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When we last saw the class leaders at the fourth annual Capitol Offense 24 Hours of LeMons at Summit Point Raceway, each of them enjoyed a fairly comfortable lead at the end of the first day's race session. When the checkered flag waved on Sunday, however, two of those leaders had lost crucial time due to mechanical problems and found their leading positions had been usurped by pursuers. Meanwhile, heroism and heartbreak abounded; here's the tale of the teams who took home trophies.
The Mazda RX-7 has, for the most part, been one of the biggest spirit-crushers in LeMons racing; we've seen dozens, maybe hundreds, of examples of Mazda's little Wankel-ized sports car in our race (including one built by Car and Driver staffers), but only two LeMons teams have managed any consistent success with the RX-7. Sure, a rotary engine has no connecting rods to throw, but fragile apex seals, fuel-delivery woes, easy-to-bust suspensions, and a list of additional problems too long to enumerate here keep most RX-7s far, far away from the LeMons winner's circle. Ghetto Motorsports managed to take overall wins in the first three Colorado LeMons races (and very nearly won this year's race) in their "Ghetto West" car, a rough-looking 1980 model, and their "Ghetto East" car just took the Class A and overall wins at the 2013 Capitol Offense race. Their '87 FC had competed for a year or two in East Region LeMons events (the team has some members in Colorado and some in the Eastern Time Zone) but hadn't been as reliable as their first-gen car… until now. The Ghetto Motorsports Mazda took the lead about midway through Saturday's session and never relinquished it, winning by a two-lap margin.
For most of the weekend, Class B seemed to be nailed down by 2012 season championship contender Rally Baby Racing and their '87 Audi 4000 Quattro. The Audi had a big Class B lead late in the race, and it looked like Rally Baby would finally have their first-ever LeMons class win. Thing is, Audis are fragile even by LeMons standards, and a busted front control arm cost enough laps to allow the Not So Fresh Off the Boat Racing '86 Oldsmobile Delta 88 to grab the class win. The DeCuzzi Racing Pontiac Fiero was hot on the heels of the big gold Olds— just seconds behind its class rival— but Not So Fresh Off the Boat persevered and took home the prize.
In Class C, the Three Pedal Mafia 1971 Sea Sprite (mounted on a Chevy S10 chassis) spent most of the weekend looking strong, but a series of Sunday-afternoon mechanical failures put the boat up on jack stands for a couple of hours. That left the door open for multiple Legend of LeMons winner Morrow's Racing and their extremely terrible '95 Mitsubishi Mirage "Narwhal" (equipped with a wall of speakers blasting this incredibly irritating song at top volume, all weekend long) grabbed the Class C win by ten laps.
There was plenty of competition for the Most Heroic Fix award this time— Summit Point is rough on LeMons cars— but the three-engine weekend of the Dahlin Boys Racing contingent of Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws and their '94 Toyota Celica proved impossible to beat.
Front-wheel-drive engine swaps are no picnic, but these guys never gave up, Engine Number Three worked pretty well, and they took the checkered flag on Sunday.
For the I Got Screwed trophy, Team Pro-Crash-Duh-Nation just ran away with the prize this time. This team and their '87 Alfa Romeo Milano have contended in race after race in this region, and the '13 Capitol Offense looked like it might be the one.
Then, disaster struck, in the form of a deer-versus-Alfa incident that shattered the Milano's windshield and forced the team to pit for repairs.
Milanos are weirdly reliable in LeMons racing— far more reliable, in fact, than any Toyota— but the rear-mounted transaxle in the Pro-Crash-Duh-Nation car failed late on Saturday. No problem, said the team, we've got a spare! After wrenching for hours to replace the offending assembly (as you might have guessed, these cars are nearly as hard to work on as the dreaded Porsche 944), it was time to race again… which is when a rear brake caliper failed. Did we mention that you must remove the transaxle to replace a rear caliper on one of these cars? Screwed!
For our event-specific award, we felt compelled to honor the Turtle Eclipse of the Heart Mitsubishi team (note the roof-mounted turtle on their Eclipse) with the Greatest Team Name of All Time trophy.
The justices of the LeMons Supreme Court felt that the J-B Weld cylinder-head repair and general never-give-up spirit of the Dr. Feelgood's Crew team earned them the Judges' Choice award. While the Feelgood 2.2-powered '93 Dodge Shadow managed a mere 31 laps, they were all glorious laps!
The Organizer's Choice award goes to the team that does the best job of softening the lump-of-coal-grade hearts of the cynical, carny-like LeMons organizers, and it's hard to beat Sorry For Party racing in that department. This very fast Firebird-racing team wears the correct costumes all weekend long, they slap their Sorry For Party bumper stickers on everybody's race cars, and generally keep spirits up when cars (including their own) start breaking parts.
The top prize of our race is the Index of Effluency, awarded to the team that achieves the biggest spread between expected on-track performance and actual on-track performance. When we first laid eyes on the 1975 Austin Marina of Austin Powerless Racing (yes, the Marina was— in theory, though not often in practice— sold in North America), we assumed that we'd see about a half-dozen lethargic, smoke-trailing, parts-shedding laps out of this car, and that most of those laps would be behind the wrecker. In fact, the Austin Powerless Marina suffered only minor breakdowns and turned a shocking 283 laps, which amounts to nearly 600 miles of full-tilt, British-car-slaughtering driving, and finished 44th out of 97 entries.
Now that's a LeMons car! Congratulations, Austin Powerless!
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com | 
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