24 Hour of LeMons
A picturesque photo of our Escort cresting Buttonwillow's Magic mountain hill.
Our hopes were quickly crushed, however, when I was assessed a black flag for going four wheels off, and this time we had to park the car for 45 minutes as a penalty. The really frustrating part was that I actually hadn't gone off, but the car in front of me did! As I drove through the dust cloud, the corner marshal must have thought it was me. Arguing our cause got us nowhere, even with video footage in hand. This set us back so much that we only stood to move up a couple places in the standings, but we soldiered on and even with more than two hours of non-running time on Sunday, the Ford Escort crossed the line and finished the race in 43rd place out of 99 participants.
It wasn't the result we were hoping for, but then again, the car finished in one piece in the top half of the standings and will live to run another 24-hour race. The winning car was a Mustard Yellow Volvo 240 with a carbureted V-8 swap that ran a fastest lap time of 2:17.60. In comparison, I managed a best of 2:29.05 in the Escort.
Despite the drama with the officials and our electrical gremlins, I had quite an amazing experience racing in the 24 Hours of LeMons. Nowhere else can you get such good door-to-door action for such a cheap entry fee. You'll quickly realize that as fun as lapping days are, the rush of racing against almost 100 cars is an entirely different feeling. It's literally one of the most fun things I have done in life.
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That's a Hayabusa motorcycle engine stuffed into the engine bay of this Geo Metro. Clever,
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One of the many cars that were fast but out of control. This Cavalier wagon spent a good a
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