Black Iron Racing, winners of the Altamont '07 race, went with their standard LeMons formula for Buttonwillow: BMW 5 Series minus all the bodywork equals win! Unfortunately for them, they didn't modify their driving technique.
At the old Altamont races, drivers could get away with metal-bending, demolition-derby-style Max Maxism on the track... but times have changed! Black Iron caused some grumbling with their insanely fast mid-90s 540, what with the screamin' V8 and all, because nobody believed that they'd built the car for under $500 (the LeMons Supreme Court believed them, sort of, but we have no influence over the rabble when it comes time for Curse voting). That became quasi-irrelevant, however, once they dive-bombed and/or brake-checked just about every other driver on the track yesterday, and they became the first-ever LeMons team to win both the People's Curse and the Overall Win awards during their career.
We really enjoyed the "audience participation" Curse at the last New England race (in which each team contributed a volunteer armed with a hand tool of some sort, with the whole mob given three minutes to do their worst to the Cursed machine), but the potential for sledgehammer-to-skull injuries was just a little too scary for us to repeat the same exact concept this time. This time, each team contributed one volunteer armed with a wrench. No "tools" like baseball bats, bumper jacks, or cutting torches allowed (though pipe wrenches and monstrous adjustable wrenches were kosher). After a few three-minute sessions of wrenching by close to 100 frenzied racers (Chief Perpetrator Lamm really wanted a cylinder head, so he added a couple of sessions), just about every fastener on the car had been removed. Black Iron is free to rejoin the race if they can make their car run again, but we suspect it may not be possible to do so in the few remaining hours.