INDYCAR: Bryan, Colton Herta team up for Thunderhill

Above: Bryan Herta during his final race, the 2008 ALMS event at Miller Motorsports Park.

Bryan Herta will return to racing for the first time since 2008 when he shares a prototype with his son Colton, pro racer Colin Braun and other teammates at NASA's 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December. The IndyCar and ALMS driver-turned-Indy 500-winning team owner, racing with his son for the first time, will pilot a Chevy V8-powered Ginetta G57 owned by Ryan Carpenter and engineered by Colin's father Jeff.

"Very excited about our driver line-up this year," Braun said. "Having Ryan with us again is going to be great. We all learned a lot from 2015 to put towards this year so that experience will be great. And to have Bryan and Colton join us will be awesome. Bryan's experience and knowledge will be invaluable. Colton looks to be on the path to stardom, so it will be neat to get to race alongside both of them. I have a huge respect and understanding of how cool it is to work with your father as well, since my dad has been engineering my IMSA car at CORE for the past year. I am glad those guys will be able to race as a father/son duo. Really excited!"

The veteran Flying Lizard Motorsports team won last year's 25 Hour in a Toyo-shod Audi R8 and will be back to defend its crown with team co-owner Darren Law, Johannes van Overbeek, Dion von Moltke and Mike Hedlund.

"The 25 is just a really fun event," Law said. "It's is low pressure, kind of old-school racing. We are in one of the fastest cars so you are constantly just flying by other drivers. It takes a lot of patience and racecraft to pick the right time to go or not go when passing the other cars, sometimes 20 a lap. It is really a blast out there, but you have to be extra careful because of the large difference in the closing speeds and skill levels of the drivers. It also has a huge range of changing conditions from warm to cold from wet to dry, light to dark, you never know what you are going to get and you will probably get all of those conditions and more."

In addition to the large grids that made the pro-am endurance race unique, the roster of past and present stars will continue as Ryan Eversley, Al Unser Jr., Kyle Marcelli, Randy Pobst, Sean Rayhall and others head to Northern California to finish the year with one final pursuit of victory.