A race like this takes determination and preparation

If you’ve been reading our team blog for some time now, you know that we have been wanting to take on the 25 Hours of Thunderhill with our own car since 2018. But sometimes, things don’t go as planned. In 2018, I crashed my Honda S2000 at the last ST4 sprint race of the season in November, and we had to start over. In early 2019, for sake of time (in order to make the season), I purchased an E36 M3 ST3 race car that we converted to ST4 duty. The plan was to do a full year of racing to get used to the new (to us) platform, and then we would tackle the 25 Hour in 2020 with it. Well, COVID had other plans that year and as such; the 25 was canceled. 

That brought us to 2021. Unfortunately, at the first race weekend of the year, Jon had an accident at Sonoma (we love that track, but it doesn’t always love us back) and the E36 was totaled. 

So, we decided to take our time and we “took the rest of the year off” by not rushing into something new right away. After careful planning and consideration, we began quietly building an E46 M3 with the goal of debuting the car in early 2022 so we could race it at this year’s 25 Hour. Well…I’m pleased to report that after 4 years of not giving up, we finally did the damn thing! And it was fucking awesome.

You’ve probably already seen the results online, 3rd in class (E1) and 9th overall. But what you don’t know are all of the details, the drama, the trials and tribulations and the blood, sweat, and tears that went into this past weekend. Fortunately, that’s what this blog is for…so please, read on.

Thursday - December 1st

The schedule for this year’s 25 Hour was slightly different than past years, and as such we didn’t roll up to the track until Thursday afternoon (a day later than “usual”). After setting up our paddock space, we decided to head into town for a Thunderhill tradition; dinner at Casa Ramos. Coincidentally, it was my friend Nick Cahill’s (of Cahill Films) birthday— so margaritas and Mexican food was a great way to celebrate and this was the first time that the full team had been together in-person (we’ve had a lot of group Zoom calls throughout the year in between testing at the track and/or racing in shorter enduros and sprints, where not everyone could attend).

Speaking of the team, here’s our roster:

• Driver: Tom Tang

• Driver: Jon Vo

• Driver: Liam Downey

• Driver: Graham Downey

• Data, Engine Tuning, and Communications: Jei Chang

• Fueler #1: Andrew Capinpin

• Fueler #2: Andrew Eng

• Fire Extinguisher and Fueling Support: Isaac Aguilera

• Jackman and Wheel/Tire Changer: Marc David

• Jackman and Wheel/Tire Changer: Mike Moreno

• Vehicle Stop/Release and Driver Changer: Matteo Sunseri

• Food and Beverage: Ashly Ruis Downey

• Logistics: Victoria Vo

• Videographers: Nick Cahill, Austin DeWees, Matt Morning

• Photographer: Edgar Molina

A huge heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone listed here for making this year’s race possible. We couldn’t have done it without you. Endurance racing is truly a team sport, and everyone here is/was critical to the success of the team.

Friday - December 2nd

Funny enough, Friday was my birthday. And I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than to be at the race track with all of my closest friends doing the thing I love most. The day went by fast. We had open practice from 9am-12pm, lunch break between 12pm-1pm, and then more open practice from 1pm-4pm. In between all of these things, we also had NASA tech and registration.

Qualifying was scheduled to start at 4:15pm for E0, E1, E2, E3, and ENP classes. The faster cars in ESR, ES, and GT qualified at 5pm. Since it was my birthday, we decided that I would qualify the car on sticker Yokohama A055 tires wrapped around our one-piece forged Titan7 T-S5 wheels.

Ride-along with me for a 1:55.0 lap (with data overlaid via my AIM PDM32 and SmartyCam setup) around Thunderhill Raceway, which was good enough for pole-position in E1 class and the 7th fastest lap time overall (including the fast boys in ES, ESR, and GT). In fact, we ran the fastest qualifying time of any production-car at the event. Pretty neat.

Race Start (Saturday) - December 3rd

Saturday morning arrived and the weather was completely different from the day before. Gone were the blue skies and sun. Instead, they were replaced by dark clouds and cold wet rain. We decided to have Graham start the race (row 4, P7 on the grid), knowing that as the most experienced driver in our lineup he would stay out of trouble early on and run a solid pace. We lined up on the front straight by 1030am and the race went green at 11am with the pace car leading the pack.

With the challenging weather, we had proactively decided to soften the JRZ/Eibach suspension setup on the car and we made the call to start the race on our "intermediate” tires, which were Yokohama AD08R.

What we didn’t expect though, is that after a solid start in the 1st hour we got black-flagged by the marshals for being over the sound limit of 99db. Apparently we were just barely over? Super weird, since we’d never had this issue with our Megan Racing exhaust system when we had run at Thunderhill earlier in the year.

I even asked for clarification with race control, but they were adamant that it was our car, #17. As such, we had to pit Graham and try to quiet the exhaust a bit by angling the muffler. We sent him back out, but boom; 1 hour in and we were already down nearly 2 laps in class. Bummer!

The rain continued to be pretty horrendous. The track was incredibly cold and cars were going off left and right. Fortunately, our WanganStyle rear diff made it easy to put the power down in the wet, and our combination of Stoptech C43 calipers and rotors front and rear, along with G-LOC R10 pads made for super predictable braking; even when the track surface was anything but.

Graham himself had a few close calls and unfortunately shit happens— he ended up going off as well, and leaving the front splitter (from Racebred Components) behind.

After going back-paddock to make repairs, we sent Graham back out with a fresh splitter and he was back in business. By now, we were down another 4 laps (6 in total) from the leader in E1 (Team Honda’s #22 Civic Si).

Around 3pm, we decided to make a driver change at our next fuel stop and that’s when Liam jumped in.

About an hour into Liam’s stint, an unfortunate accident happened coming out of T14-T15. A silver E3 Miata spun and smashed into the right side of our car, knocking us off track and ripping the door off it’s hinges, along with, yup, you guessed it; another splitter! Ugh.

We made the call to run the car without a splitter because we only had 1 left and we wanted to save it for if/when conditions improved. With the heavy rain, our lap times were so slow it didn’t really matter. So we put things back as best we could, including a spare door from Marc’s GTA spec E46 M3 (thank you!) From 100 feet away, it doesn’t look so bad…right? Haha. By now, we were down another 6 laps from the leader in E1 (12 in total) and had fallen to last in class.

As night fell, we put Jon in to drive around 6pm and that’s when the Honda guys seemed to pick up the pace. We went from catching up, to them pulling a gap on us again. Kudos to them, they drove great.

After Jon got out, I jumped in around 9pm. By this time, we were down 15 laps from the leader. I gradually made some gains though, actually un-lapping ourselves once during this time.

Just after midnight, I got out and Graham got back in. He was a beast, driving one of the more difficult stints until nearly 430am, un-lapping ourselves twice during this time and putting ourselves back into P3 in class. However, the Honda cars (#22 in P1 and #23 in P2) were solid, and by the time Liam jumped back into the car they were still up by 12 laps.

Then, something that happens fairly often during 25 Hour races at Thunderhill happened…fog. Lot’s of fog. Liam was only in the car for about 45 mins when the race was red-flagged because it was unsafe to continue.

Following a quick driver’s meeting at 530am, we were told to be on stand-by until the fog lifted. Regardless of how much we would be delayed, the race would end by 3pm. Last year, they only raced for about 14 hours under green because of severe fog delays. For us, we had already raced 18 hours and we hoped that the fog would clear soon.

Race Restart (Sunday) - December 4th

Luckily, we got our wish and we went back to green at 930am. If the weather held out, we would have completed 23.5 hours under green by 3pm. Fortunately, it did.

Unfortunately, Liam had an off-roading excursion at T1 and ended up stuck in the mud. When the fire/safety tried to pull him out, they ripped off our front bumper and bumper support. Ouch. We tried to put on our spare bumper support and bumper, but unfortunately the damage was too bad and it would have taken too much time to fix properly.

We decided to just secure the radiator and oil cooler and go back out; sans bumper. This entire debacle cost us 10 laps (meaning we were down 22 laps in total from the E1 leader).

Jon got into the car then, and his job was simple but difficult: stay on track (any more offs and we would risk unrecoverable damage with only 5 hours remaining), and keep the P4 car from gaining on us in terms of laps.

Jon did a tremendous job and delivered as needed. By the time he handed the car over to me for the final 2 hours and 30 minutes, he had maintained P3 in class and we were 11th overall. By then, the weather had gotten really good and the track conditions were great. Since we had the pace, I decided to use it.

An hour and a half later, I had gained a position and gotten up to 10th overall. As I came in for a final splash of fuel, we realized with less than an hour to go we had a chance at catching the next car up. So we decided to go hunting, and when the checkered flag was thrown we crossed the finish line 9th overall and 3rd in E1.

What an incredible recovery! What a tremendous team effort! I’m pretty sure I cried on the last lap, I was pretty choked up with emotion thinking about the last few years, the last 23.5 hours, and how hard this group of amazing people had worked to get this result. We faced so many unexpected challenges, but we never gave up. We kept fighting, we kept trying, and I couldn’t be more proud of our team…

Whats next?

Planning for next year’s 25 Hour began as we were loading up and on the drive home. No, I’m not kidding. We’re already looking forward to going back and bringing the fight to our friends at Honda/THRW in E1 class again.

We learned a ton from this race, and we can’t wait to get working on improvements across the board; everything from the car itself and our race strategy, to how our team operates and our paddock setup.

And like many of you, we are dying to see footage from the race and to look at what the Cahill Films team produces for a finished product. We expect to release the documentary short-film in early 2023. Stay tuned!