MooreWood Creative Team had an exceptional 25 Hours of Thunderhill, taking first and second place in E2. Driver Larry Moore, who won the E2 class in 2018, drove the BMW 330i for the checkered flag.
“It was the first time I’ve ever had to deal with the fog, and that kind of caught us off-guard. You never know what to expect out here,” Moore said. “The 25 always throws a different curve ball at you, and that’s why we like to come back all the time.”
The team’s sister car, MooreWood Creative Black Car, was leading the E2 class when race officials red-flagged the race Saturday night because of dense fog.
“It was an unfortunate timing incident right before the red flag, we were almost out of gas on the double yellow and we had to come in and wait,” he said. “Then they got pushed back several laps.”
That likely made the difference because the MooreWood White car won the E2 class by four laps. The White car was a model of consistency, completing 467 laps. Only four cars did more laps in the endurance race.
The team’s sister car, Team Moorewood Creative Black took the next step on the podium. Because the team was using fuel jugs that it had built for the race, but hadn’t tested them, they took a five-lap penalty for spilled fuel. They were able to pick up some parts necessary to perform spillproof fuel stops and the Black car had the speed to get back on track for a second-place finish. Asked to pick a favorite, crew chief Justin Ross deferred, as though asked to pick a favorite child.
“Both cars have their pluses and minuses. They’re both slightly different builds,” Ross said. “There was no favorite. The goal here was to finish one-two as a team. It doesn’t matter which car got the first or which car got the second. The team finished one-two, and that’s what we’re going to take home.”
Their second-place car was just four laps up on third place Legacy Motorworks. It was the second tightest finish in the race. Legacy had a strategy that was actually hurt by the fog delay. They were running 200 treadwear Cooper tires, so that they could make fewer stops to change tires. Over the course of 25 hours, that strategy would have had time to pay off. With the fog delay, it didn’t pan out.
“So it was kind of a tortoise-and-hare type of race. We feel like if we had actually been able to run continuously through, we would have been even closer than we were at,” said driver Peter Jones. “So mathematically the entire distance on 25 hours, we had the advantage with our tire strategy over the faster cars. We went through fewer of them. So we had fewer pit stops. Our pit stops, they we’re just splash-and-go stops. Unfortunately, with the parc ferme overnight and the shortening of the race, we lost a little bit of that. But we’re very proud of our first effort in the 25. I’m very proud of our finishing position.”
