We got to the track at 7 am on Sunday so that we could prep the car for the 9 am start. The car was in reasonable shape and the main thing we wanted to was to replace the transmission mounts and the driveshaft with parts we had managed to scrounge up from various disreputable sources :). However just as we were about to jack up the car we realised that we had left them at home 
. Seeing that we had no way of further patching up drivetrain, we got to work fixing the front end bodywork which had taken a few hits on Saturday and was dangerously close to the radiator. Rob hooked a chain from the car to the trailer hitch and stood on it force the bodywork back into shape.
Guy once again started the day and gave a good account of himself. Midway through his stint there was some contact which ripped our front bumper out of the car and left the radiator unprotected. Though Guy was still continuing, we knew that it would be too risky to run for to long without a bumper. At this point we went around the pits to see if we could scrounge up any spare parts. In a typical display of Lemons (and racing) spirit one team gave us about 5 feet of hollow iron bar while another team lent us the use of their welder. Unfortunately I don’t remember the team names but major thanks to them for helping us out. We lost about 45 minutes as Rob welded the bar in as a replacement bumper and then Gabe went out for his first stint.
Unfortunately just a few minutes into his stint we has a run-in with some very heavy Detroit iron that felt that smaller cars should magically disappear from its path. Since we haven’t yet mastered the fine art of teleportation, there was some fairly hard contact which ended with the other car getting a flat tire and our car slicing its lower radiator hose. We pulled the radiator and got to work fixing the powersteering bracket which was bent out of shape. After another round of begging in the pits I got a spare hose from the Edge Motorworks team while Team Blue Goose donated a hose clamp. In all we lost about 20-30 minutes during the fix.
At this point we had lost some 3.5 hours due to repairs and we were way behind on laps. Gabe, Rob and Jyri did some great stints but we knew that our only chance of making up ground was to do long stints and pass people while they pitted. I got into the car with a full tank of fuel and went out to do a hour stint. The lack of a real front bumper meant that I to be extra cautious about traffic and sometimes had to step HARD on the brakes to avoid any front end contact (even got rear ended a few times as a result :(). After a few warmup laps I really got into the groove and was pulling of some pretty fun passes through the traffic. My laptimes were good enough that the team asked me to stay out there as long as possible. About 90 minutes into the stint, driver fatigue started becoming an issue. Interestingly the effect first started during the yellow flag laps – I started feeling a bit hot and uncomfortable. However the second the flag dropped adrenaline would start flowing and the fatigue would disappear and I would get back to race pace. After going through another 2-3 yellow flags I decided that enough was enough and ended up pitting after an hour and 45 minutes on track.
Jyri took on the next stint and was doing quite well until he was punted off the track. As you can see in the video, he recovers well from the first hit in the esses but a few seconds later he gets hit again while going through the right handed sweeper and goes into the tirewall. This ends up bending out left control arm and completely messes up our toe settings. Rob once again came to the rescue and eyeballed a toe adjustment to get us back on track. Gabe then took over for the final stint of the race and despite a couple of ‘moments’ he brought the car safely to the end.
We finished 44th out of 85 cars which is a pretty good for a group of Lemons newbies who were lying in 62nd on Saturday night. A big thanks to our sponsors – Dietsch Werks, Griffin Motorwerke, ChaseCam, Livermore Performance and Autopower – for helping us prep the car. All of us had a great time and we are already planning what we need to improve in time for the December race at Thunderhill 😀
