At the Vodden the Hell Are We Doing? 24 Hours of LeMons race in September, 242 teams registered, 228 managed to get their hoopties onto the Thunderhill Raceway track, and 216 were counted on the first lap after the green flag waved. Why are those numbers significant? Well, that race set the record for the world’s largest endurance road race, and the Guinness Book of World Records folks are in the process of certifying it as such. With so many entries, someone must come in DFL, and that team was the Killer Rabbit Racing Team (KRRT) and their 1986 Volkswagen GTI. We think these guys are heroes deserving of recognition, and here’s why.
Most of the time in these races, some team gets hammered with a staggering quantity of penalty laps by the LeMons Supreme Court, and then that team’s car throws a rod on its fourth lap and finishes a few hundred laps in negative territory and thus in last place. At the record-setting race at Thunderhill, this did not happen.
The KRRT VW rolled into the inspection area during the pre-race inspections, and the LeMons Supreme Court was faced with the kind of dilemma that occurs with Rabbits (and Civics) all the time: while some examples of this type of car can be very quick on a road course, this GTI had a squishy, worn-out suspension and a track record of sluggishness in past races. In Class A, where the fast cars compete, the Killer Rabbit would be eaten alive . . . but it was a little bit too good for Class B. So, we gave the team a choice: Class A, or Class B with a couple of handicap laps to even things out. Wisely, the team took the latter option. We were pleased by their Monty Python & the Holy Grail theme, too.
Class B with just a couple of laps to overcome would give the KRRT guys a good shot at beating the P71 Crown Victorias and slushbox-equipped GM F-bodies. There was much optimism in the KRRT camp on Friday night.
When the big race got going on Saturday morning, the KRRT GTI looked great, at first.
Then, as so often happens with 16-valve Volkswagen engines, a terrible noise issued from under the hood, oil and smoke gushed out, and the car had to leave the track behind the wrecker. The team struggled to find another engine at local junkyards but did not succeed in getting their car in working order.
The Killer Rabbit Racing Team finished one lap total, which gave them a total of -1 laps completed with the two-lap class handicap factored in. That meant 228th place out of 228 entries. Who got P227, you ask? The Pit Crew Revenge “Honda Corvette” (a Civic with C4 Corvette body components attached) also turned a single lap, but in Class A with zero handicap laps.
The Killer Rabbits refused to give up after this disappointment, and the team will return to a future California LeMons race. They’re not dead yet!
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/1E3aZdb
via Agya
