In a strange turn of events for LeMons staffers, whose ideas are usually so brilliant, Sunday morning’s crank-Le Mans-start competition did not go particularly smoothly. The race pitted the two crank-startable cars in the field against each other (Team Tinworm’s Humber Super Snipe and Michael “Spank” Spangler’s Renault 10/Dacia 1100)—done in classic Le Mans style, the two drivers were required to run to their cars, cranks in hand, start the engines, and drive off.
Not four feet into the contest, Tinworm captain Alan Frisbie received a healthy forearm shiver from Spank, which immediately sent Frisbie to the pavement.
The silver lining for Frisbie, who broke the fall primarily with his left thumb, was that he wasn’t impaled through the neck by a Humber Super Snipe hand crank on the way down.
And really, any day where that doesn’t happen is a good one.
Elsewhere, the Judge-Phil-less Penalty Box (His Honor Judge Phil had to return to the Bay Area for family reasons) was filled with a team of replacement enforcers.
Extremely well-thought-out backup systems are an integral part of the LeMons organization—when Judge Phil stepped away, a crack team of experienced lawmen seamlessly took over. The group, which included Evil Genius Racing owner John Pagel, car bloggers Jason Torchinsky and Tim Odell, and anorexia survivor Shawn Rodgers, quickly applied their own flavor of LeMons justice.
When a driver of the Mad Taxi RX7 was perhaps behaving too aggressively on track, Torchinsky pulled him aside for a spa treatment—so as not too be too cruel, he provided free ingredients for a relaxing facial.
At the checkered flag, it was Cerveza Racing cruising to yet another Class A and overall win, the Super Troopers scoring the Class B honors, and the Pinewood Dirtbags Chevy Luv posting an unlikely come-from-behind win in Class C.
Well, perhaps it wasn’t all that unlikely for the Dirtbags, as part of their path to glory involved overtaking the K-Car and one of the worst Porsche 914s to ever appear on a road course. Still, for a truck that has such a high probability of bursting into flames at any second (the identically prepared sister truck to the winning entry indeed did suddenly burst into flames midway through the Saturday session).
Class B was only part of the story for the Super Troopers, whose event-long dedication to their theme earned the team its first Organizers’ Choice trophy.
Saturday’s street-car-into-race-car engine swap proved to be a lasting fix, as the OMShenanigans BMW 7-series completed the event with a blown oil cooler hose as the only hiccup in the repair. Since this strategy involved putting the street car on the trailer and driving the race car several hundred miles back home after the race, the team was also rewarded with a Heroic Fix trophy.
The grand prize in all of LeMons, the Index of Effluency, came down to a heated battle between the very same two entries in the ill-fated hand-crank Le Mans start challenge: the Humber of Team Tinworm and Spank’s Idioti Curse o Masina Pentru Idioti.
Amazingly, the pair finished right next to one another in the final standings at P72 and P73, with the Humber nipping the Renault by just two laps.
Ultimately, Spank’s inspired use of farm animals to complete his theme wound up being the difference, and the Renault team went home with the IoE trophy.
To avoid sending Humber captain Alan home with only a bruised (or dislocated, or whatever) thumb to show for his effort, he was awarded Better Luck Next Time honors.
When two cars that have no business being anywhere near a road course manage mid-pack results in a grueling hot-weather endurance race, it’s good sport to scan the cars that lost to such ridiculous entries. In no particular order: Porsche 944, BMW E30, BMW E36, Mazda RX7, Audi A4, Mazda Miata, VW GTI, Acura Integra, Mustang, Camaro. So, while the uninitiated may look at Cerveza’s dominance and conclude that a BMW is the ticket to LeMons glory, it’s equally or perhaps more likely that you’ll bring a totally sweet Bimmer that winds up staring at a set of Super Snipe taillights when the checkered flag falls. And that’s not even mentioning the car that went through tech filled with chickens.
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