NASA 12 Hours of Thunderhill Returns

Schedule Change for Thawley – Marital Crisis Avoided

NASA announced yesterday that they are returning to the dual format of their big, year-end enduro at Thunderhill. After a two year hiatus, the - race within a race - 12 Hours of Thunderhill will once again receive its own checkered flag at 11pm on Saturday December 1st, 2007, a mere 12 hours into NASA’s flagship 25 hour endurance race. This news will not likely evoke more than an “oh” from most who hear it. But for those of us running the WERC series, it is a much bigger deal. For us, it’s a double points race.

Double.

If you're not up on your NASA enduro trivia, the 25 Hours of Thunderhill is not a points race. Never has been. The 25’s special blend of sadomasochism, potential for mechanical disaster and hypothermic sleep deprivation has always been reward enough for competing. But it’s a lot to ask a regular WERC racer to do for want of championship points. The 25 is its own deal and that is as it should be.

The 12 is a different matter. Asking a typical WERC team to do a twelve hour points race at the end of the season is really not that big a deal. Sure, it’s three times longer than any other race we’ll do all year. But we still have the option of going to bed that night. Not much chance of being startled awake by a Radical or GT3 doing an outside pass when you’re asleep in your hotel room.

So NASA’s announcement of a seventh race (with season points for eight) looks to add challenge and drama to the season.

And if I were to simply add it to my ’07 racing schedule it would add challenge and drama to my marriage as well. Can’t have that. So, it is with mixed feelings of reservation and glee that I announce the following change to the RoadRaceGeek 2007 schedule:

I ain’t gonna make it to the first WERC race at Infineon. Not gonna happen.

At the end of last season, I promised my long suffering, ever-patient wife, Sharon, that I would not do a full season of Honda Challenge in ‘07. Instead, I would only concern myself with the six races in the WERC series.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s not my fault. NASA added the seventh points race, not me. I didn’t know and obviously could not have foreseen this change of events. I should be able to add the seventh race without marital penalty, right? You must be single. That or your wife likes racing and poverty more than mine does.

Dropping the first race is not without its advantages, though. (This is the glee part.) A lot of work is currently being done to the car. Any racer reading between the lines knows exactly what that means. It’s all torn apart. And although it is closer to being ready than it was last year, it still needs some attention. An extra month of preparation before California Speedway is fine with me. Plus, who wants to tow to NorCal four times in a season? Three races at either end of the state is plenty.

I don't have any photos to go with this story. So here's Benoit eating an ice cream.

Big-Boy Stuff: MAZDASPEED & B-K Motorsports Announce '07 ALMS Plans

MAZDASPEED & B-K Motorsports Announce 2007 American LeMans Series Plans
-- All New powertrain and chassis planned for 2007 --

IRVINE, Calif., January 11, 2007 – With an eye on ever increasing competition in the American LeMans Series LMP2 class, MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development and B-K Motorsports have announced they will partner with Advanced Engine Research Ltd (AER) and Lola Cars to develop an all-new Mazda-derived engine and purpose-built chassis for the 2007 season. The goal is to improve on their third place points finish in last year’s American LeMans Series (ALMS) P2 Championship and stomp Penske’s butt up and down the paddock. [I added that last bit -- Thawley]

All New MZR-R Engine
MAZDASPEED engineers in the U.S. and Japan, in conjunction with U.K. based Advanced Engine Research Ltd (AER), will debut an all-new MZR-R prototype engine at the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring. The new engine, a clean sheet design, is a turbocharged 2.0 liter in-line four cylinder. The performance goals for the engine are 500hp and 400 lb-ft, with the durability to succeed in such grueling races as the 12 Hours of Sebring and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans. The engineering team is working to incorporate the production-based Mazda Direct Injection Spark Ignition (DISI) system into the race motor. The technical collaboration between Mazda and AER has been non-stop in preparation for the season-opener at Sebring.
MAZDASPEED Motorsports Development Manager Steve Sanders stated, “Given the rules package, we needed to make a radical change to be able to match the competition. The current conditions and rules simply do not allow our rotary engine to have any competitive advantage, hence the move to piston power this season.”
Sanders continued, “The Mazda and AER engineers are working closely with Honeywell Turbo Technologies on the development of a new Garrett motorsports turbocharger design for this engine program. The overall LMP2 program is driven by Mazda engineering, as we use motorsports to help develop future advanced technologies with the potential to transfer over to our production vehicles.”
Mazda remains firmly committed to the rotary engine, in the street-going RX-8 four-door sportscar and racing classes like Grand Am GT and the one-make professional Star Mazda formula car series.
While the new engine will be exclusive to B-K Motorsports in 2007, the long-term goal is to add teams in both the American Le Mans Series as well as the Le Mans Endurance Series in Europe in 2008.

All New Chassis from Lola
B-K Motorsports will replace their existing Courage C65 with an-all new Lola B07/40. The team will complete the car in February just prior to Sebring. “The partnership between Mazda, Lola, AER, Honeywell/Garrett, Kumho Tires, and many other suppliers on this project has been excellent,” said Marcus Haselgrove, B-K Motorsports Team Manager. “Jointly developing race and road car technology with the MZR-R is what sportscar racing is about. We hope to be competitive from round one, but the P2 competition will be the toughest in ALMS history.”

How cool is that? -- Thawley

Off Season: Honda Challenge Natl. Champ Runner-Up Michael Lee Switches from Wheaties to Special-K

From Michael Lee G...

My family and I are in Sacramento this week. And because we are helping Sharon’s cousin clean out the garage at her old house, I brought the trailer. Never know when you might have to make a run to the dump or find something you want to bring home. (Her late husband was an import car mechanic, so that’s pretty likely.)

Last week, I was talking with my NorCal enduro co-driver, Andrie Hartanto. (You remember Andrie… ’06 National Champion in Honda Challenge H1 and World Challenge engine swapping king?) When I mentioned I was coming up here with the trailer Andrie asked if I could take Michael Lee’s car up to Red Zone in Freemont.

“Why?” I asked in my most earnest, journalistic tone. “Because he’s going to have me and the guys at Red Zone put a K-series in it.” Damn. Good thing I’m not running H1 anymore.

Let’s put this into Thawley perspective. Last year I was runner up in SoCal points for H1. Almost won, too. But I am an idiot and gave up too many points making stupid mistakes. (Don’t worry; I’ll get to detailing all that eventually.) Anyway, I had a decent shot at winning on any given weekend last year unless any one or more of the following things occurred:
• Andrie showed up in tourist mode to kick some “out-of-region” butt.
• Bernardo Martinez actually showed up and then beat his demons to finish a race.
• Michael Lee crossed the finish line without mechanical issue.

None of the above happened very often. And that is why I had such a good season. All three of those guys are wicked fast. But none of them were much of a threat in the points because they seldom entered or finished a race.

Now let’s look it the National perspective. Hartanto put the hurt on the entire Honda Challenge field at Mid-Ohio. Chad Slagg smoked him at every start. But shortly after that, it was all Andrie all the time. They were the men to beat at Mid-Ohio last September. And they were both running the newer Honda K-series engines. Bernardo runs a K also and is usually as fast or faster than Andrie on the West Coast, but Bernardo had to miss Nationals this year (he had trouble finding umbrella girls at the last minute, or something). All of this seemed to confirm the general feeling in H1 that the K-series engine is the bullet to have, and that the B-series was on the way out.

Enter Michael Lee. Michael used to run a Spec Miata during a dark period of questionable sexual orientation. When his Spec blowed-up and he was looking at the big picture, he decided that Honda Challenge was the place to be. (HC cars are cooler, significantly faster, the drivers are funnier and are generally much more heterosexual.) So he bought Ryan Flaherty’s B-powered H1 Integra. The car was a proven, well-sorted mount with a good race history. Michael’s problem last year was that every part that was about to fail eventually did and it waited until the day he bought it to do so. He spent the season becoming “one” with the car and fixing shit.

Undeterred by a disastrous finishing record, Michael still loaded the car up and sent it to the NASA Nationals in September. Michael is a racer. And the best of the best were headed for Ohio. As it turned out, the mild-mannered taxman from Bakersfield California ran in the top five most of the week. When the last checkered flag dropped, he had passed all the rest of the regions had to offer to finish second behind Andrie.

In the off-season Internet rules arguments that followed, Lee was used as THE example of why the B-series was still a viable, well-classed engine choice for H1. Lee was a hero to many a B-series loyalist. But all that ended the day Bernardo Martinez let Michael take his K24 powered HASport Integra for a spin at Buttonwillow. Lee’s mind was made up. He was going K.

Looking forward to this year’s Nationals then, it is a safe be that all the front-runners will be running K’s. Unless we find an engine-builder and driver combo that really wants to make a splash, the top 4-5 cars will likely be K-series.

The good news is the B-series engines all have a much better home, now, in H2. Stay tuned…

The roadracegeek DIY, One-day Paint Job

EF Paint Job

My community college Econ instructor once explained the term “specialization of labor”. Something about people being most efficient when doing the thing that they were best at. There were test questions about it, as I recall. The idea is that a contractor has no business doing his own yard-work. In order to maximize his efficiency, the contractor should hire a gardener. An hour working as a contractor paid him more than the gardener charged. Plus the gardener could cut and edge the lawn twice as fast as the contractor could. Using specialization of labor, the gardener gets work, the contractor saves time, and there are no lawn tools eating into valuable garage space where the contractor keeps his racing stuff. Everybody wins.

I did not do well in Econ, though, and every time I talk to a painter I forget all about it. My cheap-bastard genetics take over. I forget all the bad shit about body work, paint prep and the astronomical cost of automotive finishing materials. I figure I’m a pretty handy guy. I could save some real money and just do it myself.

I am an idiot.

Thawley Invents Scented Tires – Sort of

Kumho announced their new lavender scented “Arroma Tire” a few weeks ago.

The press release got posted on one of the roadrace forums I frequent where everyone subsequently began making fun of it. (That’s mostly what goes on there anyway, but the idea of lavender scented tires was more worthy of ridicule than most…)

It was more than I could bare to watch this topic go on without claiming some connection to the whole concept. Here’s what happened:

A couple of years ago, I was invited to BeaveRun Raceway in PA for a Kumho tire intro. It was a big dog & pony show for all the enthusiast magazine journos to check out Kumho's new ECSTA SPT. They had all kinds of demonstrations and entertainment for us. Auto-x, road course, 4x4 trips, rally VW rides, etc. They also had rides in the 240SX drift cars that Kumho was sponsoring. This was right after they had come out with the drift tire that made colored smoke...

I do my best to avoid the marketing wags at these events and prefer instead to spend my time with the engineers. They not only know the answers to my questions, but will often candidly offer them, too.

So I had gotten to be pals with the race tire engineer and pestered him mercilessly about tire compounds, heat cycles and shit. And we were really hitting it off. So I'm fresh out of the plane-crash, drifting demo and start bullshitting with my engineer pal again. He's excited. He wants to know how I like the drift car and mostly, what I think of his colored smoke. I make all of the appropriate noises and jokingly praise him for this miraculous feat of molecular engineering and all of its benefits to mankind. I am kind of being a smart-ass because I'm done with the whle drift thing and want to learn more about race tires. But he really wants more feedback. "So", he says, "is there anything else you think we could do for this market?"

"Yeah", I say, "can you make the smoke smell like something besides burnt rubber?" He took me serious as a heart attack and spent the rest of the afternoon looking sort of like the absent minded professor on the brink of a new discovery.

True story.

As forum regular and super genius, Scott Rinde put it, “So in this case then the answer to "Who is the fucking genius who thought this up?" is Thawley?”

I guess so. Sorry.