24 Hours of LeMons!! LOOKING FOR RACERS IN CT, NY, MA!

[WillM]

Good stuff Carl. Congratulations to the lot of you, nicely done.

[brucesallen]

Fantastic! Congratulations, all.

[Dave_G]

I like the whole format of the Lemons events with the exception of all the unnecessary non driving damage done to the cars.

Actually, damage is only ever inflicted upon one car, the People's Curse. Personally I think the "award" is clever idea, because it does two things: 1) it provides a strong incentive for clean driving; and 2) it provides a strong incentive not to spend lots of money on your car. Usually the damage is inflicted by a giant piece of heavy equipment. This is the first time that I know of that it was done by a mob with hammers. Given the scene, I suspect the punishment will be different next year.

I applaud the Jay and the other LeMons organizers for the strict rules regarding clean driving, coupled with creative and often hilarious "punishments" for transgressors. I was consistently impressed with the level of clean driving I saw on the track (the two Impalas notwithstanding), and entertained from our paddock location right next to the penalty box.

Here's an example: at one point the white 666 Subaru tried to pass me on the inside going into Turn 1. I held my line around the outside, and took the inside of Turn 2 while he held steady next to me. As we approached Turn 3 I though surely one of us would back down, but neither of us did, and we stayed side by side through that turn and into the narrow part of the track as it exited back onto the oval. I thought there was no way to fit two cars side by side there, but somehow we squeezed ourselves through there with no contact. It was outstanding fun, made possible because he knew exactly where I was, and I knew exactly where he was, and nobody did anything stupid. If there were no rules in place penalizing both drivers for contact, I'm sure we would have been bumping door handles the whole way. Personally I think this way was lots more fun.

There were several other times during the event where other drivers around me demonstrated great awareness of traffic, and overall I was very impressed by the quality of driving. Of course there were some inevitable exceptions to that, but once we figured out who they were (like the Impala that earned the People's Curse) it was usually pretty easy to give them a wide berth.

[cfossum]

Dave brings up some good points! His view is also much more mature and better thought out than mine.
I agree that the majority of the field was trying to run clean. Certainly, the threat of the people's curse is reason enough to not spend extra money on the car, but indeed the spirit of the event can be tarnished by big spenders.
By the way, the guy I hit was clearly not aware that I was there. I had been side by side through turn two many times, just as Dave described. That one time, though, the driver of the other car was convinced that he had no need to share the road.
-Carl

[breakaway500]

I guess I really don't understand the rules. I thought the car that got beat up was randomly chosen by the crowd to be destroyed. I thought the penalty box was used for any on track infractions,like off course,hit cones or vehicle to vehicle contact. Isn't there is a claimer rule to disuade teams from putting a lot of money in their cars? I just don't think destroying a perfectly good car with hammers is very sportsmanlike. Guess you had to be there...

[6PAK72]

Carl, this is so cool! What a gas, the three-turn run you describe!

Congratulations for an amazing feat, and for bringing honor to COM! Never ind what it says for an aging, neglected Mazda.

I like the bumper graffitti....

[kredden]

Didn't even know this thread existed until reading the latest issue of the Drift just now...

Yes, I was in one of the Alfa's, in fact the one that placed 2nd this year! One up from last year (The Kielbasa kids came in 2nd last year and first this year). This was only our second time with any wheel-to-wheel. Last year our only goal was to finish so it was quite a surprise to us on how well we did, winning the no prayer of winning trophy by coming in 3rd. This year we thought we could do better and even had a shot at first if that stinkin' Honda bottom end would just break (alas it didn't)!

This year they had a classing system, the Good, Bad, and Ugly. We came in first in class for the Bad finishing 2nd overall. Depending on what your goals are for the race really depends on how you run it. We wanted to stay clean and get as much seat time as possible and try to beat our previous record. Not a good strategy if you want to get one of the money prizes, except for first ($1500 in nickels) which was a long shot given we knew how good the Kielbasa Kids were and how bulletproof their car was last year. If you want to win the $1000 prize (Index of effluency) you need to start with the crappiest of crap-cans and manage to keep it cranking out the laps, this year it was a dog slow Corvair that won it, these guys were great for getting in a LOT of passing practice! The Organizer's Choice award ($500) goes to the team with the best Spirit of LeMons. This year it was won by last years Index of Effluency winner (83 Buick Regal with LARGE horns (not the beeping kind but the beefing kind)) mainly because they went through THREE engines during the race, constantly in the pits swapping parts from one engine to the next, they only went through two last year...

So we weren't really interested in the $'s so we decided to focus on faster driver changes and making sure to keep the legendary Italian reliability at peak performance. We also made sure to keep in close proximity to the other two Alfa Milano teams in the paddock in case spares or help was needed (by us or them). Things were slowed down a little bit this year in that we were not allowed to change drivers while fueling, had to wait until after fueling was done unlike last year. Other than that things went quite well during the race and we managed to keep from getting any penalties. One thing we've noticed is that the organizers go a little easier on the top 10 cars later in the race regarding penalties (assuming you don't do anything flagrant). I got rear ended hard enough to push one of the rear quarter panels in quite a bit in the second day but managed to stay out of the penalty box. We passed when the opportunity presented itself but backed off and didn't push it when it looked iffy. If there was some wanker behind us being overly aggressive we just let them pass, as they usually ended up in the p-box a few laps later!

We had one scare with about 40 minutes left in the race when our heater core decided to rupture and puke its boiling guts onto our last drivers foot. Luckily the rupture was after the valve so turning off the heater (it was on to help us keep the engine cool) stop the hemorrhaging of water. Our driver pulled off the coarse and into the pits with me running full tilt from the stands to help fix whatever the problem was. At this point we had a decent 56 lap or so lead over the #3 car (one of our Milano friends) and since each lap was only about 34 seconds or so we thought we had just blown our chance at 2nd after having been in that spot for the majority of the race! I didn't realize that the heater core had puked and whoever talked to our driver didn't relay that info (I didn't find out until after the race was done!) all I saw was that the cooling fan wasn't running anymore. I was hoping that it wasn't dead as we had hooked up an override switch to allow the driver to keep the fan on all the time if needed, and it was supposed to be running. Hoping for the best we tried connecting it directly to the battery and it started running, phew! So we Maguivered a direct connection to the battery so that it was always running, even when the car was off. We then checked the water level and put in well over a gallon and I couldn't figure out where it was going (and I still didn't know about the heater)! We sent our driver out and hoped for the best, we ended up keeping 2nd by 10 laps.

Upon inspection after we got the car back home we figured out what the fan issue was. We had used the defroster switch and circuit for the fan override, we had just forgotten to change the fuse from 15 to 30 amps, so it had blown! We still need to check the wiring as this should not have stopped the fan as the normal temp sensor wiring was still there so I have my suspicions that we might have wired it in series instead of parallel by mistake...

On the People's curse, each team gets one vote on who they think it should be. There is usually at least one or two cars that are driving like such jerks that they deserve the fate. This year there was 4 that I can think of. They don't use backhoe's at Stafford to destroy the cars like at some of the other venues. Last year a big, slow, annoying, wouldn't let you pass, Mercedes won the honor. That time they opened the oil filler cap, ran the engine at WOT and let the other team captains dump whatever they wanted into it, ball bearings, sand, ketchup, crackers, all sorts of crap. Imagine my surprise when I came out of the chicane on the track and pulled up behind the Mercedes after that! I never passed it again as right after that it died and had to get pushed in.

This year the car that got beat up (literally, with sledges and crowbars) managed to get enough stuff back working and only needed one part to get it running to get it back into the race. They actually had two similar cars in the race, both of which had been in contention for the curse! They asked the organizers to black flag their other car to get it back into the pits so they could take the part. The driver of that car showed why these guys won the curse by ignoring the black flags for the rest of the race so they didn't get to get their cursed car back in, that's the spirit!

Anyway, we had a LOT of fun again this year and are even considering entering the upcoming Ohio event, that one is on a real track (2+ miles long) and requires a totally different fueling and driver strategy than the VERY short Stafford Springs track.

Here is a link to the blog I kept last year documenting the build of our car and our first LeMons race: http://alfamilano.com/wordpress/

Kevin
Scuderia Lemoni