Jeff Shafer's 25 Hours of TH live stream

[Stan Clayton]

Jeff Shafer (defending SCCA Runoffs P2 champion 2016 & 2017) has entered a 2-car team in this year's 25 Hours of Thunderhill, and is live streaming their activities, starting about 4 hours ago. You can catch them on their YouTube Channel. Lunch hour ends in about 15 minutes and I expect they will start turning more practice laps, and then qualifying later this afternoon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWaTDMOaCxs

[Stan Clayton]

NASA's live timing and scoring: https://nasa25hour.com/live-timing/

[holmberg]

From the video feed, they appear to be running a Radical? ONE Motorsports.

Do you know their car numbers?

#67 is "ONE MOTORSPORTS / RADICAL" in ESR. That must be one of their cars.

#44 is "CROWD STRIKE / ONE MOTORSPORTS - K KOCH" in ESR, so probably their other car. I can't tell what kind of car it is though.


Greg

[Stan Clayton]

Those are the correct car numbers, Greg, and the cars are both Radical SR3s.

[Stan Clayton]

Qualifying begins in about 15 minutes, and runs for 30 minutes. Video is live, and the car is on track.

[ghickman]

It's 5:53 PDT Was that qualifying or testing? Jeff got out of car and said he did a 1:49.9 not too bad considering the sun has gone down.

That looks like a ton of fun.

[Stan Clayton]

Qually was from 5:15 to 5:45. Jeff posted a best of 1:42.0...good for 4th on the grid.

[holmberg]

Bummer. Jeff's car is out with engine problems. It's not clear if they plan to get it back in the race or not.

The other Radical is still running. Third in class, eighth overall.

[rickb99]

Bummer. Jeff's car is out with engine problems..

BIG bummer. I just looked at 'live feed' and I'm in Seattle (almost due North of TH track. Why at 12:44 on Sunday morning is the sun still shinning down there?? Very odd.

[Stan Clayton]

They did a back-end swap and got back out...but lost 30+ laps doing so.

[jaltaman]

Yeah, that was unfortunate. But their car #44 ended up P1 in ESR, P3 overall.

Fantastic job by the team, and Kenton Koch is a helluva driver. I watched his last stint and the guy never put a foot wrong and was blistering fast. Looked like a lot of fun.

Congrats to the Crowd Strike / One Motorsports team!

Also, many thanks for the unprecedented live streaming. It was fantastic!

[Keith Carter]

I was able to catch the end of it. It was kind of weird that there were 3 different drivers in 2 laps. They did a driver swap right as they were getting the checkered and the last driver got to do a stint from the pit lane to the paddock.

[jaltaman]

Hey Keith, interesting, I wasn't aware of what the #67 was doing as I was glued to the in-car from Koch in the #44 car.

It was a heck of a drive, reminded me of begin schooled by you on rF2. ;-)

[David Ferguson]

I was the voice on the radio for the #44 CrowdStrike Radical. Kenton Koch was very smooth and fast in that car. He drove a 4+ hour stint in the dark with the forward headlights off (only the cornering lights) to save power -- we didn't have full alternator power. Then he came back 6 hours later to do another 3 hours. And we put him in at the end when we moved into the lead and we could win if we could hold off the Norma (and they had the pace to catch us).

The Norma was called in for a penalty, then it was decided they didn't need to serve it, they could figure any penalty after the race -- so then they they left pits after losing another lap. It would have been tricky to figure since as we backed off after they lost another lap - we didn't know it was being reviewed.

The other drivers (George Kurtz, Gerhard Watzinger, and Dave House) all did a great job and were able to pound out the laps and run long stints (about 3 hrs per driver), without getting into trouble.

The OneMotorsport crew has the Radicals figured out. They can change an engine in 45 minutes, and have typically had to do one per car each year -- this year the #44 didn't have an engine change the entire event.

Funny story of the race -- the pace car broke down while leading, and a tow truck got a flat and had to be towed in with another tow truck -- it wasn't clear but that might have happened at the same time.

[jaltaman]

Hey Dave, I thought that looked like you in the photo I saw.

Too funny about the pace car and tow truck - how often does that happen?

Congratulations to you! Man, that was cool to watch on youtube and the live stream was of high quality - particularly the audio, which was apparently easier for us to hear than you guys on the radios. I'm not sure how you did the live feed, but well done! I spent the last 5 hours with the #44 car, and it was fun being along for the ride. I felt for House when he spun - that was an agonizing 7 minutes sitting waiting for the truck to help him get it going again, and made for some suspense with the Norma coming on - until Kenton got in the car. He drove great, and you guys did a superb job helping him to manage the race.

The Radicals performed really well, and yes, One Motorsports definitely has them down. Jeff and the team have had a huge year and I couldn't be happier for them - a great group of guys who know their stuff, and always willing to lend a hand in the paddock.

Way to go One Motorsports!

[Stan Clayton]

Terrific post, David...thanks!

I hope the One MS live streaming spreads to other teams, as I'd love to bounce from car to car. Oh, and I hope they captured all that streaming so they can make a highlights video.

[BeerBudgetRacing]

I was the voice on the radio for the #44 CrowdStrike Radical.

Did you setup the gear that allowed the live stream?
Can you tell us what was used?

[David Ferguson]

I did not have anything to do with the live stream gear. I believe it's all One Motorsports proprietary gear.

[BeerBudgetRacing]

They did an excellent job.

[Jeff Shafer]

Did you setup the gear that allowed the live stream?
Can you tell us what was used?

Wow David directed me to the forum to answer a question and unbelievably I have never posted here and had to register! Im sure I know most of you so.... Hi!

The live stream equipment is a camera (we used a go pro) connected to a Cerevo Liveshell X. At Thunderhill Verizon is really the only good cell provider so we had a Verizon Jetpack Mifi providing the internet connection. All this was riding around in the car and hardwired to the cars (very weak) 12V system.

It took about 50 GB of data per car to stream about 30 hours of video.

I had talked with Chad at Racing Radios on many occasions about making us an audio out plug in our car harness so we could connect it to the stream. At first he told me we would only be able to get the crew side of the conversation and no driver. A coupe days prior to the race he decided he could do 2 way communications so we snipped the harnesses out of the cars and overnighted them to Atlanta. After same day turnaround we got them back and reinstalled as we were loading. Im so glad we did, it made it a lot more fun to watch.

FYI: The drivers mic was hot all the time to the stream. So not everything was meant to be heard. After reviewing my qualifying video I didn't realize I had cursed at someone that got in my way! Oops.

If anyone has interest the 2 streams should post onto youtube very soon. Apparently it takes a while to encode and save 25 hours of high def video.

Hope everyone has a healthy and happy holiday season.

See you in 2018!

[starfmguy]

Thanks Jeff and the whole team, for letting us on the inside of the race. It was great to listen to all the to and fro, feedback and information needed to complete the race and win the class. I didn't recognize David's voice at the time, but great job! When issues came up, you all went about solving them very professionally, and made some great decisions on the fly. The only drawback was I felt like one of the crew in that I did not get much sleep !!! lol. Well done !!! (& great drive Kenton!)