We made it through tech and bullshit inspection with only a 1 lap penalty. And that resulted from the judges pushing on the front of the car and noticing how stiff the suspension felt. Most of that was from the cut springs we have on the front, but part was probably the shocks. Oh well, a one lap penalty is nothing in a LeMons race.
I’m not at all sure where we started Saturday because a LeMons start has all of the cars out on track and circulating with the green thrown at some random time. I was in the car for the first 1-1/2 hours and I passed way more cars than passed me. That was lot of fun! The standings are posted hourly and at the end of the first hour we were 21st. So I’d guess a bit better than that when we changed drivers. That first session was crazy. 119 cars on circuit just over a mile long. Think bumper to bumper freeway traffic at race speeds.
Fred had been out only a little while when he was punted and spun, which brought the car in for a chat with the judges. In case you don’t know, most anything that happens on track in a LeMons race (a wheel off, contact, spin, etc) will result in a black flag and penalty. Since it is much easier to identify the puntee than the punter, the innocent gets the penalty and the guilty usually escapes punishment. Some of the penalties are outrageous “street theater”, but we got lucky and were just tasked with removing the intake manifold from a small block chevy engine.
That could have taken a while as we only carry metric tools. But Greg Moberg had a mega-set of Craftsmen that included english sockets and wrenches. So in no time at all we had the intake off and were back on track with Scott in the car.
Scott ran a clean session and recovered part of the ground we lost in the penalty. But something happened when Al was in the car (I don’t remember what) and we got another black flag and got to take a cylinder head off the small block (what fun). By then, if memory serves, we’d fallen to around 32nd. Fred ran a clean session and we were moving back up in the field. Since Al couldn’t be there on Sunday, and since his session was cut short, he got back in the car. Just before the end of his session he tangled with another car and got black flagged.
The LeMons rules are four black flags and you are out, what they didn’t mention is that at three you park the car for the rest of the day. So with an hour and a half left to go we were done for the day. The Moberg crew beat us by picking up their third black flag before we got ours. That wasn’t a total loss as we got everything done that needed doing, got cleaned up, and were at Gus’ drinking beer and eating pizza before the crowd began to appear.
We started Sunday in 40th as a result of missing the last hour and a half. I was somewhat surprised that we weren’t further down. Because of quiet time there is only a two hour block on Sunday morning and to make the most of it we ran the whole session with no driver change. Since I’d given my second session to Al the previous day to get him some more track time, I got to start. The morning started dry, but rain was threatening. It wasn’t too long after the start before it started raining.
That is when things started to get real interesting. It was raining hard enough and rained long enough that there was standing water along the edges of the track and in places on the track. You didn’t dare get the wheels in that water, I found out, as it would pull the car off track. Knowing that was one thing, but being able to tell where the edge of the track was became quite another thing. While the car does have one working wiper (on the passenger side), it has no defroster. That was a major problem as I could only keep a small porthole open that I could reach. The longer I ran the worse the fog got. Finally I had to bring the car in as I could not see except directly in front of the car. The deciding moment was when I was passing a car to my left and realized I was also passing a car to my right that I couldn’t see. Driving by braille is not a comfortable way to race! Some RainX made a big difference and we ended the morning session in 35th. Scott and Fred looked like a pro race crew cleaning an applying RainX to the windshield. They got the job done faster than I’d have believed possible!
Fred and Scott did a great job in the afternoon racing with no penalties and we just kept moving back up in the standings. I sort of lost track of where we were during the day, but by mid afternoon I knew we’d gotten back up to 31st. A minor tactical error was in not having Scott drive for as long as fuel would last (about 2 hours). If we’d done that I think we’d have finished higher than we did by eliminating one driver change and fuel stop. Fred did drive for two hours so I got the last half hour.
I went tearing out on track and managed to spin the car on the first turn of my outlap (that’s a bit embarrassing!). Knowing they’d black flag the car I went straight to the penalty area and “confessed my sin” and lucked out with a “go forth and sin no more”. So it was a stop and go that didn’t hurt much.
We figured that we probably finished about 28th, but nobody thought to look at the results before we left the track. So hearing that the finish position was 23rd feels real good!
Okay, maybe that isn’t as amusing as one of Scott’s commentaries. But there you have it.
