2025 Bonus Round: ChampCar NYE 14 Hour @ Sebring International Raceway
Over the past 12 months I have discovered that I really enjoy endurance racing, more so than the sprint racing I do with NASA, even. A BIG part of that is the team that I have been driving for, Open Throttle Racing, based in Jacksonville, Fla. Mike Gorman and the entire crew are always professional in how they go about business, and really seem to enjoy what they do, which in turn makes for a great weekend as a driver. My original plans called for me to spend my last race weekend of the year with OTR in Austin, Texas for a WRL race, when NASA announced that Sebring would be the site of the 2026 Championships, it was an easy decision to switch to this event in order to get more familiar with the track. The format for the weekend was fairly simple, 4 practice sessions on Saturday afternoon, with the 14 hour race running from 8 am to 10 pm on Sunday. Let’s get to it…..
Open Throttle Racing paddock space.
Pho is the Stars and Stripes car on the end!
SATURDAY
The track opened at 10 am Saturday for load in, with driver registration starting at 11, and the practice day drivers meeting at 12:30, followed by practice starting at 1:30. One of the nice things about Sebring is there is a hotel situated between turn 7 and the entrance to the track, making it very convenient to stay there. We left our room just before 11, and made it to the OTR paddock spot about 7 minutes later. After a quick registration process, I met with my co-driver’s for the weekend, Abby Lockwood and Rich Wilkinson, both of whom are very good drivers! I had teamed up with Abby when I raced at Sebring in June, so it was fun to catch up. I had never met Rich before, and I tend to have anxiety meeting new people, but when it comes down to it, racers are racers, we’re all very similar in personality, and tend to be good people for the most part, so it was good to get to know him. The next thing on my list was learning all the ins and outs of the car, since it was a model I had never driven before. After a few minutes of going over what switches and buttons did what, I had it mostly figured out, and headed to the drivers meeting. Being familiar with the car, Abby went out for the first practice session to make sure everything was good to go. With the car checking out, Rich went next, since he had never driven the track before, so we wanted to make sure he got plenty of laps in. I went out in the 3rd session, and got a few good laps in, just enough to remember the track, and get an idea of how the car drives. The BMW F30 platform is quite different from most other cars I’ve driven on track in the past, so it took a bit to learn what it liked and how it handled certain situations, but it still has that BMW DNA, so it performed quite well. After practice ended, Open Throttle’s team strategist and driver coach, Zack Barfield, had a quick data review and coaching session with me and Rich. I felt like my session didn’t go very well, and needed some help to figure out how to get the most out of the car. Comparing data, it was obvious that I had an ok session. I was just making one minor mistake in nearly every corner, it wasn’t actually a mistake, just bad technique, really, stemming from lack of confidence in the car and unfamiliarity of the track. This consistent problem was actually a good thing… If you're doing something consistently wrong, it’s much easier to fix it, especially if it’s fairly minor. With all the racing business taken care of for the day, it was time for a little relaxation. We went out for supper with Abby and John Allen, one of my NASA Great Lakes friends, who was driving one of the other OTR cars in the race. It was great to just hang out and relax with friends. It also put me in a good head space going into Sunday’s race.
SUNDAY
We were up DARK and early Sunday, the race driver’s meeting was at 6:30am….. NOT FUN, lol. Since Abby was pulling double duty in one of the other OTR cars, Rich was scheduled to start the race in Pho, with me going in second. The original strategy was to change drivers when we pitted for fuel, about every 90 - 105 minutes, depending on how many cautions were encountered during each stint. Rich was forced to pit about 10 minutes earlier than planned, due to the car acting like it was running out of gas, so I had to scramble to get my gear on, which was a good thing because it didn’t give me time to get nervous, which almost always happens before my first stint. After I headed out, I only got 3 green flag laps before a full course caution came out, not much time to get into any sort of rhythm. After 3 more laps under yellow, they threw a black flag and had all the cars come into the pits for an emergency drivers meeting. It seems there were several drivers that didn’t understand the rules for yellow flags clearly, so that needed to be straightened out before we could continue. After the “Come to Jesus” meeting, we went back out under yellow for the first lap. So all the cars could get off pit road safely, once it went green, I was immediately on pace. My fast lap from practice was a high 2:46, and with clear track, my first three laps after the stoppage were in the low 2:44’s and high 2:43’s. After an hour and 45 minutes, I was forced in a couple of laps early when the car hiccuped on the back straight. Being a nearly 4 mile long track, I didn’t want to risk running out of fuel, so came to the pits without much warning. I was very pleased with that stint, running consistent laps in the 2:43’s, with a fast lap of 2:42.9, nearly 4 seconds quicker than what I ran in practice, a HUGE drop from one session to the next! With my next stint scheduled to be around 4 hours later, I had plenty of time to rest, get a little bit of food down, and rehydrate myself. I was also coerced into doing an interview on ChampCar Live, the YouTube broadcast of the race. I am a very introverted person, so this was extremely outside my comfort zone, but the host, Kyle Lockrow was a teammate of mine in my very first race back in 2020, and we have stayed friends since, so he helped make me feel a little more relaxed. That 15 minutes felt like an eternity, but, for my first live interview, it went fairly well. Now my training sessions will also include media training, so the next time I do one it will be better!
I returned to the pits from my torture session just in time to see Abby and Rich swap in the car, so it was really perfect timing, as you are expected to be in the pits when the driver before you gets in the car, just in case something comes up and they need to be relieved early. My second stint would be taking place right in the middle of the afternoon, from 2-2:30 until around 4. Coming from northern Indiana, I hadn’t experienced an 80 degree day since sometime in October, but luckily, the car had a cool suit system….. There were several yellow flags during my first fuel run for my middle stint, but on the green laps where I didn’t have much traffic, I was running very consistently in the 2:43’s, once again. An hour in, and we needed to pit for fuel, not a big deal, usually, but in ChampCar, fuel stops are a minimum of 5 minutes, so I had to sit there for around 2 minutes waiting to leave after refueling was complete. It was during this time that I realized the coolant for my shirt didn’t seem to be circulating, but I didn’t want to cause our stop to be longer than it needed to be, so I decided to tough it out.
The first 4 laps back on track saw me turn some great laps, with the best being another 2:42.9! After that, I was mired in traffic for the next few laps, so my times fell off a few seconds. At some point dealing with the traffic, I took a wider line than normal through the bumpy turn 17, and encountered a couple of major bumps. I have a history of getting motion sick in race cars if it’s hot and the track has a fair amount of elevation change. Now Sebring is very flat, but those bumps I hit while going through the corner were equal to a lap at OIR. This is where the cool suit problem bit me. I was already hot, not a problem in itself, I can just brush that away while driving usually. Throw in the bumpy ride, and I was immediately nauseous. Being around halfway through my fuel run, I tried like heck to toughen it out, but the roughness of the track just didn’t let my head settle down. Eventually it got to the point that I thought I was going to get sick, so I called the crew and told them I was coming in. I spent the next hour in our rental car with the seat reclined and AC on full blast, in order to try and reset my equilibrium. I also sipped on a Pedialyte, and ate a banana along with a little bit of protein to get myself refueled. My third and final stint would be fully after dark, which at Sebring means it’s DARK. This adds several new challenges to the task, the biggest of which for me is the glare of oncoming cars in the rear view camera. The light bloom of their head lights makes the screen almost unusable, so it can be quite a task to figure out how quickly a car is gaining on you, and also which side they are attempting to pass you on.
It didn’t take more than a few laps for me to discover another side effect of the night, a couple of the corners on the track had become slick as the track cooled, so I had to adjust my driving style in those turns accordingly. Overall, that session wasn’t bad, I ran slower laps for the first fuel run, but they were consistent, so I was satisfied. While sitting in the pits, my right leg began to cramp up, which is a common problem I usually run into after about an hour in the car. When I’m on track running at speed, I’m generally able to just focus on something else and not feel it, but while sitting there doing nothing, it really started to get into my head. Getting back out on track helped, but it was still a nagging issue. A lap in, I started noticing that I was overrunning the brake zone in a couple of corners, I assumed the brakes were just starting to wear out…. At first. After a couple of laps trying to adjust for this new problem, I began to realize that my right foot felt like it was “asleep”, which progressed into it feeling like it had been numbed for surgery or something. I could still feel the gas pedal, but not very well, it was very dull, almost like wearing snow boots. THIS was the actual problem I was having with the braking of the car, since this car was an automatic, I was using my left foot to brake, and right just on the accelerator. What was causing me to get too deep into the corners was that I wasn’t getting my right foot completely off the pedal, it was probably still depressed ¼ of the way, but it was at that point where I could no longer feel it. Of course, that problem didn’t get any better while in the car, so eventually I had to radio in to get my relief driver ready. Not exactly a great way to end my race, but I didn’t break anything, or wreck the car, so it was a success. As for the car, our combined team brought it home in 7th place out of 23 cars that took the green in our class, and had the second best finish for Open Throttle Racing out of the 6 team cars in that class.
Next up for Fast Farmer Autosport is another outing at Sebring with OTR in February for the HSR Pistons and Props event. My ride for that weekend will be in an E92 M3, which was running laps about 8 seconds quicker than our car this past race, it will also be on slicks, so that should be FUN!
