11/19/2024
Over last weekend, 11/15/24 – 11/16/24, N.I.B racing team participated in challenging 14 hours race at NJMP Thunderbolt with AER organization. I cannot thank enough to drivers & crews helped the team get through as well as fans came to share their energy with us. In long story short, we finished the race after 14 hours of driving.
The long story – We arrived at NJMP on Thursday, settling in and getting ready for the practices for next day. Friday, 11/15, went very well. Car was running good, drivers felt good about car, communication equipment was working flawlessly, video system had some hiccup but nothing major, and APEX pro system was tracking where our car #44 was. There were few things we needed to do after 7:30 PM “in the dark” practice, oil change, tire change, improve lighted number, & ETC. BTW, we were 4th place after qualifying race.
On the race day, Saturday, 11/16, everything was fine except I forgot to put the SD card back into video because I was running around trying to get ready for other stuffs but managed to send off the car #44. But then, check engine light came on and car won’t accelerate beyond 25% of throttle input. We pulled in and checked everything but nothing really stood out to be wrong and anything we did little to no difference. After 2 hours, we found a vacuum hose loose on valve cover which helped but still, we only had 50% of throttle. At this point in time, we could fold our tent or just push it through the race.. we decided latter. By the time we went out again, we were over 60 laps behind 1st place at 7th place. Beside the engine issue, APEX pro was not connecting, getting some infraction points for minor violations, & ETC. It was not the ideal situation being moving road block but by the time moon started to rise, we had well over 120 laps. Then night fell and night driving begun with head lights, aux lights, LED lights around cars. We were situated in front straight and had good lighting, but some other area, you only hear roaring race engine noise whizzing by with occasional headlight shone for a second or two. And then around 8 PM, driver reported that there’s noise when turning. We pulled it in to garage and started to inspect and found left front wheel is loose. Initially, we thought it was wheel bearing but turned out to be bolts on strut was loose. We tightened the bolts and off we go again. Around 9 PM, red flag! Which means serious incident on the track and every car must stop on the track. Thankfully, it wasn’t our car but it was overall lead car caught fire just before pit entrance! Which we recorded whopping 27 minutes 19 second lap time! By the way, our best time was recording around 1:39 when engine was good and 1:49 after engine wasn’t good. After switching to last driver with 1 hour left on clock, we couldn’t believe that the car is still running. Our only hope was finish the race because we were limping but we are still running where 1/3 of starting field had retired. Celebration came when car #44 returned to garage and we couldn’t be happier although we were last one to finish the race. 14 hours of race tested every bit of machine and us. But what a fun it was and accomplishment of finishing it felt awesome!
On Sunday, I had a breakfast with other crew members and my friend who won the overall the night before. Talked a lot about what happened, laughed and came home. Only after I came home to put the car back in garage, we also noticed that rear sway bar was broken half. We don’t know when it happened but it must’ve been during the race and we were scratching our head how did we completed 14 our race?
