Benicia racer has rough time getting to Thunderhill

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Things didn’t go smoothly at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Willows last weekend for Benicia Legends driver Phil Joy.

Anything but.

The trouble started Friday as Joy was on his way to the track to compete in the National Auto Sport Association’s (NASA) Northern California Golden Masters racing series. His main car, a white coupe bearing the No. 47, had gotten new brakes at Radeuchel Performance Motorsports in Oakdale, and he picked it up on the way to Thunderhill.

About halfway to Willows, driving a borrowed truck that pulled the trailer carrying the No. 47, “the lights started dimming a little. I changed the high beams, and about two seconds later the whole front started smoking,” Joy said.

The wiring harness of the truck had come into contact with the battery and shorted out the electrical system. “Here it is 10 o’clock at night over on the side of the freeway, nobody around,” he said. Joy had to walk about a mile to pick up a couple rolls of electrical tape, then do some night-time patchwork on the truck.

“I got to the track at around midnight,” he said.

Saturday morning at the track started out like a typical race weekend. “We were fastest in practice. The brakes were working good, trying to break them in.”

During qualifying, however, “I come out on the straightaway, and I hit it hard — “ and he heard a loud, grinding noise.

Joy limped the car back to the pit area. “I thought it was the rear end with the way it ground, so we pull out the axle, pull out the rear end. Started working on the engine, found out it was some big bearing in the motor,” he said.

It wasn’t the sort of thing that could be fixed in time to race. And Joy, for once, had not brought his backup car. It was back in Benicia.

“The one time I didn’t bring the other car!” he said of his dark-blue No. 47 sedan.

Joy missed Saturday’s race. He brought the white car back to Benicia and picked up the blue car, then drove back north with his own truck, “thinking, ‘I’m not going to have any more problems,’” he said.

But fate had other ideas.

“I get out on 680 and blow a tire!” he said. “Of course the spare I (had taken) out because I had all this other stuff in there.

“I called somebody, who came and got me, got the spare, put on the spare … Got back up there at 10 o’clock at night.”

Sunday morning, he practiced fast in the blue No. 47 and qualified fastest in his Master Class.

Then two other drivers dropped out.

“Now we had a ghost,” he said. “They call it ghost because if you have less than five (drivers in a class), you don’t get first-place points.”

But after all he had been through, he wasn’t going to skip the race. And he had good speed during the first few laps.

“I was playing with the Pro (driver) thinking, ‘OK, I could get him here, OK, I could get him there,’” he said. Then a Thunder Roadster blew an oil line on Turn 10, which caused the race to be run under caution for 13 laps.

Joy had missed his window.

“I learned two things. When you have a chance, grab it, don’t wait. If I had passed him for the overall win, I would have been sitting pretty.” And, “don’t try your last-lap strategy two laps before the checkered flag, because then the competition knows what you’re going to do.”

Joy finished second overall and first in his class. But even with the adversity, he kept his lead in the NASA Golden Masters class.

A third thing Joy learned: Don’t leave the blue car at home.

“I’ve been looking at how to modify the trailer to carry two cars,” he said.

NASA’s next race will be June 15-16 at Sonoma Raceway.

It’s a much shorter drive.

“I’m glad we’re back at Sonoma next month,” Joy said.