When we inspected the 133 entries at the 2013 Halloween Hooptiefest at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Friday, we saw an unprecedented four Volvo 850s preparing to race. At the end of Saturday's race session, the 850s were buried pretty far down in the standings— the most successful one ended the day in P56— while the winner of the Real Hoopties of New Jersey race held a semi-comfortable lead.
The drivers of the Ziegel Scheißhaus '86 Mercedes-Benz 190E managed to thread a flawless path through all the metal-bending, oil-spewing, rod-throwing mayhem that results from setting 133 steering-wheel-chewing East Coast drivers loose on a 1.66-mile road course. While many teams were hard-pressed to put together a dozen clean laps in a row, Ziegel Scheißhaus ran fast lap after fast lap, didn't break any parts, and finished the day with 216 laps.
As seems to happen at just about every East Region LeMons race in recent years, the '89 Ford Mustang of the Near-Orbital Space Monkeys finished Saturday just a few laps behind the leader. The Space Monkeys drive just as well as the Scheißhaus guys, and their car is about as quick, so everyone at NHMS knows that the 3-lap edge held by the Benz could evaporate instantly with the slightest stumble. A too-long fuel-stop, a minor mechanical problem, or a black-flag-inducing spinout would switch the P1 and P2 cars just like that.
Another car that we often see near the top of the standings in East Region races is the Team Pro-Crash-Duh-Nation '87 Alfa Romeo Milano. This may be the best-sounding car in all of LeMons racing (who says a V6 engine can't make a beautiful noise?) and it ended Saturday's race session just a single lap behind the Near-Orbital Space Monkeys' Mustang.
In Class B, the '92 Acura Legend of LEGENDary Racing holds a 5-lap edge over the PunisherGP Peugeot 405 Mi16 and finished the day in P19 overall. Not bad for a squishy, 21-year-old luxury car that came straight out of the Japanese Asset Price Bubble!
As for Class C, which tends to be where the most hard-fought battles in any LeMons race take place, we'd like to be able to report that the '87 Plymouth Reliant-K wagon of Rally Baby Racing (which has been passed from team to team around the country for all of the 2013 race season and has proven itself to be irredeemably terrible down to the subatomic level) suddenly came to life and ran like a train all day. Sadly, such was not the case; the "Super K" finished just 76 laps, good for 126th place overall. We are hoping that tomorrow will be a better day for Lee Iacocca's pride and joy.
The real-world Class C leader is the '85 Chevrolet Chevette (yes, GM was still building Chevettes in 1985) of Team Chev-itte Where the Sun Don't Shine. This team won Class C a couple years back with this car, but then they ruined it by adding a sketchy-even-by-LeMons-standards junkyard turbocharging setup. People win the lottery, and the same sort of dumb luck appears to have kept all the Chev-itte's connecting rods in place so far in this race.
Four laps behind the Chevette, we've got the bouncy, jouncy, Pinto-engined '93 Ford Mustang of Speedycop and the Gang of Outlaws chasing the Class C lead. The wing probably costs this car five seconds per lap due to added drag and weight, but who cares?
Three Pedal Mafia's '69 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, which retains much of its original glory in spite of a few decades' worth of body filler and mildew buildup, suffered a few time-outs due to brake overheating and tended to heel over at alarming angles during turns but otherwise handled the indignities of road racing quite well. P120 is respectable for the big Roller!
Meanwhile, many teams spent much of the day trying to patch their broken-down hoopties back into semi-running condition. This Kim Jong-Un-themed Camaro team nuked their engine during Friday's practice session but managed to find a mid-90s Buick Roadmaster with an allegedly good 350 engine for cheap on Craigslist.
As is so often the case in LeMons racing, the engine wasn't quite an exact bolt-in swap, and the new engine's serpentine-belt tensioner turned out to be bad. These guys have been hammer-and-tongs at their Camaro repair since Friday night and they're never going to give up!
The transmission in this Subaru Forester failed in a fashion recognizable to all LeMons Subaru racers, so the team swapped in their spare trans… which turned out to be missing first and second gears.
How will all this nerve-shredding drama sort out? Check the home of all your 24 Hours of LeMons coverage later to find out!
from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com
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