-We inspected the entrants at the sixth annual Southern Discomfort 24 Hours of LeMons on Friday, and today they raced. We saw a lot of lead changes in each of three classes, but— unusually for LeMons— Class A turned out to be the most exciting. Here’s what went down in Kershaw today.
-Team S.O.B. (Sick of Breaking) and their 1986 Volkswagen Golf are competing in their 15th LeMons race, and they have yet to take an overall win in our series. They’ve come close many times and contended just about every time, but the maddening fragility of the Volkswagen Golf has undercut their considerable driving skills and tight team organization every single time. Today, the car didn’t scatter its transmission on the pavement, nor did its electrical system let out all the Bosch smoke, and the S.O.B.s finished the session with a three-lap edge over the P2 car.
-That P2 team is another outfit that has been chasing an overall LeMons win for many years: Vermont Bert One and their Volvo 262C Bertone coupe. This car has a 244 Turbo engine instead of the original PRV V6, and the Bert Ones have come agonizingly close to a win in nearly as many LeMons events as has the S.O.B. team. They’ve roamed the country with their chopped-top Swedo-Italian coupe, racing in California, New Hampshire, Texas, South Carolina, and just about everywhere else that LeMons goes, and they’ve missed that elusive win by a couple laps here and a few laps there. Longtime LeMons fans will have a hard time choosing which of these teams to root for, since each is equally deserving.
-The team that led the field for most of the day ended up in P4 and six laps back of the leader, after a power-steering-line failure late in the afternoon. The Hard Parkers came out of nowhere and had a near-perfect day on the track, and a bit of research revealed that the team’s roster is packed with Improved Touring S ringers. The car is an unexceptional V6-powered 1996 Ford Mustang, but the driving has been exceptionally good.
-The S.O.B.s are taking apart their VW for the umpteenth time, trying to catch the about-to-fail parts before they can torpedo their chances for a win… again.
-The scene in the Bert One compound looks very similar.
-However, both teams— in fact, just about everybody at CMP— put down their tools and headed over to the Team Turbo Schnitzel geodesic dome— which takes three guys about six hours to assemble but is worth every bit of work put into it— for the massive dinner prepared by pit-neighbors Terminally Confused Racing. These Honda Civic racers cooked 120 pounds of pig meat in four Big Green Eggs, managing to feed the members and hangers-on of 77 hungry LeMons teams, plus all the race organizers, corner workers, and track employees.
-Naturally, plenty of the local refreshments were on hand. The “Painkiller” in the foreground tasted like Ozium air-freshener liquid, fabric softener, carb dip, and nail-polish remover, with hints of Orange Dye #334 and a Listerine finish.
-Class B was very exciting as well. The Knoxville Lowballers’ Geo Metro, which features the Duratec V6 from a Ford Contour SVT in the back, has become a fairly well-sorted race car after a mere dozen races in which it was parts-droppingly unreliable and boasted garbage-truck-with-busted-tie-rods-grade sketchy handling. We can’t believe this is actually happening, but the Lowballers’ Geo managed to finish the day leading Class C and in P3 overall. Just to confound everyone further, this car somehow set the fast lap of the day.
-Maybe the Orange Dye #334 is doing strange things to our senses, because it appears that the other Knoxvegas Lowballers Class B car— the 1998 Ford Contour SVT with Taurus wagon body graft— is pursuing its stablemate for the Class B prize, sitting just six laps behind the Lowballer Geo.
-Leading Class C and in 29th place, we’ve got the Fuzzy Blumpkins and their 1979 Ford Pinto.
-Those Blumpkin Pinto pilots had better not get too complacent, because they’re being pursued by the relentless Team Fairlylame drivers and their 1964 Ford Fairlane sedan. Just three laps separate the two teams, and Class C wins generally go to the team that breaks the fewest parts on Day Two of racing.
-Meanwhile, teams are breaking parts and scrambling to find engines, transmissions, and whole parts cars on Craigslist tonight. We’ve got quite a few Heroic Fix contenders making their moves tonight.
-A lot will happen tonight in the pits and tomorrow on the track, so be sure to check in for all your 24 Hours of LeMons updates!
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1EMXgvk
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