to qualify the car on old brick hard tires to save our inventory of race tires, so we ran the tires that we had been practicing for 6 hours on, plus a couple of Conference sprint races, plus some other events no doubt knowing Manfred, since the starting position for a 25 hour enduro is for all intents a non-issue. I ended up at 2:11 and change for a 33rd place grid position.

The opening ceremonies were a true class act with the United States Air Force providing a full dress with bagpipe player color guard flag ceremony, followed by an acrobatic stunt plane air show and a squadron of F-16 fighters on afterburner blasting the starting grid on the frontstretch with afterburners lit up brightly shaking the air with
crackling noise.

The race started at 11 a.m. on Saturday morning and the full grid made it through T1 with no incidents, and most of the morning and afternoon running without incident as there was a lot of give and take. I was surprised frankly when I got back in the car at 7 p.m. at how the partnership between the cars had seemed to become a little more stressed, and the various teams had seemed to have adopted a more "take" and less of a "give" philosophy and demeanor on the track. Particularly when in proximity to any miata for some reason.

Anyway, day faded into night and the absolutely beautiful conditions during the day changed to a rather chilly temperature as the sun went down, and we found ourselves trying to stay warm, as well as adjust the tire pressures for optimum temps and what not. Still just a matter of running good solid laps, and still making good solid pit stops.

On Sunday morning the sun began to rise over the horizon, painting the sky with a preternatural red glow that evolved into a golden light and a welcome warmth that washed over the facility. This is the principle difference between any other enduro like the 8 hour etc..., the sunrise is a stunning revelation of the nearing of the closing stages of the race, yet there are still several hours to succeed or fail.

We continued to go around, and around, and around, collecting laps while other teams that may have been ultimately quicker fell by the wayside from major mechanical issues that weren't practical to resolve, or had other issues keeping them off-track. Try to imagine doing 600+ consecutive laps.

Meantime, Debbie Morton, Margie Duske and Natalie kept us fed with wonderful hot food in abundance, snacks at our fingertips, and coffee and other refreshments, all the while in a transparent method so that the sustenance was simply available without request, and completely unobtrusive.

As the hours counted down, I think all the wood in the area had been beaten to death from knocking, and we were all trying desperately to preclude any jinx whatsoever from becoming reality. As it became apparent that there was a very real possibility that we could possibly finish in the top 5, the general tone of the population in our group started to build from a sense of unbelief to a palpable feeling of disbelief, then a reluctant acknowledgement that we actually might do this thing.

We did finally finish the race, in 5th place overall. It still remains for this to sink in for most everybody on the team. What accounts for the result? Hard to say. There is a saying that luck is defined as when preparation meets opportunity, and after last year's race we all sat down and identified where we could improve, and tried our best to prepare. Yet there still seems to be a whole bag full of intangibles that can't be controlled, so we'll gladly acknowledge that our fate that day saw us realize a result beyond our wildest dreams.