You've seen the Burning Man Penalty from the Goin' For Broken 24 Hours of LeMons at Reno-Fernley Raceway last weekend, but that was just one of many innovations in the LeMons Correctional System.
When the superhero-themed World Talent Force (WTF) Civic blew up early in the race (as Honda LeMons cars are wont to do), these two team members were sort of at loose ends once they put their helmets and Nomex away. Naturally, they decided to spend the rest of the weekend in official WTF costume. And that's when it occurred to them that they might be of some help to us in the Penalty Box… making lowly worms worship them! This team spent a long, long time in the desert sun, Smelling The Boots while a jeering audience taunted them.
What we really wanted to do at that point was put choke collars on every member of a miscreant's team and make them follow the WTF women around for the rest of the day, barking and scratching for fleas. Unfortunately, the LeMons Supreme Court got overruled on that fine idea, so instead we settled for making this bad driver serve as a piece of furniture, groveling in the dust as he so deserved.
Because it was Nevada, we replaced the LeMons Wheel Of Misfortune with the LeMons Crap Table Of Punishment. Roll a ten and you got the not-so-bad Preach To The Converted. Roll snake-eyes, however, and you'd be taking a number for the dreaded DMV Penalty… and that one takes a while.
We offered teams a chance to draw blackjack hands against the house for a double-or-nothing deal on their penalties, but had few takers. For some unfathomable reason, the racers felt that we might stack the deck against them. Imagine!
Let's say you're a racer staring down the barrel of the DMV Penalty. The judges hand you some forms to fill out (after waiting a while, of course). Who is the last guy you want writing those forms? Graverobber, of course… and that's just who wrote 'em! Check the gallery below for a better look at a few examples of LeMons DMV paperwork.
We really like dumping cheap beer on cars, so we've added the Gangsta Funeral to our penalty repertoire. You've heard about "pouring one out for the dead homies," right?
We picked up a bunch of 40s of OE, King Cobra, and Mickey's, and we dumped them right into miscreant's cars. On a 90° day. In the sun. Let's just say that teams were begging for the Chemical Ali a few hours after being on the receiving end of the Gangsta Funeral.
It wasn't a good idea to start squawking about the unfairness of our so-called judicial system; once the World's Greatest Whiner Alarm (more on that later) was triggered, the next step was a jar of baby food down the hatch. Mmmm, nutritious ham and lima bean baby food that's been sitting in the sun all day!
Sometimes we had to custom-tailor our punishments to fit a specific set of miscreants, particularly when said miscreants enjoyed all the regular punishments we'd dished out. Here we see Dominik of the Junkyard Dogs team, applying cheerful pink and gold touches to his once-evil Supra. Yeah, that put a stop to his asking for extra penalties; note the pain in his eyes. We gave the Dogs the coveted Judges' Choice trophy, and in return we got a nice LeMons writeup from Junkyard Dogs driver and Suicide Girls writer Heathervescent on the SG site (warning: link is NSFW).
We had high hopes for the Hamthrax Penalty, aka Swine Flu. The miscreant would be forced to don a surgical mask and a rubber pink snout, then search the pits for a hidden "vaccine" syringe. Unfortunately, the pig snouts apparently blew away in a dust devil (which also picked up a large awning tied to four heavy wheels and lifted it 50 feet in the air before smashing it to the ground), and then someone drove over the syringe after we'd only administered the penalty one time. We'll take another shot at the Hamthrax in Louisiana next weekend. See you there!