Richard and Yvonne Migliori and their Team PDG race group finished their best year ever winning the Western Endurance Racing Championship Series and the United States Touring Car Championship series for 2015. Team PDG also finished 3rd place overall at the grueling 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race! Full race report at the end of this post. Click here to view a gallery of images from Head-On Photos.
Richard and Yvonne (center) with their Team PDG scores a podium finish, 3rd place overall, at the 2015 25 Hours of Thunderhill!
The weather during this year’s race was a mix of wet and dry, and the GTM drove through it all.
Photos by Steve at Head-On Photos. Note: Steve’s dad Norm passed away a few years ago, and he took a huge number of really great photos of Factory Five cars racing out west at tracks from Vegas to Infineon. Steve’s doing a great job following in his father’s footsteps.
Serious competition at this year’s 25 Hours race included teams practicing for Rolex.
Report from Team PDG:
December 6th 2015/Willows CA
Team PDG had an absolutely stellar year in 2015, racing the venerable Factory Five Racing GTM car #4. The year started out with team owners Richard and Yvonne Migliori deciding to race in not one, but two significant series… the Western Endurance Racing Championship series and the United States Touring Car Championship series.
Though there were some difficulties in doing so, including a race early in the season where both events were at the same track on the same weekend, when the checkered flag fell on the regular 2015 seasons for both these series the team had scored multiple podiums and wins, and managed to come out as the year-end points leaders and champions in BOTH series!
Unfortunately, in the last race of the regular season for the Western Endurance Racing Championship the Factory Five Racing #4 car sustained significant damage when driver Mike Holland, who was currently leading the race overall by over 2 laps, was hit in the left rear by a spinning lap car. This did roughly $15,000 worth of damage to the rear of the car and the team was in a significant time battle to rebuild the car for the last race of the United States Touring Car Championship, as well as to get the car properly prepared for the 2015 25 Hours Of Thunderhill.
Through extremely hard work by the all volunteer crew, the car completed the final United States Touring Car Championship race, coming in 2nd securing the year-end points battle and overall title.
That would not be the end of the challenges faced by the team for this year’s 25 hour race though, as 3 of the 4 drivers scheduled to run the car at the December 5th-6th event cancelled on the team just 3 weeks before the race. It was at this point that the team reached out to their fellow competitors that they had been racing against all year in the two series to ask if anyone could help support the effort to run this car in the fast-approaching 25 Hours Of Thunderhill.
The outpouring of support was overwhelming, and the same guys and crews that the team had competed with during the entire 2015 season now came together to field the car they had all been trying to beat. The drivers ended up being Mike Holland (long-time PDG driver), Dave Brown (competitor in the USTCC series and Life’s Good Racing team manager), Beau Borders (driver for Dave Brown’s Life’s Good Racing Team), and Ken Kurtz (long-time competitor to Team PDG at WERC, USTCC, and local NASA events).
Not only did these individuals bring decades of racing experience, including multiple wins of previous 25 Hours Of Thunderhill events, but they also brought a Toyo Tires tire sponsorship and a bunch of very experienced crew members.
This all culminated in one of the best 25 hour teams Prototype Development Group had ever assembled. The various teams seemed to gel nicely and it was as if everyone had been working with each other for years.
The final chapter was that after a bunch of turmoil, and even the possibility of not being able to run this event, with everyone unrelenting in their determination to get the Factory Five Racing GTM #4 on track, the Team scored its first podium finish in 9 years of running The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill, North America’s longest, and arguable the most difficult, endurance race. The Team finished 3rd overall in a field of 63 starters.
Special thanks to all the Team PDG sponsors.
Baja Designs Lighting, Mendeola Powertrains, Tel Tac Electronics, My Race Shop, Toyo Tires, and Factory Five Racing.
About Prototype Development Group
Team Prototype Development Group fields the first, fastest, and most winning Factory Five Racing-based GTM in sanctioned racing events. The Baja Designs, Factory Five Racing, Mendeola Powertrain, www.myraceshop.com race vehicle started life as a Factory Five Racing GTM kit car. With minor modifications to accommodate specific safety requirements of sanctioning bodies, and some slight changes to give it a racing advantage, such as an enlarged capacity fuel system, Prototype Development Group has turned a superb street car into a serious endurance racing track weapon. It uses a sequential 5 speed Mendeola transaxle and a GMPP crate engine to achieve speeds in excess of 150 MPH. Car owners Richard and Yvonne Migliori have hosted some of the greatest names in motorsports history to pilot the car to many podium finishes. Drivers like Elliot Forbes-Robinson, Davy Jones, and Johanness Van Overbeek. In the period between 2008 and 2011 the team fielded the car in an astonishing 66 races with 58 podium finishes. The team fields the #4 GTM in both SCCA and NASA sanctioned regional and national events. For more information about the current successes, as well as sponsorship and volunteer programs with Team Prototype Development Group, please visit www.pdg4.com.
About NASA
The National Auto Sport Association (NASA) was formed in 1991 to deliver high quality motorsports events to enthusiasts at major racing venues throughout the nation. NASA has created programs that allow owners of both racecars and high-performance street-driven vehicles to enjoy the full performance capabilities of their cars in a safe and controlled environment. NASA offers many different programs that will allow you to enjoy motorsports on a number of different levels, including our High Performance Driving Events (HPDE), Rally Sport, Time Trial, NASA-X and Competition Racing programs. For more information, please go to www.nasaproracing.com.