Rx8 at the 25 hours of thinderhill
 

Thunderhill Qualifying Update: Congrats to Dennis Holloway and Sonny Watanasirisuk for Mazda-powered class pole positions.

Dennis Holloway put the No. 34 RDR Mazda RX-8 on the front row of the E2 Class running a time of 2:05.215.

"I had a couple of consistent laps in the low 2:05's," Holloway said. "There was a little more in the car. It was cold and starting to rain, so I thought it might get a little slippery. You really need to watch the mirrors at night as the closing rates are amazing. Go RDR!"

In E3 the No. 05 949 Racing Mazda Miata driven by Sonny Watanasirisuk put in a time of 2:06.150.

"We went out right at the beginning of the session to get the lap in quick," Watanasirisuk said. "The car is handling beautiful. I had no real moments on the track that made me anxious. Snow, rain it don't really matter to me, I will just drive through it. I want to thank 949 Racing, Track Speed Engineering and Stop Tech Brakes for their support

:bowdown:

pic!

I'm not sure which Mazda this is. (live streaming)

Live Timing for the race is at: http://www.nasa25hour.com/live-timing-feed.html
Race Announcers are at: http://new.livestream.com/endurance-...hour&cat=event
There is a little less than 6 hrs left at this point.

The #34 Team RDR RX8 is presently in the pits with a differential problem. They are working on it and haven't withdrawn the car from competition yet.

#34 is back in the race and being driven by Jeremy Barnes.

http://www.justin.tv/teamrdr4#/w/7779124960
#34 Rx8 live feed

The #34 is haling ass. They will pass at least 2 cars overall. They may even pass the #70 Diesel at the laps they are turning.

very fast car very fast drivers, last night about 5 hours into the race they were leading the e1 e2 second place was 6 laps behind and they are passing those diesel 6s like they are standing still. They had a problem with a solenoid which set them back a bit, and then a differential replacement which put them back quite a ways, but they have the ability to make up a lot of time.

I've got the YouTube stream, Justin TV stream and T&S feed all going at the moment.

currently 24 laps behind the next in class car

I wonder if they were using a 5.12 rear end instead of a stock one. Have heard that it's really hard to put together one of the 5.12 sets and have it be as reliable as a factory sealed one...

CHECKERED FLAG ON THE LAST RACE OF 2013. The LONGEST RACE OF 2013. AND THE COLDEST RACE OF 2013. Congratulations to the Mazda Miata racers at Sector Purple Racing and RJ Racing for class wins in E2 and E3. The three Mazda6 SKYACTIV-D Clean Diesels all finished with not even a hiccup from the powertrain (5,000+ miles in 25 hours between the three cars). Congratulations to the Mazda “dealers” for winning the internal race against our “factory” guys. A salute to the Rotek Racing team for taking the overall win. And a special shout-out to everyone at Team RDR for never giving up with the #34 RX-8 which recovered to finish fourth in the E2 class. A complete press release will be posted later this afternoon.

I'm pretty sure the RDR guys do not run the 5.12 rear diff. That must have been one COLD COLD race this year.

19F, and it snowed for qualifying

Why do you guys think they don't run the 5.12 R&P? Too "hot" for a 25h enduro? I'm sure RDR can afford diff cooling.

i have no idea why they would or wouldn't run a 5.12. however having run 3 25's i have a couple of ideas.

the first is fuel mileage, in a race this long, it matters a LOT. we can do a fuel+driver change in about 2 minutes, which is the same as 1 lap, so every time you stop for gas, you loose a lap. also the class they are in only allows 10 gallons per pitstop.

the second is durability, again staying out of the pits is important. they were dominating until the kill switch died (we had the same thing happen in 2009, its a bigger to figure out, cause its a name brand race car part, and it acts like an alternator failure). so perhaps 5.12 is too risky? maybe they wanted to be a little easier on the engine? or maybe they found they they could use one or two gears for the whole track or something?

so i don't know, but maybe the pieces added up to make 5.12 not work for that race?

They don't seem to think that the 5.12 diffs are reliable. I race against them a lot and they don't even run the 5.12 in their sprint cars. Maybe that will change next season since I'm putting the pressure on with my 5.12 equipped RX8 ;)