This year, Lunatick Racing finally ran some races as a real team, participating in the pair of AER races at NJMP, Lightning in June, and the one we had all been really looking forward to, the 14 Hour day/night race at Thunderbolt in November. For most of us, this was only our second experience with night racing, the first being the Devil in the Dark that we ran with NoRags Racing three years ago.
Team Members
For this race, we had one member who couldn’t join us (Dan Jensen), since he had already committed to driving with Team NoRags for this event before we planned it, but we were in neighboring garage bays and pit boxes, so he wasn’t too far away. We also had several new people join us, expanding the ranks of our group of racing friends. The roster for this race was:
- Phillip Moore, driver
- Brandon Fetch, driver
- Robert Myles, driver
- John Hainsworth, driver
- Thomas Smith, driver
- Peter McParland, crew chief
- Jeff Yatsko, crew
- Dutch Hurlbut, crew
- Ivy Mamet, crew
- Melissa Fetch, crew
- Jean Myles, crew
- Mark Patterson, crew
- Cynthia Mosher, crew
L to R, top: Peter McParland, Jeff Yatsko, Brandon Fetch, Robert Myles.
L to R, bottom: Phillip Moore, Melissa Fetch, Dutch Hurlbut
We had two new driver’s joining us (John Hainsworth and Thomas Smith), and we surrendered the critical decision making to a dedicated crew chief (Peter McParland). One new team member deserves special mention, as well. AER had contacted us to ask if we would be willing to take on a student from the Alfred State University Motorsports Program (from whom AER gets a lot of volunteer pit marshalls), and Brandon and I agreed to give Dutch Hurlbut a spot on the team. That turned out to be a great decision, as the young man (1/3 my age!) fit right in with the mostly middle aged racing geeks that make up the rest of the team. Dutch worked really well with our resident mechanical genius, Jeff Yatsko, and was a pleasure to have on the team.
Friday Qualifying and Night Practice
After unloading the car on Thursday night, we were able to spend a full day taking advantage of the time available on Friday. After Brandon drove a few leisurely laps scrubbing some new tires and bedding a new set of brake pads, we let John and Tom spend the rest of the morning practice sessions getting comfortable in the car, which was new to them. After lunch, everyone got in their required qualifying session, and we ended up starting 3rd, which was encouraging, since Brandon’s Miata is still tuned for SCCA Spec Miata, running with a restrictor plate which keeps us down on power relative to many of the other Class 1 cars. We put the car to bed confident that if we could run without any serious problems during the race, a podium finish was not unrealistic.
Of course, running a 14 hour endurance race “without any serious problems” is a bit of a pipe dream, so….
Saturday Race
We let Peter do his job as crew chief and set the rotation, with the caveat that we wanted Brandon to start the race, since we set him up as the finisher at the June race at Lightning, where due to a variety of problems, he never ended up in the car. After Brandon, the rest of the order was Tom, Robert, Phil and then John. Brandon’s opening stint went well until near the end when he radioed in that the car was starting to run rough at RPMs below the power band. Thus we began what would end up being a rough total of nearly 2 hours of the race spent in the garage trouble shooting a performance problem. Tom, Robert and myself all struggled with the car’s performance during our stints, with the car running rough and down on power if you made the mistake of letting the RPMs drop below about 4000.
Towards the end of first John’s stint things got worse, and we spent nearly an hour aggressively trying to resolve the problem, changing plug wires, plugs, the cam sensor, and finally the coil pack, which restored the car to normal behavior. This was a great team effort, which also included changing out the right rear upright, which was found to be failing during one of the short runs we made testing out one of our attempts at a performance fix.
With the car’s performance restored, we ran the rest of the night without serious issues, other than losing the rear view mirror, which popped out and broke during my second stint. The last five night stints went very well, and we ended up finishing 7th out of the 12 Class 1 cars that started the race. While we obviously wanted a trophy, finishing the race strong after dealing with a number of major problems was itself an accomplishment, and the end of the weekend, everyone had an absolute blast, and I am personally looking forward to racing again with this team of friends.
Lunatick Racing will be back in 2022, running in at least four of the scheduled AER races, if at all possible.
Driver’s Stint Videos
The following links are the minimally edited in-car videos for each driver’s stints.
Lunatick Racing 
Sounds like it was a great time! Sorry I couldn’t be there, though I appreciate you reaching out to ask. Maybe next year?
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You are permanently on our list of possible driver’s and crew, and I do hope we get to race together soon, hopefully next year.
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