LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week: Olds Sheds Wheel At Checkered, Scrapes Across Finish Line

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

LeMons Good/Bad Idea of the Week: Olds Sheds Wheel At Checkered, Scrapes Across Finish Line

Sometimes a 24 Hours of LeMons team's Good/Bad Idea can be an ill-advised engine swap, as we saw in last week's Z-powered Datsun 510… and sometimes it's an extremely dramatic race finish that brings a standing ovation from the grandstands. Team Olds went for the latter approach at the finale of the 2011 Boston Tow Party and Overhead Cam-Bake at Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut.

The Team Olds '92 Delta 88 looked good all weekend. The car didn't break down (much), it managed to put down some respectable lap times on Stafford's tight, paint-tradin' course— not an easy feat for a big GM boat surrounded by Alfa Milanos, Honda Civics, and BMW E30s— and it looked luxurious doing so.

Here we see General Motors showing the flag at Stafford's start/finish line; that's the Chev-itte Where The Sun Don't Shine Chevrolet Chevette (which finished sixth overall out of 52 entries and annihilated the Class C competition) in front, with the Team Olds Delta 88 right behind it. Just behind them is the winged #6 Limp1 Brokebird Pontiac Firebird, which finished in an impossible-to-believe fourth place, and that majestic yellow machine is the Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws '80 Pontiac Bonneville Donk— which took home the Index of Effluency, LeMons racing's top prize— rollin' on 22s in extremely gangsta fashion. Behind the Donk we've got the Elmo's Revenge Saturn SL2, and that Pontiac Fiero decked out in Alitalia livery is none other than the legendarily terrible "Five Lap Fiero" built by C/D scribe Mike Austin for the '08 Altamont race and then sold to the members of Rusty Tear Racing (in what we assume was the swindle of the century) after Mike decided that a VW Quantum Syncro wagon would be more reliable. Yes, the Team Olds Delta was in excellent company for a weekend of racin' glory that no doubt made The General proud (never mind that a Milano took the win on laps).

As the shadows lengthened on Sunday afternoon, Team Olds could taste that checkered flag coming. Not many full-sized grandma haulers can survive a weekend of thrashing on Stafford's wicked-mean half-mile course without tossing a rod through the oil pan or busting major suspension components, and so taking the checkered flag would be quite a triumph for the Oldsmobile pilots. The flag dropped on the winning Team Scuderia Limoni Alfa Romeo, and then the Team Olds driver put the hammer down and roared into the team's glorious 734th lap.

Then, coming around the final turn before the finish line, a tie rod decided it had had enough. The Olds plowed into the wall, knocking off a wheel… and then carried enough momentum to scrape across the finish line, with the errant wheel bouncing past the delighted fans in the grandstand. Never have I heard such cheering for the finish of a 24 Hours of LeMons race!

One of the greatest finishes in LeMons history is captured nicely by the in-car camera of the Team French Toast Peugeot 405 Mi16 (itself a great example of a Good/Bad LeMons Idea); the wheel comes off the Olds at about 0:39, followed by the Pug clipping the three-wheeler's left rear, followed by the cheers of the crowd.

We saw a lot of checkered-flag drama during the '11 season; here's the Kamikaze Pilots of Fury Honda CRX throwing a rod seconds after the finish of the Showroom-Schlock Shootout at Autobahn Country Club. Once again, standing ovation from the spectators. Sure, it's a bad idea to blow up in the final seconds of a race… but in LeMons, it's also a good idea!