One Motorsport has been a fixture at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill ever since Speed News has been covering it, since 2013. The team’s Radical sports racers are typically one of the fastest cars on track. The trick is getting them to last and keeping them out of incidents with larger, heavier production-based racecars. The team has been advancing on all fronts each time they take on the 25.
This year, the speed was there. The team started one car from P2 and a sister car from P4, behind another Radical and a Norma. The No. 44 car led the race for 16 hours, ahead of pole sitter Turn 3 Motorsport and the three-time winner Flying Lizard, but early Sunday morning, shortly after the sun rose, the No. 44 came into the pits with a brake problem. Heat had melted the seals in the right rear caliper. The team fixed it and got back out, but ultimately a minor clutch problem became major, took out the crankshaft sensor and the team retired the car.
“We were going to change it, but there were only two hours left in the race, and we weren’t going to change position, so we ended up bagging it,” said team owner Jeff Shafer. “It’s been a little something every year. We’ve just been improving it a little bit every time. The clutch problem, we’ve never had that issue before. We’ll have to revisit that and see what happened. In years past, we’ve had electrical problems, and we finally have a good electrical system and that held really well for us.”
Team Crowdstrike/One Motorsports/Radical No. 67 car ended up winning ESR and taking second overall. The No. 44 car finished third in ESR and 17th overall while sitting quietly under the team’s hauler awning.
Taking second in ESR and fifth overall was Turn 3 Motorsport, also running a Radical with the stock-displacement 1,340 cc motor. Driver Victor Franzoni remarked that they, too, had trouble with the crank sensor, which cost them the lead and a lot of lost laps.
“So, then every stint became like a qualifying stint, and we just tried to recover as much as we could,” Franzoni said. “I think we did a great job. It was our first time. We learned a lot. We saw where we can improve and we’ll be stronger next year for sure.”
