Ironman Steve Gorriaran
While Mazda’s flagship effort featured a 25-driver lineup, another Miata made it to the checkered flag with a single driver completing the entire race. Steve Gorriaran not only drove for 25 hours straight, but came home a class winner at Thunderhill, all in his first attempt!
Gorriaran, piloting an E2-class 1999 Mazda Miata, completed 653 laps, just 37 laps shy of the previous overall distance record from 2006. The 2009 SCCA Spec Miata National Champion, entering his first NASA race, put on quite a show. So how did this racer from Providence, R.I. pull it off?
Steve Gorriaran at the wheel of the Gorilla Racing Mazda Miata. (John Dagys)
“I did it with these guys helping me,” Gorriaran said, pointing to his team, who drove five days straight from New England to get to Thunderhill. “It was pretty funny. When I met David [Delgenio] five years ago, I said to him, ‘You know, I always want to run a 24 hour race by myself.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve run the 24 Hours of Mosport before by myself.’ We’ve always talked about and I said, ‘Lets go to Canada sometime and we’ll do one, and then he calls me up and says there’s a race we can do. We come out here and clear it with the guys at NASA, and they let us do it. Here we are.”
Gorriaran put his Gorilla Racing/Driven Performance/Racer Motors machine on the class pole, but elected to start from the rear of the field to stay out of trouble. That strategy appeared to be working, as the Miata stayed within the top three for the entire race.
During each pit stop, Gorriaran got out of the car for a quick bathroom break while the team refueled and changed tires. Delgenio estimated they lost about two and a half minutes during each stop, but nonetheless remained on the lead lap to the other class leaders.
A full-service pit stop came exactly halfway, where the team changed all four brake pads and gave Gorriaran some well deserved resting time, or not!
“There was one stop where we did the brakes and I ate dinner,” he said. “It was some wonderful cold chicken! They had a [street] car running [with the heat on] and the plan was for me to get into it and lay down for a little bit while they did the brakes. But by the time I got done with that freezing chicken, I flipped the seat down and was just about to lay down when one of the guys came over and said, ‘Ready to get back in the car?’”
That stop at the 12.5-hour mark dropped Gorriaran five laps down from the class-leading Miatacage.com Mazda Miata, but he slowly worked his way back up, thanks to a revised strategy of keeping him in the car during the pit stops to the end. After all, Gorriaran was getting stiff, and struggled climbing in and out of the car during each stop.
The Gorilla Racing team, along with "ironman" Steve Gorriaran, celebrates the the E2-class win. (John Dagys)
Utilizing a special funnel that drastically reduced refueling times, Gorriaran was able to creep back up the leader board and eventually retake the lead with three hours remaining. From there, he didn’t look back, and took the narrow win over the Miatacage.com entry.
“It was probably easier for me to stay awake then my guys,” he said. “I thought you’d zone out, but I felt sharp the whole time. My wife was shaking her head hoping I had the sense to stop once I got tired, but I never got tired! The only thing that [disappointed] me was that we had a problem with a wheel bearing at the end. We were going very slowly, and I really wanted to match my times from the start.”
While it was a one-man driving effort, Gorriaran was quick to praise his hard-working crew, who also stayed up for the entire 25 hours. Led by Driven Performance’s David Delgenio, David Woodle from DWW Motorsports and mechanics Shawn Dewey, Jonah Delgenio, Leos Kubic, David Loring and Dan Malek, the entire crew, plus Gorriaran of corse, deserves a huge pat on the back for what was truly an ironman effort.
So will Gorriaran attempt another 25-hour solo race next year?
“We talked about it beforehand, and I thought it was going to be more tiring to drive this car because we’re in the second slowest class,” Gorriaran said. “That meant that I kept getting blinded by the lights of the cars coming up behind me. When you’re attacking, you only look straight ahead. If you’re in a very fast car, it’s easier to judge traffic. I would do it again if we could win overall. It’s like all the things we do, I want to take the next step.”
And there you have it, straight from the ironman himself, Steve Gorriaran.
John Edwards’ Nurburgring Adventure
Just one week before claiming the 2009 Atlantic Series championship, John Edwards turned his first-ever laps in a closed-top race car. It wasn’t any ordinary race or at any ordinary track, though. The 18-year-old strapped behind the wheel of a GT4-spec BMW M3 on the Nurburgring Nordschleife for what would be a baptism by fire.
Edwards' BMW M3 GT4 he piloted at the 41st annual ADAC Barbarossapreis at the Nurburgring. (Sören Herweg)
Sharing the wheel of the SP10 class car with Michael Auriemma and Richard Gorannson, the trio took home the class win, finishing a very respectable 28th overall out of the 181-car field.
“That was my only other experience in anything with a top on it,” Edwards said, in addition to this weekend’s run in the “25 in 25” Mazda MX-5 Miata. “It was similar, but we were in a little higher horsepower car, so we’d pass more cars on the straights. But it was slower in the corners because there were a lot of street production cars at the Nurburgring.
“The Nordschleife is amazing. I was actually surprised how much fun Thunderhill was, because compared to the Nordschleife, it’s a very short track, but it has all the elevation and off-camber corners, and even a jump. So it’s pretty exciting. But over at the Nordschleife, you get air three times a lap at over 100 mph each time. It’s definitely something special and really interesting for that being my first ever race driving something with a top on it!”
The event turned out to be a family affair for the Edwards, as John’s father also drove in the four-hour enduro, finishing fifth in his class aboard a Honda Civic.
MPME Team Scion Enjoys Strong Early Run
Let’s give it up for all the little teams that could. After last year’s remarkable comeback following a devastating roll in testing, the MPME Team Scion tC suffered no dramas of that level in this year’s 25 Hours of Thunderhill. While transmission problems knocked the Marshall Pruett-owned squad out of the running by the 14th hour, it proved to be a good run while it lasted.
The MPME Scion tC enjoyed a strong run before losing both fourth and fifth gears. It did however, limp home to take the checkered flag. (John Dagys)
The driving team of Gary Sheehan, Mark Hotchkis, Dave McEntee and Robb Holland overcame an electronic boost malfunction to set quite impressive times during the night time hours. At one point, Sheehan was clocking laps on par with the two overall-leading Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars. The ES-class car made considerable gains from last year, with it setting lap times some 2.5 seconds quicker. And with only modifications made to the aerodynamics and handling of the BFGoodrich-shod Scion since 2008, it was enough of a reason to make Pruett smile.
Not bad for a base car which lists for $16,000.
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