Into the Night: 

It was in my session when I brought Thunderbolt in around 4:50PM to attach the light bar.  Our pit crew measured and pre-cut window tint for the back hatch and left side mirror.  They applied it with a spray bottle and use a credit card as a squeegee, for the hatch they also secure the  edges with racers tape.  Bill Dockery said the easiest transition  was the dusk to dark session as the driver adjust to the loss of light gradually.  He was spot on as our driver for that session Rick Lofgren was putting down lap times in the dark as fast as his lap times before it got dark.

Rick was in the zone and did a double stint.  He came in for fuel and we sent him out again.

Our E2 class rules only allows changing out one tire or rotating four tires in the hot pits or we can change out all four in the paddock.  We made one tire rotation (front to back) during the race and it was time to bring Thunderbolt in at 1:22AM.

It has been 14 hours and 22 minutes that Thunderbolt ran on the same set of shaved Toyo RA/1's.  During the tire change we inspected the brake pads.  The front pads still had about 40% left and we still have 10+ hours to go.  We decided to change out the front pads just to be safe and because we didn't want to bring Thunderbolt into the paddocks again.  We been checking on the oil during fuel stops and did not have to add oil.  After the paddock downtime it still did not need oil and we got Thunderbolt on it's way again with a fresh set of Toyo's and front brake pads.

The rain came in before 4:00AM, it was not raining hard enough to bring Thunderbolt into the paddock for a set of full tread Toyo's but it did make the track slippery if you go off the dry line.  My next driving session was at 4:30AM.  I tried to sleep or nap but was unable to.  I had a hard time with my session.  The contrast between the well lit front straight and pitch black darkness of the back part of the track was scary.  More problematic was that I had no depth perception with the car lights behind me.  I found myself racing phantom cars that were not there. 

I wasn't too proud to radio in and ask for help.  Rick's last session ended at 8:30PM Saturday evening and he was well rested and was on deck.  Rick took over my session around 5:00AM.  Not too much happened before daybreak.  Rick did go off in the dark and bent a wheel.   We brought him into the hot pits and changed out the wheel/tire, there was no damage to the suspension.