Archive for the ‘24 Hours of Lemons’ Category

Pink Pig turnkey LeMons car for Sale!

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

In a bittersweet move, the Formula BMW team is officially retiring from Lemons racing and we are putting our “Pink Pig” lemons car for sale. After 3 years of successful racing the team is splitting up and the members are moving onto other pursuits including Spec Racing. As a result we are selling the Pink Pig as a fully setup turnkey LeMons car for teams who want to get into the series without going through the hassle of building their own car.

Pink Pig at Reno

Car info:

  • 1986 BMW 325 E (E30)
  • Class winner at Reno-Fernley 2009
  • 2 Top 5s and 2 Top 10s in the last 4 races
  • Excellent handling and fast lap times
  • Ultra reliable – no major breakdowns in last 5 races
  • Full safety gear
  • 6 TR-Motorsports wheels with Hankook tires (enough rubber for 2 races)
  • Fully stripped for maximum weight reduction
    • Lexan windshield
    • Sunroof and rear parcel shelf replaced with sheet aluminium
    • Door skins only
    • lightweight sealed battery
    • dashboard, excess wiring and interior completely removed
  • Updated brakes (new master cylinder, stainless steel brake lines, new Hawk race pads, Super Blue racing fluid)
  • Wired for in-car radio (4 radios and helmet mics included)
  • 2 gallon drinks system in place (separate 1 gallon bottles)
  • Cool suit mounting system (cool suit not included)
  • Numerous other safety, reliability and speed modifications – contact for full list
  • Never had any BS Penalties or tech issues
  • Lemons Legend” on Jalopnik
  • Click here to follow the history of the car and its racing efforts

Car package includes all safety gear, radios, wheels, tires, drinks systems, fuel filler hoses, etc… – just add gas and race!

The car is located at Dietsch Werks in Santa Clara and we are happy to show it with an appointment. For pricing and more information please leave a comment below or call Rahul at 510-439-7265

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Officially a Lemons Legend

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Pink Pig at ButtonWillow
Photo by karamia29

Judge Murilee over on Jalopnik just posted a list of his LeMons Legends for 2009 and the Pink Pig was on his list. This is what he had to say about us:

Formula BMW, BMW 325e
An E30 becomes a LeMons Legend? In this case, you’re looking at one of the all-time legendary LeMons cars. Notice how every body panel seems to have been hit hard, repeatedly? That’s because this car is a veteran of the early races at Altamont, including the notorious “Demolition Derby” race of October ‘07 and the not-much-less-brutal May ‘08 race. With seven LeMons races to its credit, the Formula BMW E30 has finished 44th, 44th, 20th, 10th, 5th, 10th, and 6th during its career… and been hit approximately 8,000 times (7,997 of those at Altamont).

While I love the write-up, I do have to point out that we actually finished 44th, 44th, 19th, 10th, 5th (class win), 10th, and 5th. :) Our average finishing position for the 2009 races was 6.67

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The physical demands of Lemons racing

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Fatigue – that’s a word you hear being thrown about a lot at endurance racing events. We know that as drivers do long stints behind the wheel, fatigue starts setting in and the lap times start to drop steadily. But the $64,000 question is how long can a driver stay out on track without compromising the performance of his/her car or the safety of the other competitors. People keep throwing around the statistic of F1 drivers having an average heart rate of 170 bpm for the 90 odd minute duration of the race. That data might be useful for a young fit F1 driver who spends the entire duration of the race on the ragged edge, but is not very relevant to the average Lemons driver who is generally older, considerably less fit, often drives longer stints and (speaking for myself) is generally well under the limit?

In order to learn more about the physical demands of Lemons racing, I decided to wear a heart rate monitor during my driving stints behind the wheel of our #23 Pink Pig E30 at the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Buttonwillow this past August. Our friends at Chasecam lent us a PDR100 video kit and copy of their Dashware software that allowed me to sync my heartrate to both the video stream and the in-car telemetry collected using my Race Technologies DL1 data logger. The following is a summary of what I learned with some things being as expected and some things decidedly unexpected.

Current Fitness Level
I’ll start by giving a quick baseline values for my current fitness levels. I have a resting heart rate of just under 50 bpm and I run between 10-20 miles a week which puts me in the above average range of physical fitness. Click here to see an example heart rate trace from my last long run (outdoors, 85 F, 8.5 miles in 84 min, avg heart rate of 164 bpm).

Additionally since Buttonwillow in August is brutally hot (temps of 110 F are quite common) I did hot weather training (outdoor 10k twice a week at 2 in the afternoon) for a couple of months to help prepare for the heat stress. The temperatures during the race ended up being about 100F and I did wear a Cool Shirt which I used intermittently for the first hour and then continuously after that.

Data summary
stint 1 raw
The graph above shows my heart rate during a 2 hour 50 minute recording window. My average heart rate during this entire period was 120 beats/minute with a maximum of 165 bpm. As you can see there are several distinct segments where my heart rate varied significantly from the average. By syncing the heart rate data to the video I was able to find that each segment points to a specific event during the race.

Specific instances
stint 1 start
Looking at the first 25 minutes of the data you can see that my heart rate initially hovers around the 90 bpm mark. At this time I was lined up in the pitlane and waiting for the cars to slowly get released onto the track. The small spike at the 4 minute mark happens exactly as I get out of the pits and onto the racing service. I should add that I had never driven a single lap of Buttonwillow before (mechanical issues on Friday) and was very nervous about going blind onto a new track. As I start doing the yellow flag laps you can see that my heart rate starts dropping again and stays that way for the next 7-8 minutes as I slowly learn my way around the track. The next spike you see is at the 12 minute mark and is shown in this short video below which has my heart rate in the top left corner.


As luck would have it the car right behind me was given the green flag which meant that I had zero warning of the race start. As the cars behind start passing me on the straight my heart rate starts rising from the low 90s and hits 129 bpm in the middle of turn 2.

stint 1 2nd half
The graph above shows the last 90 minutes of my stint. There is a gradual drop-off in my heart rate starting at about the 1:21 mark. This corresponds to a long full course yellow out on the track. The heart rate initially does not drop by much as I am staying close to car in front so that I can pass it at the next green flag, but as I drive further along the course I realize its a full course yellow and start relaxing which drop my heart rate to just over a 100. You can see another example of it in the video below which shows a yellow flag segment from my second stint on day 1.

The second dip you see towards the end of my day 1 stint happens when our car breaks down on the exit of turn 1 and I pull off the course and stop. While I’m initially quite agitated as I try to restart the car, I quickly realize that the car is dead and my heart rate starts dropping to the 100 bpm mark. About 5 minutes later the tow truck pulls up to the car and tows me back to the pits. Once I get there my heart rate once again starts rising and goes well past the 150 mark as I get out of the car to try and help fix the problem. It goes back down to the 140 mark as the problem is found and fixed but then rises to a peak of 165 as I am refueling the car (a 40 pound fuel can on your shoulder will do that).

As I went through the data, the most surprising fact for me was that the heart rate does not seem to have much correlation to the speed, g-force, laptime, etc… In fact it seems more psychological than it is physical. While there are some small changes over a lap, there are no significant bumps going through particular turns or even when passing individual cars. Instead the most pronounced changes in heart rate happen when you come up on a large group of cars and are unsure of how to pass them. The following video is a great example of this. Initially my heart rate is in the 115-120 bpm range as I go through the sweeper by myself. As I catch up to a group of five cars it rapidly rises and peaks at 144 bpm as I pass the last car. As soon as I pass them it starts dropping quickly and levels back down at the 120-125 bpm range.

For comparison here is a clean air lap where it drops as low as 97 bpm with a temporary spike at 131 bpm but spends the majority of the lap between 115 and 125 bpm

Summary
My stint in this case was for 2.5 hours in 100 degree weather and I could probably have driven for another hour. One thing to note is that I have plenty of experience driving on track (karting enduro, HPDE, Lemons) and can tell when my performance level goes down. If you are not familiar with driving on track and/or are driving at 10/10ths you will get mentally drained well before you get physically fatigued. If you dont take car to monitor your concentration you will start making more and more mistakes. The optimal stint length can and will vary dramatically even for the same person depending on their mental and physical state – I did a 4+ hour stint at Lemons Thunderhill 07 with no problems but when I drove a Spec Miata there I was wiped out in just 45 minutes.

In summary I can say that while Lemons is indeed quite strenuous, the mental aspect is more taxing than the physical. If you are used to good cardio workouts and can monitor your own concentration levels, it is possible to safely to do long stints. All this of course only applies to me and the way I drive – your mileage WILL vary and I make no statements about your driving abilities

Bonus video
And finally as bonus here is a 15 minute battle I had with the Itallion stallions Fiat X1/9. It starts off with them passing me on the run up to the hill and I then spend the next 15 minutes trying to get the position back. I’ve speeded up the sections where I am trying to catch up to them while the close quarters action is at regular speeds. Total run time is a little over 10 minutes. My favourite section is at the 6:20 mark where I pull alongside on the exit of the bus stop and we go side-by-side for 3 corners till I finally have to give up because they have the inside line over the hill. In case you are wondering they have modified the X1/9 to run motorcycle carbs which is why they were able to stay ahead on the straight. Plus this is within the first 10-12 laps on track so I’m still not very familiar with the track which I hope excuses the bad driving :-)

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The Pink Pig returns

Friday, June 5th, 2009

Pink Pig at Reno

Running its first competitive race after 28 years, the Porsche 917/20 “Pink Pig” made a triumphant return to endurance racing at the Reno event of 24 Hours of Lemons vintage racing series. A lack of power at altitude combined with niggling fuel and wheels meant that the car could not compete on outright pace and instead had to depend on strategy to make its way up the field. Ultimately the Formula BMW team fell just short and had to settle for a class win and 5th overall instead of the overall victory they were aiming for.

Class win at Lemons Reno

The Formula BMW team has since been working hard on upgrading the car and fixing the fuel issues. With the next race being run at sea level, the turbo cars will no longer have an advantage and Pink Pig will finally be able to compete on raw pace as well as race strategy. All race fans are invited to come out and support the Formula BMW team and the “Pink Pig” as they go for an overall win at the Buttonwillow event of the 24 Hours of LeMons racing series.

Click here to read more about the history of Team Formula BMW at the LeMons racing series.

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Goin’ For A Win – recap of Lemons Reno 2009

Friday, May 29th, 2009

Pink Pig E30

The Goin’ For Broken race at Reno Fernley raceway was the 5th 24 Hours of LeMons race for the Formula BMW team and the debut of our new Pink Pig race livery. Additionally the car was quite a bit lighter than the last race with the sunroof, dash, heater core and inner door skins being removed. We cracked our windshield during the dash removal which we replaced with a sheet of lexan to further drop weight. We were going with our regular driver lineup of Guy Argo, Gabriel Matus. Rob Dietsch and myself. Since the racedays were of unequal length (8.5 hours Saturday, 5 hours Sunday), our plan was to have Guy, Rob and myself run a single 3 – 3.5 hour stint with Gabe splitting his stint between the two days. The long stints would minimize our driver changes and would allow us to pass people in the pits and finish higher than the 10th place we recorded at Thunderhill 08.

Emergency Wheel Spacing

I was driving the first stint for our team and got off to an inauspicious start when I had to pull in to the pits just before the green flag (Lemons has a rolling start) because of a loud noise and vibration from the right front on right hand turns. It turned out that our new wheels were rubbing against the right front strut while at speed. We had test fitted the new wheel on the left front tire where it fit with no issues but we had forgotten that we had bent our struts for extra camber at Altamont 07 which meant that while they fit fine on the left there was rubbing on the right which was aggravated on right hand turns. Luckily we were able to borrow a wheel spacer (Thanks Squirrels of Fury!) but by the time we put that on we were already 2 laps down on the leader without having driven a single lap. :-(

When I first went out under green my immediate impression was that we were waaaay faster than most of the cars out there and was passing several cars at each turn. This was probably down to my familiarity with the track and the car because after about 5-10 laps the cars became more difficult to pass as the other drivers became more comfortable with the track. About an hour into the race I noticed that the fuel gauge on the car was still registering full despite having plenty of hard racing laps in that time. This meant that our gauge was broken and we would have to time our pitstops based on fuel starvation. At about the 2 hour mark the car started fuel-starving on the fast right of turn 14 but was still doing pretty well elsewhere on track. We decided to keep going as long as we could and/or to wait for the next yellow. I kept driving the car in higher gears to help with the fuel economy but after about 5-6 laps the fuel starvation was getting bad enough that we were sputtering on the straights after right handers and i brought the car in for a green flag fuel and driver stop. It was about the 2.5 hour mark when I came in and despite the fact that my long stint had put us back on the lead lap (9th overall), we were still well short of the 3+ hour stint we were originally planning on. The good part was that we knew that we could use the right hand turn fuel starvation as a gas gauge to decide when to time our next pit stop.

Pink Pig at Reno
Photo by Jeff Balliet/ASK photography

Guy drove the next stint and kept in touch with the leaders. At this point we knew that we were in the top ten and were basically trying to put in reasonable laps without doing anything crazy. Guy drove for about 3.5 hours before the fuel starvation became bad enough that we were forced to do another green flag stop. At this point we were 4th overall and just 5 laps behind the race leader despite having the slowest “fastest lap” of any car in the top 15. Gabe got into the car with about 2.5 hours left in the day and was putting in some excellent lap times when he had an unfortunate spin at turn 15 which brought us in for a black flag penalty. Since we had been good racers for most of the day (and bribed the judges with some excellent Guatemalan rum ;-) ) we were let off with a driver change penalty which put me in back in the driver seat for the final 10 laps of the day.

At this point the traffic had thinned considerably and I was able to able to drop my fastest lap down from a 2:51.844 to a 2:46.177. Right about this time the #72 E30 of the B-Team (who I knew from Lotus Talk) pulled up right behind me and tried to get past. I knew that I wasn’t racing them for position so I did not try to block, but I certainly wasn’t going to move aside and let them past either. They tried a few different attempts at getting past but I hung onto the inside line and was able to stay in front. About 5 laps into the battle they came right alongside me on the front straight which led to the action you see in the image below.

reno-animated-small
Source photos from Jeff M/The B-Team. Animation by Rahul Nair.

This moment started as we were coming onto the main straight when I got a bad run into the corner while the B-Team got a great slingshot out and pulled alongside me down the straight. This had happened a couple of times before but since I always held the inside line into the esses they had had to lift in the end and tuck in line behind me. On this particular lap the #26 Team Carpet Pissers CRX was pulling out of the pits and made it into the first bend of the esses right just before the two of us. Normally I would have tucked in line behind the CRX and passed them going into turn 2 but on this lap I spotted an opening and decided to pass them between the 2nd and 3rd esses expecting that the B-Team would get boxed in behind them which would give me some more breathing room. As luck would have it the B-Team driver decided to do the exact same thing on the outside and suddenly we were three wide through the turn at about 95mph. I was up on the rumble strip on the left while the B-Team was on 2 wheels in the gravel on the right. At this point the driver in the CRX sees the B-Team on his right (and I suppose didnt see me on his left) and jinks left to avoid them. The front bumper of his car hits my right front wheel and leaves a black line down both doors. The impacts pushes my car to the left but I am able to maintain control while the CRX unfortunately spins out. Amazingly both B-Team and I are still side by side entering turn 2 and I am able to get ahead under braking. While it looked (and was) pretty exciting it was still a dumb move on my part especially since we were not racing for position and the next day both B-Team and I went up to the driver of the CRX and apologized for putting him in a difficult spot.

At the end of day one we had completed 129 laps and we in 4th place overall, 6 laps behind the Eyesore Racing FrankenMiata. We were still the second slowest fast lap in the top 10 but we used our long stints to make up for our wheel issues at the start as well as 3 green flag pit stops. Now we just had to keep on doing more of the same for day 2 and hope that the leaders would trip-up enough for us to pass them in the pits.

Day 2 started with Gabe driving the car. It was obvious from the lap times that we had no chance on catching the FrankenMiata with speed alone. They were pulling away from us at 10 seconds a lap when they suddelny spun and stalled on course on lap 5. As they were being towed in we began to push like hell to make up laps and we got back 4 of the 6 laps before they got out on course again. Gabe kept putting in consistent laps but the FrankenMiata was back on pace and was consistant pulling out 8 seconds or so per lap. Both teams came in for a driver swap just a lap apart which kept us 3 laps behind with 3 hours to go. Rob put in some stellar laptimes including our fastest race lap of a 2:42.809 but in the end it just was not enough to catch the FrankenMiata.

Class win at Lemons Reno

We ended finishing first in class and 5th overall just 4 laps behind the FrankenMiata which hung on to win the race. We did get a nice trophy to stick on the mantel place but I personally am still annoyed at some of the mistakes we made which cost us a possible win. The good part is that we know what to fix and we know what we need to do at Buttonwillow in 3 months. We wont rest till we get some nickels (Lemons cash prizes are awarded in nickels :-) )

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Lemons Penalties 101

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Guest Judge
As I mentioned in my last post, I spent most of the Lemons South Spring race as a guest judge. This meant that I not only got to decide and hand out penalties, but I also had a chance to document them. So now for your viewing pleasure, I present my guide to the penalties from Lemons South Spring 2009

Studs and Spurs
While in Texas, the Judges found a calendar that Lemons drivers love to emulate. Judge Jonny will lead you through a mock photoshoot in your pink cowboy hat

Studs and Spurs penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Marcel Marceau “Mime Your Crime”
Offending driver must put on a French striped sailor shirt, a beret and paint his/her face white. Then the driver must mime their stint in the car – starting with putting on the helmet and gloves, driving around the track, the incident causing the black flag, the drive to the pits and the spin of the wheel.

Marcel Marceau “Mime your Crime” penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Taiwanese National Anthem
This penalty was dreamed up by Judge Phil and qualifies as truly cruel and unusual punishment. While he explains it best in his post, the short version is that the team must wire a six tone car alarm into their car and the alarm must play constantly until the car comes off the track. As an added bonus the team must warn competitors of their bad driving by attaching a Taiwanese flag to their car. My thanks to the #56 Blind Rodent Racing team for demonstrating this penalty so that future lemons racers can understand just what fate awaits them.

Taiwanese National Anthem penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Follow the Leader
This was an impromptu punishment dreamed up by Judge Lieberman when a seven car incident filled up the judging area with multiple miscreants. Rather than dealing an individual punishment to each team, all the drivers from each team were required to line up behind the Judgemobile and follow in single file while they took a slow lap of the paddock. They then had to warn other teams of their behaviour by shouting “We’re bad drivers!” every time the Judges honked the horn.

Follow the Leader penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Butter and Moonshine
One thing the judges can always be counted on to do is to come up with creative punishments using locally available materials. In this case they pour liquid butter into the crankcase of the car followed by adding some local moonshine into the gas tank. This was particularly ironic since the team in question was the one that bribed the judges with the moonshine in the first place.

Butter penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Moonshine penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Three Legged Race

Three-legged race penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

This is a special penalty for the cars that are involved in metal to metal contact. Both cars are black flagged and since the drivers obviously like each other they are tied together for a three legged race around the paddock. The best part of this penalty is that it can be applied to any arbitrary number of drivers. In the video below we have 4 drivers from the same team taking a 5 legged lap of the paddock.


Three-legged race team penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Bobby Bosch Relay Race
Bobby Bosch Relay Race
Another diabolical creation from the twisted mind of Judge Phil, the Bobby Bosch Relay Race is an E30 special penalty where the teams are handed a bag of Bosch relays of which one has been tampered with. They then have to go figure out which relay is the defective one before they are allowed to rejoin the race. And in case you were wondering you can tell by any external marks since Judge Phil opened the casings on all 10.
Bobby Bosch Relay Race

Preaching to the converted
Driver must stand on the hood or roof of his car and read “Pinto with a Pedigree” and the following chapter “Rescuing a Red Farmer Rust Bucket” from Tom Cotter’s book The Hemi in the Barn alound to his team, gathered around the car.

Preaching to the Converted penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.

Paint your whip with Bob Ross

Bob Ross original

Bob Ross was a well known american painter who was famous for painting landscapes using oil paints. Teams that get this penalty must put on the Bob Ross wig and paint a serene landscape from the Paint with Bob Ross book on the hood of their car. This particular example was painted by #32 Superkak racing team.

Paint your whip with Bob Ross

Bart Simpson
Write your penaly on your car 100 times – “I will not pass under yellow” for example
Bart Simpson penalty

An E30 edition of this penalty requires that you write the penalty in German
Bart Simpson penalty in German

Barnyard
The Arc Angel attaches a metal farm animal or the “Move Over Dick” mirror to the offending car.
Arc Angel

Graffiti your Ride
You must graffiti your car with reasons why you wish you were driving a different marque. This particular example from the Crown Victoria of #60 Pleasant Valley Racers includes “I wish I was driving a Honda”, “Nascar Sux”, “Honda Rules” and even a Japanese flag on the roof.
04052009668
04052009672

Stay with Your Ride
If a team follows the judges around with too much whining the whole lot is duct taped to their car for the duration of their punishment.
Stay with your ride

The Pacifier
Drivers that whine at the judges have a baby bottle taped to their hand and must gnaw on a pacifier for the duration of their penalty.
04052009661

Close Shave – Shave your way out of it
Have a beard or a goatee? Shave your beard or goatee off – as soon as its gone you and your car can return to the track. No facial hair/. How about shaving the legs from the knees down?

Shaving facial hair to avoid a penalty – 24 Hours of Lemons from rnair on Vimeo.
04052009660

Why am I Upside-Down?
You’re upside-down because you have no business being out on a racetrack. If a car rolls at a Lemons race it is immediately done for the rest of the race. Unfortunately this is one rule that I am very familiar with :-(
FX16Flip-804px
Photo stolen from Jalopnik

Peoples Curse
And finally the ultimate Lemons penalty – utter devastation of the peoples curse car at the hands of the excavator. The second car in this video is from another team (#85?) which was sick of working on their car and asked Jay to crush it along with the peoples curse.

Peoples Curse – Lemons South Spring 2009 from rnair on Vimeo.

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Lemons South Race Recap

Monday, April 6th, 2009

Ready to race at Lemons South Carolina

This is going to be a very short recap since we didnt really get very far in the race. I flew into South Carolina and made it to the track on friday. The Schumacher Taxi Service Corolla FX-16 had already been teched and looked pretty well setup. I didnt get to drive the track or the car so instead walked the track to get an idea of the flow of the track and see where our likely passing zones were. The interesting difference from previous races thing the lack of temporary chicanes, we were going to be use the full west course of the Carolina Motorsports Park with no changes whatsoever. Another change new to Lemons was that the corner workers were going to throw local yellows instead of the full course yellows we’ve seen at the previous events. It looks like Lemons is growing up and looking more and more like a real racing series.

cmpwesttrack

On raceday I was the first driver and also one of the first car on track. This was super helpful since I then got to do 3-4 laps under yellow which helped me get used to the car and the track. Once the green flag went out It took me another 3-4 laps to get comfortable with the dynamics of the Corolla before I really started pushing the car. It turns out that the car had no power or torque but it did have excellent brakes and pretty decent lateral grip. The best way to pass people was under braking into turns 1, 11 and 14 though I did manage to pass a fair number of cars around the outside of turns 1 and 12 as well. Since the start of Lemons is really chaotic (92 cars on a 1 mile course) I got almost no “clean” laps and was dicing for position on every lap. In the end my laps times were pretty competitive (best of 1:08.9 at a time when the fastest cars were in the 1:07s) and I managed to get us up into 7th place at around the 90 minute mark.

This is when things start going wrong – I was trying to pass a car into turn 13 when a Miata hit my from behind and spun me around right at the apex. I got a black flag for spinning (the Miata got away scot free) and we spent about 20 minutes in penalty area before the next driver was allowed out. The new driver had no track or racing experience and about 5 laps into the race managed to do this:

FX16Flip-804px
Photo stolen from Jalopnik

Yup that’s our car on its side. He came into turn one too hot with one wheel off inside the rumble strip. At this point instead of just going straight off the track he tried to make the turn and caught a wheel on the curbing which led to a roll-over. Video of the roll below:

The driver was fine and the car was in surprisingly good shape. However Lemons has a “Why am I Upside-Down?” rule which says that if a car rolls it is done for the race. So that was the end of the race for us just 2 hours into the event. Luckily the 2 other guys on the team got 45 minutes of track time each with the other cars on Schumacher Taxi Service so at least it wasnt a total waste for them. I still had a day and half to go before my flight so I ended up becoming a guest judge for the event – more on that in my next post.

Guest Judge

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Lemons Reno and South Carolina

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

In case any of you haven’t figured out already, my last post was a fake press release. It was actually our teams entry form into the next 24 Hours of Lemons race where we will be sporting the “Pink Pig” livery of the Porsche 917/20. I am happy to say that the organizers liked our idea and we have officially been accepted in the Reno event to be held at Reno-Fernley raceway on May 23-24. Now we just need to get the lemon ready in time.

In the meantime I will also be participating in Lemons race at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC on April 4-5. I will be driving a Toyota Corolla FX-16 for the Schumacher Taxi Service.

Wish me luck!

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Der Trüffel-Jäger von Zuffenhausen

Friday, March 13th, 2009

Press release from Porsche:

In order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Porsche 917, Zuffenhausen has restored one of their most famous vintage race cars for one final race. The “Truffle-Hunter from Zuffenhausen” a.k.a. the Porsche 917/20 will take one last shot at glory by entering the 24 Hours of Lemons before being permanently enshrined in the new Porsche Museum.

pink pig
Photo by Michael Schrock

Originally built to take part in the 1971 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 917/20 had a unique aerodynamic body that combined the handling of the short-tail 917Ks with the high speed stability of the long-tail 917Ls. The wide proportions of the car lead to the german press nicknaming it the “Pig” and the Porsche team played along by painting the car pink and adding graphics representing a series of butchers cuts for pork. Despite the unflattering names, the car tested well and could hit a higher top speed on the Mulsanne straight than the 917K’s could, but could also keep up with the short-tail car through the corners (which the long-tail car couldn’t).

It was driven in the race by Reinhold Joest and Willi Kauhsen and ran as high as third before crashing out due to brake failure. The next year the rules at Le Mans were changed which meant that the 917s could no longer compete and the “Pink Pig” was retired after just one competitive race. Porsche has now restored the 917/20 to complete racing specification and has partnered with the Formula BMW team with the goal of a dominating Lemons victory as a fitting sendoff to 917 range.

The Formula BMW team has multiple years of experience in Lemons racing series and is fresh off a 10th place finish at the 2008 race at Thunderhill. Their combination of raw speed and tactical nous has led Porsche to chose them as their official factory team to race the 917/20 in the 24 Hours of Lemons race at Reno-Fernley raceway. The Formula BMW team will also be continuing with its innovative media campaign which has produced fan favourites such as the Lemons Experience documentary, 3-Camera Race action, Driving in the Dark and many others. As with previous races the team will be documenting the entire experience on their website which will allow fans to sample the Lemons racing experience from the comfort of their own living room.

Join us on 23-24 May 2009 at Reno-Fernley Raceway to see the Pink Pig race once again.

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The Lemons Experience – Thunderhill 2008

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

As some of you may already know, Team Formula BMW finished in 10th place at the 2008 24 Hours of Lemons race at Thunderhill. Instead of the usual blog post with in-car video, I’ve tried something new with a video blog post of the off-track action. The goal was to create a mini-documentary that shows the Lemons experience as seen through the eyes of Team Formula BMW. It is a 25 minute video that goes all the way from car prep and transport, through tech and judging, ending with the actual race itself. My personal favourite is the section on the Tech Judging which starts at the 7:38 mark.


The Lemons Experience – Thunderhill 2008 from rnair on Vimeo.

All the video footage was shot using a Nokia N96 cameraphone and was then edited together using Adobe Premiere Elements. A big thanks to Nokia and the WOM World folks for lending me the phone to me – I’ll post my official review of the phone in a bit. As I said before this is my first video blog post and obviously isn’t perfect. I learned a lot of things while making this video and I’ll have a future post with tips for making your own videos.

Update: We’ve made it onto AutoFiends and Jalopnik, you would think that professional blogs would be include a pingback when they link.

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