Yesterday was just non-stop action for the tech-inspection/practice-laps day at the 24 Hours Of LeMons Arse Freeze-A-Palooza, but I got a few photos and some info tidbits for race fans...
Even though many entrants from the Pacific Northwest were thwarted by bad weather (or worse than thwarted), we had quite an assortment of cars show up. Two TR7s, three Alfa Romeo Alfettas, a Corvair, and half of what we dearly hope will be a pair of V12 Jags are all here. Oh, and a Yugo should be racing as well, having shown up at the last second and getting a full cage installed in the parking lot.
Some members of the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys managed to make it to the track, and numerous teams have offered them seat time. Looks like they'll be doing some driving in the car that got the second-highest BS Inspection lap penalty in LeMons history; yes, a team showed up with a clean Miata, complete with very sanitary Jackson turbocharging setup... and virtually no convincing documentation. We were going to give them 1,499 laps- so as to preserve Krider Racing's awesome lap-penalty record, and provide a lesson to future racers- but we lopped 299 laps off that amount because of their generosity with the carless Surrender Monkeys.
Meanwhile, complaints about potential conflict of interest due to judicial membership in the Black Metal V8olvo team were addressed by recusing ourselves from the BS inspection of the car and leaving it to the Chief Perp. Naturally, a bottle of absinthe- distilled in Alameda- oiled the gears of justice in this case, and all was well.
The CBR900 motorcycle-engined Geo Metro put in a lot of practice laps yesterday, and was the fastest thing on the track, hands down. If that funky drivetrain holds together and it avoids even the slightest contact, it should triumph... but that won't be easy. We let it slide with no lap penalties, so we'll see how that sorts out today and tomorrow.
Yours truly and the Loverman aren't the only Doctors Of Automotive Journalism covering this story; Damon Lavrinc will be providing regular updates over on Autoblog as well (and rumor has it that Mike Bumbeck will be here as well).