In early April 2024, we decided to take the 1988 BMW 325i Spec E30 to the ChampCar 24 Hours at VIR. The race was in August. The car hadn't turned a wheel in six years. We had four months.
Four drivers, in this order: Forrest Vaughan, Chase Vaughan, Archie Adams, Anthony Adams. The order was a mix of experience, rain comfort, and who we thought could hand the car off cleanly to whoever came next.
Prep
Nights and weekends from April through race week. The list was long and most of it wasn't glamorous: new fuel cell, new radio, new safety equipment, new wheel bearings, a full weight strip, and all the smaller items that eat entire Saturdays when you're waking up a car that's been sitting for six years.
The philosophy was reliability over speed — not because we couldn't build a fast car, but because this was a Spec E30 built years ago for a different ruleset, not a ground-up ChampCar entry. You can repurpose a car in four months. You can't redesign one. Finishing is most of the race at a 24 anyway. The 300ZX is being built from the ground up, and that's where the rest of those ideas go.
None of this happens without V6 Fabrication and Equipment and Fast Track Transport. Their logos are on the car because they were on the build long before they were on the bodywork.
Friday
Friday was a test day. The car passed tech. I took the first session as a shakedown — nothing fell off, nothing leaked, nothing sounded wrong. The other three split the remaining sessions to get reacquainted with the track and comfortable in the car.
We put on the race tires and tried to get some rest.
Race Morning
Race started at 9am. We were at the track by 7 for the drivers' meeting. Jay was running the timing stand as crew chief. Harrison, Hayden, and Ryan were pit crew. Jill, Kelley, and Kate ran hospitality — food, water, and the kind of support that keeps a team of eleven pointed in the same direction for 24 hours straight.
The plan was 2-hour stints. The open question was whether the car could actually do 2 hours on a tank of fuel. We weren't sure, and the only way to find out was to run the first stint and watch the gauge.
We started about 40th out of 70 cars.
Stint 1 — Forrest
Two clean hours. The car ran the way we'd built it to run — not the fastest out there, but steady. I handed it off in a better position than where we'd started.
Stint 2 — Chase, and the Shifter
Chase went out and ran a strong hour and a half before the radio came alive out of NASCAR Bend. The car wouldn't go into gear. He was able to get it towed back to the paddock with the clutch held in.
We started moving before the car was on the hook. Tools out, Archie suiting up. We decided to do the driver swap behind the wall instead of in the pit box — no sense in burning tow time twice.
The guess was right: the shifter bolt had backed itself out somewhere on track. New bolt, driver change, quick check over the car, back out in about 20 minutes.
Stint 3 — Archie
Archie got up to speed quickly and ran an uneventful stint. That's exactly what you want right after a mechanical.
Stint 4 — Anthony, Rain, Darkness
Near the end of Anthony's first stint the weather caught up with us. The race was red-flagged about 30 minutes for lightning.
When they called us back out, I took the next stint. I had the most rain experience on the team, and that felt like the right place to put it. VIR in the rain at dusk is a different track — you drive the car softer, the front end talks to you more, and small mistakes add up faster.
I took us into darkness and handed off.
Through the Night
We cycled through the order. Night racing at a 24 is its own discipline. Headlights behind you wash out your mirrors, the apexes are farther away than you remember, and every handoff gets a little quieter than the last. Everyone drove well. No contact, no drama.
The Final Stop
Around 4am the team started running the math on our position and the stint plan. Everything was going to line up clean — three 2-hour stints per driver, straight through to the checker. We debated swapping Archie and Anthony so Archie could take the sunrise stint. We left the order alone. It was working.
Inside of two hours to go, we started watching for a window to make our final stop. The position board had news: the car ahead of us in class was in trouble. A podium was right in front of us.
We called Archie in. Harrison and Hayden fueled. Archie and Anthony swapped. Ryan cleaned the windshield and gave the car a look. We hit 4 minutes — a minute under the 5-minute minimum. Radio check was good.
Anthony hit the starter and got nothing.
The battery cable going to the kill switch had a crimp failure. 23 hours of vibration had finally found the one thing I hadn't double-checked in prep. We got the wire back in, wrapped it in tape, and the car fired. Two minutes lost. Still legal on minimum pit time. Anthony back on track.
From there, the only goal was to bring it home.
The Finish
15th overall. 3rd in class. Out of 70 cars. First race under the Vaughan Motorsports banner, with a car that had been asleep for six years four months earlier.
Every problem we hit on race day was something I could have caught in prep — the shifter bolt, the crimp on the kill switch cable, the fuel question we answered by guessing. The team found a way around all of them. That's the part I'll remember.