Dust, Dusk, Darkness – Strategy and luck tip their hand in round two of the Western Endurance Racing Series at Buttonwillow Raceway Park

In endurance racing, strategy is important, but execution gets the job done. Horsepower is nice to have, but not required for success, and luck is paramount. If you can snare a bit of each of those elements — or an abundance of one them — you stand at least a chance of winning.

Those elements were doled out in varying quantities in April as 27 teams took the grid for round two of the Western Endurance Racing Championship series at Buttonwillow Raceway Park.

Team Green Alternative, a Norma chassis car powered by a 2.0-liter four cylinder lifted from a Honda S2000, qualified fastest but ran the warm-up lap at the back of the pack, which left Team Life’s Good Racing! on pole in its Camaro-bodied stock car chassis. 25 Hour E0 class winner El Diablo Motorsports had the second spot followed by the ES class winner from round one at Sonoma in February, Team Prototype Development Group.

This enduro also was interesting in that it was the first event Time Trial teams were invited to participate in a “Tag Team” format. Time Trial teams were classed based on enduro rules, but competed for the fastest lap time instead of the highest lap count. They could drive as many or as few laps as they wanted.

The race began in fits and starts, with no less than four caution periods in the first 45 minutes, which sent dust swirling and required sending the safety car out. Team Green Alternative had further troubles early on when it went off at Phil Hill, stalled the engine and filled the car full of dirt. After that, the team had trouble getting the car refired in the pits, despite several attempts to push-start it.

An hour into the race, the drivers had settled into a rhythm and the double-yellows went away for an evening of clean racing, despite the blacker-than-crude darkness of California’s Central Valley.

By 7:30, Team CRE had the lead in ESR with its Miata-powered Catfish body car. Team Honda Research West 1 was in command of E1 in one of the cars the team debuted at the 25 Hours of Thunderhill. Robert Davis Racing had first place in E2 and Team El Diablo was in command of E0. Team Prototype Development Group had ES all to itself since Life’s Good Racing had dropped out due to a mechanical.

“We broke the most bulletproof part of the car, the differential,” said Life’s Good Racing! crew chief Chris Hovey.

As is normal, E3 was the most competitive class, with the Saturn SC2 of Thunder Valley Racing holding off Team 949 Racing’s Gordon Jennings, who struggled for 30 laps to get past a pack of E2 cars that were slower in corners, but faster on straights.

“I finally got around them and started working on Sean Sampson and managed to overall him at some point. Then I chucked the car off and filled it full of dirt and did two laps in sheer terror,” Jennings said. “I was only going to do one lap but my vision was so bad that I couldn’t even see the pit out. I went right past it. I could not see out of the car to try to get back into the pits. I couldn’t see it, so I had to do another lap in sheer terror.”

By that time, luck had run out for Team SuperMiata, which blew an engine that had been giving them fits all day. Team Competitive Edge Racing’s Mazda rotary-powered sports racer also had expired. Team Green Alternative Motorsports never could get their car back into the fray, and retired without having completed a single lap.

As the enduro entered the second half of racing, cars began coming in for pit stops, planned and unplanned. Things began to get serious. In E2, Team Mansour was penalized five minutes for spilling fuel. Then, without warning, the Race Monitor app that most teams use for keeping track of who is where on the track stopped broadcasting the signal from timing and scoring, so most of the teams didn’t know where they were in class or overall.

“Nobody down here knew who was in what place,” said Team Mansour driver Dean Mansour. “We just tried like mad.”

In the last half hour of the race, the No. 25 Team Honda Research car was meatballed for a suspected leak, and Robert Davis Racing’s No. 11 RX-8 was told to come into the pits because of excessive smoke.

“Car 25 is clean,” a voice reported over race command radio. “Car 11 looks like the Valdez.”

At the end, Team El Diablo Motorsports earned the overall win and took first in class. Driver Lance Boicelli seemed rather nonchalant about his team’s win.

“We opened up a couple of breaks in the beginning, but they kept compressing because we had a few double yellows,” he said. “There was a lot of attrition. A car blew a motor and spun off, and we were able to keep a pretty good pace.”

Team Prototype Development had the ES class to itself, because the Life’s Good Racing! car dropped out, but they were racing for the overall win. But their car wasn’t cooperating.

“We were in fourth gear for about two-thirds of the race,” said driver Mike Holland. “We had some gearbox issues right about lap three or four. It’s a sequential box, and it was skipping a gear from third to fifth. So I just put it in fourth gear and drove the track till 50 minutes left in the race, and then started shifting again. So, we did pretty well with one gear. It was basically a go kart.”

The E2 class win went to Robert Davis Racing’s “Husky Boys” and the Catfish of Ron Cortez ended up taking the ESR class win and 19th overall. Team Honda Research West’s No. 27 car took advantage of lessons learned at Thunderhill — and some new parts — to win E1.

“We did a lot of work this week making some modifications on the car, so for us it was a good opportunity to test a new exhaust system,” said driver Matthew Staal. “We had problems in the 25 hour, so we did our modifications and it seems to have worked out pretty well.”

In E3, Team Thunder Valley Racing took the win, a victory the team attributed to strategy and a flawless car. But luck might have played a role, too. Team 949 Racing’s fuel-spill penalty knocked them back five minutes, which was enough to put them one lap down on Thunder Valley.

“The Saturn just rocks,” said driver Karen Salvaggio. “It’s such a sleeper. The car, you can just stand on it everywhere. It ran perfectly. We had no issues the whole way. We got really crappy fuel economy because it was a sprint race the whole time.”

Tag Team Format Debuts at Buttonwillow

The April WERC event provided the backdrop for a new program that lets Time Trial drivers participate in an enduro for as long or as little as they like. It works like this.

Two or more drivers create a team for $99 apiece and “tag team” the driving. When one driver finishes a stint, he exits his car and tags the hand of the teammate, who can then take to the track. Teams compete for the fastest lap time, all while negotiating enduro traffic. Fastest time wins whether you run one lap or 50. There is no need for a pit crew, kitty litter, five gallons of water or someone manning your hot pit at all times because you have no hot pit.

Classed according to enduro rules, Tag Team drivers need only a car that passes race tech and a TT license. Two teams took advantage of the new program, and each of them ran for about around an hour before calling it a night.