| Gofastsports.com TAG Racing #57 Race Report |
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Holy $#!& we finished! The biggest lesson learned by The Gofastsports.com TAG Racing #57 Mazda RX-7 is to buy a bigger motor! Taking 105hp to a 25hour race is both ambitious and downright stupid. All this notwithstanding, we had a bottom-line-kick-in-the-ass-boatload of fun. Rolling up to pre-grid was nothing short of a religious moment for me as first driver. Between the Honor Guard, the F-15's and the National Anthem, I confess to dropping my visor to hide my tears. We managed to qualify reasonably well though the highlight of day 1 was knowingly directing the Spoon team, none of whom spoke a lick of English, into the vacant spot next to us on the grid which was about ten rows further back than they should be. After a few photo ops on our part, they were directed by an official to their actual starting slot way, and I mean way on up the grid. As a result, we have photos of our 1983 Spec-7 qualified next to the Spoon car! So I owe them a California roll next year I guess. Actually we didn't qualify that badly and even had about 15 cars behind us on the grid. We elected to start from the back of the pack so as to avoid any potential disasters into turn 1 and 2 due to bad weather conditions. So we directed everyone past us during the pace laps. With our demon rocket racer topping out at about 115mph we figured it wouldn't make that much of a difference over 25 hours. The funny part is that we hit top speed into turn 10 and not on the main straits...(exit speed baby). Next year we must remember to bring wetsuits and flippers to get around our pit though. All fung-shuay aside, establishing a hot pit in a splash pool is not easy. Holy crap was that some serious rain through Saturday. I need to thank the Yokahama support crew for letting me groove a set of our Toyo's.
And so the hours rolled by till 23h25 when the tranny rudely retired 3rd and 4th gear. Disloyal bastard! Well this really bummed us out because these are the only two gears we decided to run so as to save the car. Fat lot of good that did us. Into the paddock we limped for a tranny swap. Now this is where things got really interesting for us - when everything was done and we tried to bleed the clutch it occurred to us Monster Garage aficionado's that we forgot the throwout bearing. Yippeee, tranny change number two underway. After much giggleing and boyish provocation, be buggered if we didn't eventually get the car back on track. About two hours lost. The moon out of turn 2 was a magnificent site. That is if you ever had a chance to glimpse at it between the Miata ninjas and Porsche mafia chasing each other around like savage beasts. How the hell we never once got dinged should be reported to the Vatican as a modern day miracle. Anyway the rest of the night went well to reveal a sunrise that was just gorgeous. With 90 minutes left to go we did our final driver change and actually allowed ourselves to believe that we might just accomplish the unimaginable and slay this 25 hour dragon. 30 minutes to go, in he came for a splash and dash and there it was, smoke from the right front wheel. You know the kind that just looks and smells bad, ( as if there is a good smelling and normal looking smoke that can come from wheels. ) Back to the paddock for a front right rotor change. With 20 minutes to the flag we heaved our Frank Williams inspired ball of speedy caged fury back onto the track.
Overnight I had left a case of champagne outside to chill, at 12h00 it was still well chilled despite having spent the entire morning in the sun. As our faithful little Mazda made it's way past the pit wall, our driver did his finest Michael Schumacher impression and swung close to the wall us where I had a bottle of the champaign spraying over the track. Needless to say when he arrived back in the pits and shut down, the poor bastard got hit by 9 more bottles of still very chilled and well shook champaign. By about the third bottle he thought to close his visor. Once again I found myself in tears. We had just finished the longest endurance race in US history. It was a privilege to be part of this, and only an organization like NASA could pull it off as well as they did. Then again we have come to expect nothing less from the great people involved in this event. Most sincere gratitude to the corner workers and safety crews whom worked thanklessly and tirelessly to keep us safe and bring us home. Thank you to Ken, Joel and Jeremy for all your hard work as crew. Next year, oh hell yeah baby!
A very special thanks to our sponsors:
Go Fast Sports
Laparoscopic Center of San Diego
Nology
Dragon
Wilson's Machine Works
Drivers:
Graydon Dallas-Orr
Adam Fierer
Trevor Dallas-Orr
Dylan Eddy
John Reed
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