LeMons: Half-Off Racing is gonna DOMINATE!

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Teched and ready to race. Green flag drops at 1030 tomorrow.

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KTVU Channel 2 coverage of the LeMons race this weekend:
http://www.ktvu.com/videos/news/24-h...eports/vCT2W9/

Cameo by the #508.

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We finished 17th OA, out of 167. Could've improved a few spots had we not made a couple unplanned stops right at the end--one for a black flag (got caught up in someone else's dive-bomb) and one for an oil/gas top-off*. Our next-to-last driver had to get out of the car early becuase he was cramping, which messed up our pit stop timing, necessitating the late-race splash and dash.

Oh well. Top 20 in our third race is pretty dang good!

* we were using a quart of oil per hour on track. Yay for 270k mile engines.

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Race summary:


Happy stainless exhaust (taken after Day 1):

[Kchrpm]

17th out of 167 is like 2nd out of 20. Give yourself an honorary silver (bullet beer).

[Kchrpm]

Are you Rud?

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Yeah. College nickname, accidentally given to me by a friend who dyslexically announced that "Rud is a stuss!" after I turned a Suburban around in a very small parking lot.

[Kchrpm]

Consider that information banked for an appropriate callback.

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A few more tidbits:

Our tires are pretty much done, particularly the rears, thanks to spinning up the inside rear on high-g right-hand (mostly) corner exits here at Sears. Need a more limited limited-slip, or a bigger front bar, or both. That said, we got three full events out of this set of Dunlops (and can still use the fronts as spares); two of those events were held in pretty hot conditions, so way to go Dunlop.

Above-mentioned limited slip problem. Dunno if it was a balance issue, or a LSD issue, or both. Should be relatively easy (and inexpensive) to rebuild the clutches/shims in the LSD.

The bigger exhaust made the shift points audible within the car, and, I think, allowed other cars around us to hear us coming, but was still so quiet that you couldn't hear us from the grandstands. Haha. The in-car soundtrack was totally worth it, though.

We've got some Go-Pro video finally; I'll link to it once it's uploaded some place. Should be good, since we turned the cameras on for Rich's final stint, and he's fast.

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ps. there was a group of particularly crazy people that ran a stock (!) 300+k mile Prius in the race...covered the back end in bumper stickers:

Honestly, the stock Prius was by far the most bizarre LeMons car that I've ever driven (and that's saying a lot considering I've driven a number of Spank's cars including the Toyohog, the Moke, the Corvegge, and the Toronado). For how bad most of us would assume the Prius would behave on a racetrack, it was excellent. Sure it pushed like crazy in the corners and barely had enough power to get out of its own way on the straight, but what it lacked in outright performance it made up for in spirit and hilarity. The brakes were excellent until alex cooked them. Then we fixed them and were excellent once more. On the handling oriented parts of the track like the carousel, esses, and bus-stop, it could hold its own with most Class B cars.

The luxurious and functioning stock prius interior created a racing experience that was almost surreal. Taking the carousel one-handed while scanning the local radio stations over the squeal of the front tires was a bit odd. Losing myself in driving for about 8 laps while NPR discussed the subtleties of the Crimean conflict was both entertaining and informative. Seeing the corner workers laugh as I passed by dancing to Beyonce's Drunk in Love during a full-course yellow added some much needed brevity to the caution period (surfboard). And monitoring our gas mileage and regenerative braking through the full-color display on the dash provided some excellent efficiency data which was promptly ignored. At the end of day 1 we managed an average 16.8 mpg. My only regret was that the Prius didn't have GPS. I was hoping I could experiment with putting the track entry into it as a destination point and having it give me directions around the track every lap.