Category: motorsport

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons

Officially a Lemons Legend

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).

… Read the rest
Categories
24 Hours of Lemons personal research videos

The physical demands of Lemons racing

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.… Read the rest

Categories
autocross cars videos

Health benefits of Autocrossing

At the last GGLC autocross Alex and I decided to try out a little experiment to see how your heart rate changes during the race. We used a Polar S720i to record his heart rate, an iPhone for video and a DL1 data logger to record G-force and speed readings. I used some simple PHP magic to sync the two data files together and used the Chasecam Dashware system to create this finished video.

You can see the speed, heart rate (BPM), longitudinal G (acceleration + braking) and lateral G in the dashboard on the top of the video. His average heart rate was in the low nineties while on the grid and rises to to 101 just before the start of the run.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons

The Pink Pig returns

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.… Read the rest

Categories
24 Hours of Lemons photos

Goin’ For A Win – recap of Lemons Reno 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.… Read the rest