Sunday, November 28, 2010

Aftermath: Laissez les Crapheaps Roulez 2010

OK, I've recovered enough from the race (and the Thanksgiving festivities are over) -- so here's the aftermath post. It's unfortunate that the fog turned a 24-hour race into a 19-hour race, but the forced rest was very welcome. True 24-hour Lemons races are exhausting.

Joe pilots the Neon at speed at dusk
Joe piloted the Neon from dusk until full dark.

Circuit Grand Bayou is notorious for being tough on tires, so we took along lots of them-- one sacrificial set for practice from our VW, plus two full sets of stickier tires for the race and two unmounted tires. Our in-race tire changes would have been substantially slower and tougher if we hadn't been pitted right next to our Jetta-driving colleagues. (Tetanus Racing is a "spin-off" of SNAFU Racing, essentially. Chuck & Andy have been using the SNAFU name for over a decade.) Each time we had to do a tire change on the Neon or the Jetta, we had two full teams of people grabbing tools and tires so it was a great feeling of teamwork to get those stops done quickly.

SNAFU Racing's police JettaSNAFU Racing went with a German police theme for the Jetta's debut.

As the racing resumed, we were excited to be in the top ten cars-- 10th place! Mary started the day for us and we think we even got all the way up to 8th place briefly. Unfortunately our emotions got the best of us and we pushed a little too hard, ending up with several black flags for two-wheels-off moments. Still, we did have a running car at the end of the race and got our best finish yet: 9th place. The race had 47 cars start, and about half were running on the afternoon of day 2.

The Jetta placed in 31st, which was a nice showing for the car's debut. They had some issues with the exhaust system popping some leaks, a fuel-pump that popped a wire loose, and also had some black-flag incidents due to spins on their rock-hard second-hand tires-- but when it ran it handled well.

Hearty congratulations to Brian and the Property Devaluation team for their win of the Index of Effluency at this race. Brian has applied the skills & knowledge he used for the CapriStang we took to Ohio to make a wickedly fast Ford Fairmont station wagon.
Property Devaluation Racing's Ford Fairmont race car

My thanks go to Property Devaluation & SNAFU Racing for pit-stop help, to Glen for Neon-tuning advice, to Lemons HQ & CGB for making this a 24-hour race, and to the Firkin & Phoenix for the encouragement (and snazzy team T-shirts to boot).

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