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TC Motorsports finished second in the 2005 NASA 25 Hours of Thunderhill presented by the U.S. Air Force held December 3 and 4. After 25 hours of racing, TC Motorsports finished only three laps from the class winner, and finished seventh overall of 58 entries. TC Motorsports completed 641 laps and covered 1,923 miles, nearly 30 laps (90 miles) more than their third place finishing effort in the 2004 25 Hours of Thunderhill.
The #23 tcmotorsports.net/Group 2 Motorsports/Applied Racing Technology/eprodius.com/Pinnacle Mazda E2 Mazda Miata battled back and forth for the lead for much of the 25 hour race with the eventual E2 class winning #11 PDQ Motorsports Honda Civic. TC Motorsports gave up the lead at lap 244 with an unscheduled stop due to a noise violation from being 1 decibel over the posted 98 decibel limit. "We had no choice; the NASA race officials said we had to make modifications so our car would be quieter, or go home," explains TC Motorsports Team Principal Carlo Sparacio. At that stop, the team brought the #23 car behind the wall and into the garage to weld an additional pipe section to the exhaust system to quiet it down, and then toped off the fuel tank. This work was completed in six minutes.
The team could just keep pace with the Honda, but the extra stop for the exhaust modification, which in turn forced the team to refuel outside of their scheduled pit window, forced yet another unscheduled stop for fuel later on Sunday morning. This alone would be enough to cost them the victory.
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