Some of the guys at work; Cameron, Mitch, Dave, and I decided to go in together and rent a LeMons car this year. If you’re and avid follower of my blog, you’ll remember that way back in 2008, I ran the Yee-Haw! LeMons race with Jeff, Nick, Scott, and Doug (as support) at MSR Houston. We actually did really well in that race since we built the car up and prepped it properly. We had an overall 7th place finish. This time, the result was not so good. Of course, there were 166+ cars that started this race at Thunderhill. Things have changed a lot since the last time I raced, and it looks like the $500 cars are worth way more than $500 nowadays. There’s some seriously creative heaps too.
We rented a 1990 Honda Civic Wagovan. And since we paid for the premium rental price, we expected an arrive and drive experience. Unfortunately that was not the case. The car didn’t arrive until about 2 hours before tech closed. Since Chris, the guy we rented the car from show up so late, our pit was about as far from the track entrance as you could get. We were closer to the parking lot exit of Thunderhill than the actual track entrance. After 4 hours of tightening all the major suspension and subframe bolts (some of which were finger tight), we proceeded to bleed the brakes. The theme was a Coroner car, and the dead body tied to the top lasted about 15 laps before we had a flat and had to pit.
A portentous sign of things to come was the Korean Air playing card we found in the door, along with a handful of loose bolts. The rear upper control arm bushing is completely pushed out, so we WD40’d it back in and stuck a hose clamp on it to hopefully keep it in place. The bottom right photo is Dave going our for the start of the race.
Here’s our pit, we shared it with 3 other cars that Chris was renting out.
Here’s the dead body in various states of flying off from the beginning of the race to right before we had to pit.
Unfortunately, Mitch forgot to bring his 100-400mm lens, and I only packed my 24-70 expecting him to bring it. Turns out I didn’t have any time to shoot photos anyway since 2 people were needed for fueling, and the next driver had to be ready to get in the car. And this brings us to the most disappointing part of the weekend. We were told that the car could run about 1 hour 45 mins on a tank of fuel. That was probably about what we excepted the each driver to be able to take in the 95 deg weather. Turns out that due to the saddle gas tank, and the fuel pickup being on the left side…with most of the high speed high G turns to the left, we got approximately 50 min before the car would start sputtering in the turns. What totally killed us was the pit location being so far away and a 10mph limit the whole way to and from the pits. So we had to pit twice as often as most teams and drive the farthest away. The car was fast and turned some pretty quick laptimes, Dave’s fastest was a 2:22.157, we still finished 15th place in Class B and 55th (out of 166) overall.
In the end we still had a blast. The car was surprisingly mechanically sound, after we went through it and sorted things out. It had a ton of grip and enough power to blast by a lot of the slower cars. Our pit mates with a later model Civic sedan finished only 5 places lower than us while they ran an average of 10 seconds slower per lap. Not pitting is the key to doing well.
An off track incident right at the beginning of the race. I think that’s the early 90’s Accord sedan going off. One of the twin Scottish Kilted BMW E30’s caught on fire on the backside of turn3…leaving a fireball and huge plume of black smoke.
Here’s some shots from the awards ceremony, and one of Jay Lamm himself (in the fedora looking hat).
Here’s a couple shots of the sunset on our hellish drive back to Orange County from Willows (north of Sacramento). I got home around 1am.
Since I didn’t have the time or ability to take many photos, I had to rely on others shots of our car on track. Thanks to Murilee Martin for the shots below. Clockwise from top left, the 187 Wagovan shooting the gap between the My-Doll (yes that is a bloody tampon on top) E30 and the Porsche Escort ZX2. The Wagovan getting stuck behind the moving chicane Corvair in the thick of traffic. The Wagovan passing the Cor-veg (running on vegetable oil) on the outside. Side view of the Wagovan.
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