I finally got back onto a road race track December 3-5th at Buttonwillow Raceway in the south valley. Yes, I finally let myself be talked into going competitive road racing with a LeMons Team. I am now a member of the Cajun Coonasses dba Spinal Crap team that won the 2099 Lemons National Team and Driver’s Championship. LeMons cars are a trip. Basically stock piles of junk with extremely good safety gear (cages, seats, harnesses and full drivers safety gear) that race competitively on road race courses throughout the US. The Cajun Coonasses have two ‘91 Nissan Sentra SE-R’s that they campaign on the west coast and a Saturn stored in Texas that they campaign on the southern circuit. Stock or not, when you strip a Sentra SE-R of everything that can be ripped out without the car falling apart, they’re pretty fast. You may remember some of my team mates. They are Scott Macleod, Tony Partida and Kert Miller. All ex-members of the DVMA.
The race was billed as the 2010 LeMons Arse-Freeze-Apolooza. It was cold, it was raining, it was muddy off track and a Buttonwillow kindly pointed out to us that at every event at the track in 2010 a car had ended up on it’s roof. Oh great! The team decided that since I hadn’t been to Buttonwillow before, I should go out first and learn the track on the warm-up laps. Great, a car I’ve never driven on a track I’ve never been on in pouring rain; I’ve never raced in the rain. I got a whole bunch of warm-up laps to learn the track. I went out about 20 cars behind the pace car. It took 12 laps to get all 165 cars on the track and I was about 60 cars back due to cars coming on the track in front of and behind me. The green flag fell and I discovered the joys of driving a front wheel drive car in the rain against a field of mostly rear-wheel drive cars. I could go inside them on the corners, floor it and pull right around them on the inside. Whoo Hoo! At the end of my 1 hour 50 minute session (we drive until the car sputters because it’s running out of fuel) I was up to 21st. I had also managed to slide wildly around turn 13, put both rear tires in the mud at about 50 miles and hour and fill them with mud. I also got hit in the drivers front by a spinning Nissan Z car. Between the two incidents the car had developed a violent shake in 4th gear. It turned out the be the mud in the rear wheels. When I slid off track I had filled the rims with mud; when I got hit some of the mud fell off leaving the rear tires way out of balance. Once the mud was cleaned off the car ran great again.
The rest of Saturday consisted of me driving around Bakersfield looking for front brake rotors to replace the cracked set that were on the car. It turns out that ‘91 Sentra SE-R’s use one of four different brake rotors depending on where they were assembled. Of course, I picked the wrong ones and had to go back for different rotors. I got a call during the second trip to Bakersfield; Kert had hit a Crown Victoria and bent the passenger side front strut. I found one on Highway 58 way out on the way to Mojave and finally made it back to the track just as the checkered flag came out. We were in 83rd place. Not bad with all the trouble we experienced. We changed out the strut and the front brake rotors. Oops, no brake pads and the set on the car were trashed. Scott found a set of used Hawks in the trailer; they would have to last. It looked like Sunday would be another day of babying questionable brakes.
Saturday night at a LeMons race is a social event. The Alfa Romeo teams make enough spaghetti for everyone and the 500 Buck Chuck Crown Victoria team set up wine tasting… Boones Farm Strawberry, MD 20/20, Thunderbird and Cisco. I can still taste the Cisco when I think about it, yuck. Cough medicine tastes better. Even the Ritz Crackers with Cheese Whiz they provided to clear the palate between tastings didn’t help get rid of the taste.
Sunday dawned and, yippee, it wasn't raining. All, of course, wasn’t what we expected, though. It is Lemons. The organizer announced in the driver’s meeting that they were adding another corner to the layout. Uh, OK. He then announced that for an added twist they were reversing the direction we would run the track. Yikes! Everything I had learned yesterday was now useless.
Kert went out and got our first black flag of the weekend when he went off track with all four wheels. He came in to the black flag station and received his penalty. Since he had gone off track to avoid an accident , he was given the Hero’s award. He had to wear a necklace of Alfa Romeo hubcaps and walk around the paddock waving like a beauty queen to his adoring fans. I made the mistake of waling along with him. The official asked if I was from the same team. Yes, I was. “Good,” he said, “you have to walk and wave, too.” I did. The official led the way in his motorized easy chair yelling, “He’s a Hero. He went off track to save innocent lives.” Pretty funny. Yes LeMons is about having fun. It’s real racing. Just inexpensive with a whacky sense of humor. The LeMons racers live by the motto, "Racing isn't just for Rich Idiots, it's for all Idiots."
Kert was finally released to go back on track and finished his session with no other problems. I went out next and promptly went off track going to fast into a corner that was easy in the other direction. I slid back on to the track at pit entrance, so I just went straight to the Penalty Box and reported what had happened to an official. He let me off since I had self reported and I went back onto the track. A couple of laps later I came on a snarl of cars entering a turn, locked up the brakes and decided to just go down an escape road rather than spinning or wrecking. Well, that got me a black flag and back to the Penalty Box I went. “How many black flags is this for your team today?” ”Two,” I answered. “How many yesterday?” “Zero,” I told them. “How many today?” He asked again. “Two,” I answered again. “That’s only because you didn’t get caught on one’” he stated. “Yes, but I came in and self identified,” I told him. “We still have to give you some kind of penalty’” he said, and proceeded to stencil a Yugo logo and the work “YUGO” on the back of the car to let the other driver’s know that I drove like a piece of s***. That’s pretty funny. Back on track I went. Of course the real penalty was the 5 laps I lost sitting in the Penalty Box carrying on a conversation with the officials and getting my Yugo stencil. Scott went out next and about an hour into his session reported that the front brakes were gone. He was driving with the E-brake and downshifting. He came in for fuel and Tony went out for the last hour; still with no brakes. Tony was driving pretty carefully, but in endurance racing it’s not all about speed, its just about completing laps.
Well between mechanical problems, accidents, penalty’s and our own driving abilities, we had reached a high of 21st place, a low of 81st place and managed to finish in 73rd place. Not bad for a $500 car driven by a bunch of jokers like us. Truthfully, we were winners; we had a great time, nobody got hurt and the car only needs basic maintenance to be ready for next time, and I can hardly wait for the next time!
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