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By Andrew Caddell
My dad put a note out on the SpecMiata.com forum that we were looking for a good ride in the Thunderhill 25 hour race. He got a message back from a guy that we had heard about in the past named Bluegrass, about an open seat he had in his BiggsB Enterprises E2 Miata. My dad and I decided to drive down to the Thunderhill track in Willows, California to test with the team. We walked away pleased and said we would love to join the team. This turned out to be the right call.
When we arrived back down at the track on Friday of the race weekend, it was Kim Wilcox and I doing the driving as the other 3 drivers had tested the day before. I did run the car in one session and was very pleased with it. It was all I needed to see and I didn’t drive the rest of the day.
Friday night they hold a official “dark” practice and it goes right into qualifying. Todd Lamb did the practice and got out for me to go out and qualify. Right when I got in the car I noticed steam in the car so I told the crew and they quickly noticed the heater core was bad. They just bypassed it and sent me out to qualify. While I was out starting my qualifying laps, I felt a bad vibration and could only run a 2:09 lap. I had just done 2:06’s in practice so it was of some concern. Turns out there were some bad lug studs on both rear wheels and they were allowing the rear tires to come loose! We were all real glad qualifying doesn’t matter that much for an event of this length. Our time put us 41st on grid.
The morning of the race the BiggsB Enterprises team informed me I was going to start the race. The crew did some last minute checks of the car and rolled it up to grid. I belted in after the cool opening ceremonies, I was ready to go.
At the start of the race I was feeling good now that the car was fixed and was up to 3rd in class in about 4 laps. I just settled into a groove for the last bit of the stint and brought it in for the first fuel stop. For the 2nd stint I had no major incidents just logged some laps and sat 2nd in class.
I got out of the car and had some bad cramps in my legs as the seat was a little too narrow. Todd Lamb got in the car and put in some good times and kept us 2nd in class. David Bahr, Kim Wilcox and Charles Mathis all put in great double stints and we were now 1st in class!
After Charles got out I got back in at about 4am in the morning. After about 2 laps the team informed me I was going to be doing a double stint again. At this time the exhaust started getting louder and I brought it in for the crew to check it out. They quickly found out that a bolt from the exhaust down pipe had came loose so they tightened it up and sent me back out on track. For the next two stints I had no incidents at all and I brought in the car for a driver change to put in Todd at about 7am.
He put in a great double stint and the team thought it would be best for me to go back in the car to finish the final 4 hours up to the Noon finish. I was ready so I got back in and actually got to play around with a couple miatas over that time. We had a couple cautions in the final 4 hours and I just ran some slow lap times to keep the car going and after 25 hours we finished 1st in E2. It was a great experience to finally win this race. 3 years and I had come close and led lots of laps but never finished it.
I would like to thank Bluegrass for the opportunity to drive for him, it was a pleasure. Todd, David, Kim, Charles were great drivers to share the ride with, they all knew what it took to drive in an endurance race. The entire BiggsB Enterprises crew were flawless and never did anything wrong the whole race. It was a pleasure racing with them and we hope we can do it again.
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