After lining up the largest and most interesting field of Midwestern LeMons racers we’ve ever seen on Friday, we dropped the green flag on Saturday morning and presided over a drizzly, cold day of racing at GingerMan Raceway. When the checkered flag came out soon after sunset, we’d seen a lot of dramatic class battles and lead changes, and here’s how it all sorted out.
There was once a time— actually, that time was the first eight years of LeMons racing— when the Porsche 944 was the most frustrating car imaginable in our series, but the last year or so has seen the emergence of several 944s that can avoid scattering fragile Stuttgart components all over the tarmac for long enough to keep the lead in one of our races. Today, we watched the United Ducktape Racing ’86 Porsche 944 wriggle past the competition during the course of the day’s racing, and it threw neither connecting rod nor transaxle during that period. At the end of the day, this car held an impressive two-lap lead over the Mark’s Harder Lemonaid 1987 BMW 325i. It’s all too likely that this Porsche will sneeze rod bearings out its tailpipe on Sunday, but perhaps the proud German marque has turned the corner and will continue to do well in our series.
The Class B leader does a good job of pointing out the difficulties facing the LeMons Supreme Court when it comes to classing these cars. Last time we saw the Lemon Aid Racing Geo Metro— which features a very ill-advised BMW M50 engine swap and rear-wheel-drive conversion— this abomination collapsed in a heap of diminished expectations and broken dreams, finishing a truly pathetic number of laps. This time, though, the absurdly overpowered GM-badged Suzuki defied all expectations and kept running for most of the day’s racing (in spite of being heavier than a BMW E30), finishing the day with a three-lap edge over the Legitimate Racing Honda Accord.
After the Schnitzelwagen Volkswagen Squareback won Class C at the Doin’ Time In Joliet 24 Hours of LeMons in July, we figured that miraculous accomplishment could never be repeated — after all, the Schnitzelwagon had failed in typical fragile Volkswagen fashion in race after race for the past two years. Still, though, it seemed wrong to refrain from promoting a Class C winner to Class B, even in the case of an air-cooled Ausfallwagen. But, since we’re talking about what amounts to a Beetle with 400 additional pounds of heft and a crank-driven cooling fan, we offered the team a choice between Class B and Class C with 13 penalty laps… and the team took the latter option.
Wouldn’t you know, at the end of Saturday’s race session, the Schnitzelwagen held a two-lap advantage over the Afunzalo Racing Fiat X1/9, even with the 13-lap handicap. LeMons car classing, it is more art than science.
Meanwhile, the 1981 Dodge Mirada of Team Sheen has stayed relevant in the Class C race, ending the day fourth in class and 18 laps behind the Schnitzelwagen. 18 laps sounds like a lot, but Class C is the sort of place where you can be leading one minute and watching your crankshaft clank down the asphalt the next, so we might well see the quintessential Malaise Era Mopar take a miraculous class win on Saturday.
As is always the case, many teams are fighting maddeningly undiagnosable mechanical demons as the sun sets over Lake Michigan. The 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix Super Fly Pimpmobile of Team Can You Dig It looked great all day, but then got knocked off the track by a typical-for-its combination of ignition and/or fuel-system problems. Anyone got a spare Quadrajet?
At the same time, teams with more modern hardware are criss-crossing the Upper Midwest in search of parts to replace their blowed-up hardware, and we can expect local Craigslist sellers to get many late-night phone calls from LeMons teams looking for that hard-to-find missing puzzle piece. Such is the life of a LeMons racer.
Sunday morning, the whole demented circus lurches into action once again. Be sure to drop by later to see what happens at GingerMan Raceway!
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/108EZI7
via Agya
