uhg! I wonder what happened?

From facebook:
Emilio - Rear hub flange failure I think, wheel came off with it. Towed Sonny in.
3 minutes ago · Like

I don't have precise info but it sounds like a rear hub flange let go. Hub flang and the important round thing attached to departed the racing effort for greener pastures. Sonny driving at the time. Towed in, repaired in one 29 minute lap.
e don't change rear hubs in races. It's faster to swap in a whole new upright/axle/hub assembly. Guessing it took Andrew about 10-15 minutes to do that.

So now we're 5 laps down with 2.5hrs to go. The long hours of pedaling around doing 2:08's is over. Time to unleash whatever speed Kitty still has. Currently averaging about 5s faster than RJ. Won't be quite enough. We need them to make two more stops to our one. The good thing is RJ has to push now that we're closing rapidly. If they're smart, they'll calculate maximum gain possible by us and pace to stay just ahead so they can avoid as much risk as possible. That's what we would do.

As it is, it's just like last year. I had a lead in E1, broke in the morning and had to drive flatout for the last 4 hours to overtake leader just at the end of the race.

949 just pitted and RJ did about 15 mins ago. I assume both are good to go to the end? Looks like down 3 laps and some change with 1 hour and 40 minutes left.

Who's in the car until the end?

RJ almost certainly will need another stop with about an hour to go, based on their previous stint lengths. Our stop was almost a minute faster than theirs. I don't think we're topped off so we'll probably need another stop too unfortunately. We still need a FCY to help us close the gap.

well whoever it is is flyin... only .7 off fastest lap of the race for that car. The previous few laps have all been under 2.04.5 which is about 6 seconds faster per lap than rj. Shaping up to be a really interesting battle.

Sonny in Kitty now. With front end aero damaged, pushing flatout. He'll likely stay in the car until the end.

Yeah, I was looking at the numbers and it looked like you needed ~8.7 seconds a lap from the 90 minute mark to catch them on pace alone. Probably need a little help but still got time and anything can happen.

And now I glance at the live timing and see the last lap was -8.9 :party:

Sonny is just doing work. 2:03.5 now... wow. .2 off the fastest lap with a tired car and busted aero.

Update. Mark is actually in the car now. Must have switched at the last fuel stop.

seriously down to the wire here

Yeah. It is a LOT closer than I thought would be possible. I am guessing neither team has a pit stop left. RJ racing doesn't seem to be speeding up...

Edit:
Nevermind, i thougth there were a few more minutes left.

We finished 2nd in E3, 58 seconds behind RJ Racing #23 Miata. The failed hub flange at around 4.5 hours to go put us from a 6 lap lead to 5 lap deficit. We clawed almost all of it back with sheer speed. Congratulations to Team 949 Racing for a huge effort. Next year!

So who got disqualified in E3 bumping the #36 car to second place?

We got DQed. The front aero got destroyed when the rear hub failed and the car went off at very high speed. The airdam, undertray, and brake ducts were removed while we were replacing the hub, and stock bumper skin was ziptied/taped back on. Without front aero, we came in 2lb underweight and were DQed.

That freakin sucks, sorry guys. Not a good year for the Cali NASA crew.

Is NASA just out to get you guys? You can't catch a break this year.

Norcal NASA region keeps track of lap records. It is customary for NASA to weigh/dyno any car that set a new lap record (we did) even if it does not win it's class. Perhaps there is more to it than that but I wasn't there so I don't know. I do know that traditionally at least, NASA does not dyno anything after the T25. They expect competitors with a concern to lodge formal protests well before the race starts. Jerry doesn't like to have drama after the 25 and he basically says so in the drivers meeting.

We went fast during the race. 2:03.2 at Thunderhill is smoking fast. To do it in a car that's optimized for endurance pace and not sprint pace is even more astounding. To put that laptime into perspective, Rover in full Nationals trim (PTE*, no aero, 2-liter with ~2800rpm of flat powerband) was able to get to a 2:03.7. Kitty is set up completely differently to improve mileage and driveability at the expense of speed.

I was a little surprised that we were dynoed after the event, but not shocked. Our fast lap was close to 2 seconds faster than our closest competitor, 5+ seconds a lap faster than the fast laps most cars were able to turn, and our race pace was consistently 4-7 seconds a lap faster, even when we were in cruise mode during the night.

The weight thing is a real bummer, but sometimes you play too close to the sun in an effort to shine bright. The rear hub failure was another surprise - we dealt with it remarkably quickly but there just wasn't enough time to recover. If there were guaranteed wins, they wouldn't be nearly as sweet. This team's preparation and workmanship before/during the race was every bit on par with the pro teams in attendance (GMG, Award, Truspeed, etc). Up until hour 19, the most exciting things to happen during the race were a flatspotted tire at 90 minutes in and pulling the car 45 minutes earlier than expected to swap brake pads around 1am - every other stop was on schedule and flawlessly executed. Even the RF hub failure early in the morning was reported early by Sonny and changed quickly with virtually no drama.

There's no doubt that E3 is the hardest class to win. It's probably the most difficult amateur class win on the planet. You have to be perfect, and we were almost perfect, which isn't enough. I certainly hope we take another crack at it next year as a team. I can't imagine crewing for another Miata team - the 949 guys set the bar pretty damn high.