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After a weekend of rain, trashed engines, and crashes at MSR Houston, the checkered flag waved on Sunday afternoon and we had a fresh set of winners at the 81st race in 24 Hours of LeMons history.
Proving that their two previous overall LeMons wins weren't just flukes, the Z-Wrecks team beat their 76 competitors in decisive fashion. The 31-year-old Datsun 280ZX finished the race with a three-lap cushion separating it from the Team BenzGay 1986 Mercedes-Benz 300E, taking the Class A trophy for good measure.
The Class B win— and fourth place overall— went to the Blue Goose Audi 4000S. This 10-valve, non-turbo Quattro thrived during the rainstorms and looked pretty good in the dry as well.
Class C was another typical hard-fought battle, with the TARP Racing Simca 1000 (actually a sectioned Simca body welded over the body of a very thrashed Toyota MR2) overcoming a fairly steep lap handicap (the team was given the choice of Class B with zero penalty laps and Class C with 8 penalty laps) to beat some tough competition.
That brings us to the I Got Screwed Award, which want to the Apex Vinyl Mater six-wheeled Toyota Hilux pickup. With its slushbox transmission and ill-suited-for-LeMons-racing 20R engine, the six-wheeler isn't anywhere near fast, but the Apex Vinyl team looked to have the class win nailed down with less than an hour to go on Sunday. Then the truck wouldn't start after a pit stop, and the TARP "Simca" got the Class C win by two laps. Screwed!
The Team Unter Puff Opel GT burned a piston during the first hour of racing on Saturday, and nobody on the team had ever opened up an engine before. Rather than give up, the team got a shop manual, found an Opel 1900 piston, and spent all day and night Saturday taking a self-taught crash course in engine repair. It worked! Sadly, the car spun out on Sunday, stalled, and got bashed by a BMW 325i, but we expect the Unter Puffs to pound the bent bodywork back into shape for the next Texas race.
Our special race-specific trophy this time was the Most 1980s Flock of Seagulls-Grade Car In The World Award, in this case for the Datsun "210ZX" of Ratsun Racing. This B210 got its 210ZX kit back in the day, was parked and forgotten in 1984, and then revived for the Gator-O-Rama. Ratsun Racing needed until Sunday morning to get the car running, and it only managed to turn six laps, but we fully expect this machine to return with all the bugs worked out.
Your LeMons correspondent and Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court often finds himself in terrible dilemmas when helping to choose the winner of a race's Index of Effluency award. In many cases, there's a fairly unsuitable-for-racing car that climbs to stratospheric heights in the standings… and also a staggeringly horrible car that barely creeps into the top two-thirds. Such was the case at the 2012 Gator-O-Rama, with the 1991 Mercury Capri of Team Mostly Harmless performing the astounding feat of cracking the top ten. For reasons that will be made clear shortly, the Capri couldn't get the IOE, but the team deserved something for their weekend of great driving: Judges' Choice.
Why would you race an electric car in an endurance race, knowing that batteries aren't as good as gasoline for this sort of racing? If you're been around LeMons for a while, you know the answer: because it's a tremendously bad idea that also happens to be really cool! Team Pulp Friction B put a forklift motor and a bunch of Mercedes-Benz Sprinter lead-acid batteries in a 1968 Datsun Sports shell and managed just two very slow laps (maximum speed attained was 32 MPH). 76th place overall… and the Organizer's Choice award.
Some LeMons teams take a well-proven car as the basis for the race machine, then go through it and do all the suspension modifications possible within the $500 budget (or beyond, in some cases). This is why we see so many Civics, Mustangs, and BMW 3-Series. Other teams, however, find a super-rusty 40-year-old sedan, put a cage in it, and go racing as-is. That's what the Green Cornet team did with their super-hooptied-out 1972 Dodge Coronet, and the ancient Mopar slipped and slid its way around the track, its well-worn 318-cubic-inch V8 roaring and its body leaning at alarming angles. When the race ended, the Green Cornet had climbed to 58th place, which is an achievement on par with a cow finishing in the top three-quarters of a greyhound race. For that, the Green Cornets took home the top prize in LeMons racing: the Index of Effluency.
For more 24 Hours of LeMons coverage, go here. Read full story »
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | 
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