-In our sixth season of racing at Sonoma Raceway aka Sears Point, the 2015 Sears Pointless event had perfect weather, some great new cars, and a lot of BMW E36s and Mazda RX-7s crashing into other cars and various immobile track features. Still, some teams managed to stay out of the dreaded Penalty Box and take home some trophies, so let’s see all those winners!
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-Normally, we’re not much excited by the team that gets the most laps and/or the Class A trophy, but this team had been chasing a LeMons win in various horrible-looking, tartan-tablecloth-covered BMW E30s since the early days of LeMons racing, always without much success. The Flying Scotsmen pulled off an overall win at the Utah race last year… but the feat was accomplished in a Volvo 740 wagon and under a different team name.
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-This time, though, the wretched-looking 1985 BMW 325 of the Flying Scotsman grabbed the Class A and overall wins by less than a single lap. Congratulations, Flying Scotsmen!
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-And what car was in P2 and on the same lap as the Flying Scotsmen BMW at the very end, out of 177 entries that started? The very same Flying Scotsmen Volvo 745 that won in Utah last summer. This may be the first time that the same team has taken both P1 and P2 positions in a 24 Hours of LeMons race.
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-In Class B, the Ford Pinto Cruising Wagon of the Model T GT and Pinto Bean Bandits outlasted the Fiero Libre Jackson Pontiac Fiero and Panting Polar Bear Ford Crown Victoria and took the win by a single lap. Note the tasteful bubble window and “Shagin’ (sic) Wagon” graphics.
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-The Volvo 240 can be hard to class, since we’ve got 240s in the series that range from excruciatingly slow to top-contender fast. The Rep-Eat-Offenders’ 1987 244 has a squishily stock suspension and automatic transmission and had broken something important at each of its previous races, so it seemed like a longshot to contend in the slowest LeMons class (plus my LeMons team raced a 244, way back in 2008, so perhaps this influences my classing decisions). Not this time! Nothing broke, the drivers stayed out of trouble, and the Rep-Eat-Offenders finished in 43rd place overall and first in Class C. Their closest pursuers were in a Volkswagen Vanagon, which should tell you something about Class C.
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-Winning the created-for-the-occasion “Child Labor Award, Presented by The Gap,” the 2001 Mazda Protege campaigned by the Blue Oak School in nearby Napa impressed us with their car’s beautifully executed paint and decals. Well, at least the car looked great until a big brown box Caprice plowed into it.
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-Still, the kids who helped build the car were very happy with their weekend of racing (you need to be at least 16 to race, but there’s no age limit for car builders).
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-Speaking of cars bent out of shape by a big, ill-handling brown box Caprice, the Bangers N Mash Jensen-Healey got turned into sort of a confused parallelogram by contact with the aforementioned understeering Chevy, but the team persevered and hammered their car back into some semblance of a functioning race car. Heroic Fix!
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-After all the bent metal caused by a bunch of racing rookies in a gigantic, wallowy, not-so-controllable 1984 Chevy Caprice sedan, you’d think that the members of the Point Breakers team would be considered Public Enemies Number One through Five by the race organizers. Not so!
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-Because there was so little malice on the Point Breakers’ part (who offered to help fix the cars they damaged), and because we loved their Ex-Presidents’ Point Break theme so much, we awarded this team the special “We Don’t Actually Hate You, You Just Suck” trophy.
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-The Pure Evel team started the weekend full of optimism. Their Evel Knievel suits looked great, their 1991 Saturn SC2 had a matching paint job, and it looked like they had an excellent shot at a Class B win.
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-Why, they even baked us this beautiful Pure Evel Saturn cake!
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-Sadly, their car’s engine swallowed a couple of valves early on Saturday and the metal carnage would have been a race-ender for many teams.
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-The members of Pure Evel didn’t even think of giving up, though. Knowing that every junkyard in the country is overflowing with Saturns, they headed over to the Pick-N-Pull about 20 minutes away (the very same yard where I found the Mythbusters “trunk machine-gun” Cadillac a while back) and found a low-mile Saturn SL2 with a good-looking engine.
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-After wrenching all night in their Knievel suits, the Pure Evel guys had their Saturn running and ready to greet the green flag on Sunday morning. Hooray! Unfortunately, storybook endings sometimes elude even the most deserving racers, and the new engine threw two connecting rods through the side of the block, earning Pure Evil the self-explanatory I Got Screwed award.
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-The Jackalope Jockeys and their ’77 Volkswagen Rabbit would have won a trophy at any less crowded LeMons race, thanks to their spectacular-looking car, but we ran out of award hardware. Still, honorable mention for the VW Jackalope.
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-While we’ve seen many American Motors cars in the series, no AMC Eagle had ever set tire to a LeMons track. That all changed last weekend, when Pit Crew Revenge brought this completely stock 1981 Eagle to the race.
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-The Pit Crew Revenge Eagle had Colorado dealership tags (before the rise of the Subaru Outback, the Eagle was the iconic Colorado car) and came with ineradicable cannabis stench and stereotype-reinforcing detritus from its most recent, San Francisco-based owner.
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-The Eagle was incredibly slow, running lap times a good 45 seconds behind the medium-quick cars even with experienced racers behind the wheel, but so what? Another well-deserved Judges’ Choice award for Pit Crew Revenge.
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-For the Organizers’ Choice award… well, this photograph of the Two Many Wheels Hardcastle and McCormick Coyote X should explain it.
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-A little history lesson is in order here. The Too Many Wheels Coyote X started its LeMons life as the second car (in addition to their Volvo 245) for Bernal Dads Racing, way back at the 2010 Goin’ For Broken race.
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-The Bernal Dads decided that a Miata was just too boring for them, so they grafted on most of a Volvo 245 body and created the “Molvo”.
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-The Molvo raced for a few years and caused a lot of double-takes, but eventually the Bernal Dads sold the car and replaced it with a cookie-themed Alfa Romeo Milano.
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-When the Two Many Wheels guys took ownership of the Molvo, they removed the Volvo sheet metal and replaced it with this Franzia wine-in-a-box rig (Sears Point being located in the heart of California’s famed Wine Country).
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-The “Frankenzia” Miata dispensed real (bad) red wine from a spigot on the box and got passed by the likes of Buick Park Avenues running on five cylinders.
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-So, in between the Arse Freeze-a-Palooza in December and last weekend, much work with plywood, spray foam, and fiberglass was done, and this gorgeous Coyote X was created. Even though the body modifications added what must have been hundreds of pounds of extra weight to the Miata, it still got around the track reasonably quickly.
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-For the big prize, the Index of Effluency, the 1966 Volvo Amazon of Team Rancho de Llama ran away with the top trophy this time.
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-This team won the Index of Effluency at the 2013 Arse Freeze-a-Palooza with their 1971 Volvo 1800E, but the car crashed hard at the Guinness World Record-setting 2014 Vodden the Hell Are We Doing race and the chassis structure was a total write-off. So, the team found an Amazon shell and transplanted all the running gear from the wrecked 1800E.
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-For a while, the Rancho de Llama Amazon contended for Class C, and its P83 finish was very impressive for an ancient, B18-powered Volvo with what might as well be a tractor suspension. Well done, Rancho de Llama!
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-The next LeMons race takes place in Michigan in a few weeks. If you can’t make it there, be sure to check in for race updates.
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from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1NggQSU
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