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2018 25 Hours of Thunderhill
It's this weekend!
Team PDG has a new title sponsor...Hankook Tire...and we are set to go racing starting with a Friday practice, and then Saturday and Sunday race.
We are attempting a live stream, but I don't have the details yet.
It could rain, and we are very well prepared for that!
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Senior Member
Congratulations on the new sponsor!
Does this mean you will be running different tires?
MK3.1 2004 Mach 1 donor. ABS, PS, TC.
GTM #304 LPE 525hp LS3
2000 C5 Lingenfelter LS1@489hp
1999 Corvette FRC/Z06 track car
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We ran the Hankooks all last year, but this is the first race where the car will be title sponsored by Hankook. They are a great tire. Lots of grip and last a long time.
Here's a sneak peek without all the stickers on yet...
Hankook 2018.jpg
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Senior Member
Wow, Mike, I love it! Best GTM livery yet! Where can I buy a poster for my shop???
MK3.1 2004 Mach 1 donor. ABS, PS, TC.
GTM #304 LPE 525hp LS3
2000 C5 Lingenfelter LS1@489hp
1999 Corvette FRC/Z06 track car
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Congrats on picking up a very high profile sponsor!!!! The new paint configuration is equally impressive!!!
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Senior Member
I do love that paint!
Congrats on the sponsor, and the result!
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For those interested, about 16 hours of the 25 are archived on Carl Rydquist's Youtube site...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZPFlSJy3U8
You can tell who is driving by the glove colors...
All Black-Carl Rydquist
Black/Red-Beau Borders
All Blue-Mike Holland
Blue/Black-Troy Lindstrom
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Administrator
Originally Posted by
crash
For those interested, about 16 hours of the 25 are archived on Carl Rydquist's Youtube site...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZPFlSJy3U8
You can tell who is driving by the glove colors...
All Black-Carl Rydquist
Black/Red-Beau Borders
All Blue-Mike Holland
Blue/Black-Troy Lindstrom
Crash, are you going to regale us with the story of your most impressive Thunderhill effort yet?
Congratulations on your podium finish!
FFR 5369 Pin Drive, IRS, Trigos, Torsen, Wilwoods, FMS BOSS 302 "B" cam , Mass-flo. CA SB100 (SPCN) Registered
Delivered 4/23/06. "Finished" 4/2012 (still not done!)
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David- With the exception of the couple of cold tire incidents and my nose bump I had in the middle of the night there was very little drama this year. Simply put, based upon all the 10 other years of running this race, we had a plan, we followed the plan, and the plan worked. As one of the crew guys said, "we got everything we could out of this car this year given what we had to work with". What that means is that we ran an average speed faster than we ever have, our pit stops were clean and efficient, the driving was superb, and the outcome was what we had predicted given the fact that we are down on HP to the Porsche GT3 Cup car. You can see this in the video where they simply pull away particularly at corner exit. We really REALLY want to put a higher HP/TQ engine in this thing and have a shot at beating these guys and winning the overall. I think we need a mild LS7 as we have largely maxed out the LS3. We could certainly get more power out of an LS3, but reliability would likely suffer. We are also looking at helping Mendeola develop a six speed which would allow us to move the gear splits closer to each other and hopefully give us a little more power coming off the corners. Of course the draw back there is more shifting. We already do over 8500 shifts on a gearbox in just this one race. Adding 4 more shifts per lap would increase this to over 11,500 shifts during this one race. That's a lot of shifts, and a lot of opportunities to make a mistake. We don't have electronically controlled anything in this car except the fuel injection.
I'm sorry if this disappoints you all that there was not more action to report or drama to see, but this really was a year where things went pretty much according to plan and we got the results we thought we would. This virtually never happens with this race and by the middle of it we usually are way off schedule. This year even the driver stint change times went pretty much according to our posted plan. I hate to say this and jinx things for next year, but our experience is showing a couple of things here. One is that we are getting much better at predicting how to run this race. Another is that we are now at the point where we really cannot go much faster without some significant changes to the car. We are at our limits with this car and the "low hanging fruit" of improvements are behind us. The next 5 seconds of lap times are going to be expensive.
One of the greatest things about this year's race was that we forced the Flying Lizard Porsche to go out a second time during qualifying in order to beat us for starting position. They had thrown down a pretty fast time and we were stuck in traffic, but after they came into the pits Carl found a relatively clean lap and beat the Porsche by a few tenths. We brought the GTM in and parked it, but this forced the Porsche to go back out and keep running until they beat our qualifying time. Not a position they normally find themselves in, and this, while only a minor victory since they ultimately out qualified us, did make us smile. Hopefully we get something together for next year that puts a bigger smile on our faces.
BIG THANKS to all of our sponsors...
Mendeola Transaxles
Baja Designs Lighting
Champion
Hankook Tire USA
MyRaceShop.com
...and all the many volunteers that come out to support our efforts. We could not do this race without you!
Last edited by crash; 12-10-2018 at 12:16 PM.
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