12/05/2025
Well, it was a great year in the John's Waterproofing #143 Miata. I teamed up with a new partner in owning the car who has been a great guy to have on the team, a top notch driver and a great guy to help with some of the costs.
The year started off in January at Laguna Seca where we scored a 3rd place podium finish.
Next up was The Ridge in April where we ran both days, but had some mechanical issues and the best we could do was a 6th place.
Next came the roller coaster Oregon Raceway Park in June where we scored a 1st place win. My first ever in any car I've run.
After that came our home track at PIR in July. Saturday was great with a 3rd place podium finish. It was a close one because with about 30 minutes left my driver called in that the car had lost power and was starting to make unhealthy noises. We were only 2 laps up on our next competitor so I told him to stay out and watch the gauges. "As long we aren't oiling down the track, drive it until it pops." Ended up needing an overnight engine swap, which we were successful in completing with about 3 hours of sleep and got the car out to take the green flag, only to discover the replacement motor had a bad rod bearing and seized up within 1 lap.
Then came The Ridge race number 2 in September. This one was painful in many ways. Practice was fine all day Friday and then 7 laps into the race on Saturday we broke the transmission. Because we swapped to an internal clutch slave cylinder, (requiring very specific bleeding procedure that is very easy to get wrong and you can't tell if you did it correct until it is in the car) we had to install and remove the transmission 2 times to bleed. And then of course, on the 3rd install, as I'm picking up all of the tools, I notice a pilot bearing sitting next to a jack stand. Yup, out it comes again.
We end up getting back out on Sunday, but one of our guys had a hard off track that ended up breaking a $15 oil fitting that is buried up in an area that requires an engine pull to fix even if I had the part. So, we tucked our tail between our legs and packed it up for the weekend.
Finally, we made it to the championship race 1,000 miles at Thunderhill in November. Because of our multiple podium finishes, we qualified for the championship.
The car held up all weekend and we had a very solid driver line up who could all drive within a few seconds of each other consistently. Unfortunately, 3 of our 4 drivers (along with 50 other drivers) missed a yellow flag and got penalized 6 minutes total (that is almost 2 laps at Thunderhill). Looking at the footage, a corner worker at a specific corner where he placed the flag in a holder and then walked to a different part of the stand that had a better view of the track. In talking with my drivers and several other team's drivers, they figured out that the hole for the flag pointed it directly at the driver making it hard to see. And with the flagger standing at the other part of the stand, they were looking at him, rather than the other parts of the corner stand for the flag. Apparently, about 50 cars got caught by that as well. Thankfully they changed that practice for Sunday and things went better.
Unfortunately, that meant we were now 2 laps behind the leader. We tried a couple rolls of the dice on pit strategy to make up some time but weren't able to make enough time up.
All in all though, it worked out fairly well with us coming in 2nd in class in the championship.
It was a great year with the most races I've run in a year with 6 races, 4 podiums and a bump up in class at each race we ran. I guess next year we just need to line up in B class for every race.
I wanted to thank everyone who drove with us this year and especially Cathy Fuss for running the best race league in America Lucky Dog Racing League, and to my sponsor John's Waterproofing to help pay for several races worth of gas, the awesome looking wrap, and for paying for a replacement engine.
Here is our fastest lap of the weekend. https://youtu.be/yV6A1mnJZjY
