For the first visit of the 24 Hours of LeMons to Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama (and the 2014 season-opener race), we had a good mix of fast veteran teams and excellent new cars. Saturday's race session gave us much lead-changing and many dramatic rise-and-fall adventures among the top contenders, while each of the three classes saw interesting story lines developing. Here's how the day went.
Those in the know picked Hong Norrth Racing as the strongest entry among the Class A teams, but the much-battered Mazda MX-3 had some early mechanical problems and then got stuffed into a wall at high speed after a brake failure. The driver is fine and the car will be de-crumpled and back in action by Sunday morning, but the Hong Norrthers finished the day in P16 and out of contention for the win. Eventually, the 1986 Mercedes-Benz 190E of Ziegel Scheißhaus Racing pulled out to an impressive six-lap edge over the Burningham Racing Porsche 944. This W201 is a genuine Cosworth 2.3-16 car, squeezing under the LeMons $500 budget via the absurd resale value of its Cosworth-only interior, and the Scheißhaus gang has a couple of past LeMons wins under their belts. It's not the quickest car in the race, but the drivers are very clean, the car hasn't broken, and its fuel economy is excellent.
Leading Class B is the Halfast Racing 1995 Chevrolet Caprice. This car really stank up the track at its previous South Carolina LeMons races, breaking just about every part in the car over the course of a typical race weekend, so your LeMons correspondent (who also serves as Chief Justice of the LeMons Supreme Court) placed it in the medium-fast class this time. Of course, then the car held together and the Halfast guys (who turned out to have vast experience with the Barber track) ran the race of their lives for the first part of Saturday, climbing as high as P2 for a brief, glorious moment. The other Class B teams weren't so happy about this, but then a couple of black flags knocked the Caprice down to sixth place… and further black flags on Sunday might just induce the LeMons Supreme Court to kick the team up into A class.
Another controversial classing decision by the LSC involved the Geo Metro of the Knoxville Lowballers. Yes, that Smokey & the Bandit semi-tractor is a Geo Metro, and it's powered by a rear-mounted, 200-horse Ford Contour SVT V6. This car has an impressive power-to-weight ratio, but the Lowballers' race history up to this point involved an unbroken string of broken parts, engine swaps, and I Got Screwed trophies, so we put the thing into Class C. Wouldn't you know, today it held together just fine, turning some 1:58 laps (the Hong Norrthers managed a 1:51, to put things into perspective) and ending the day with a five-lap cushion over the Zero Budget Racing Chevrolet Chevette Diesel. Let's just call it the Ill-Advised Engine/Incredible Theme Loophole: build something like this, get into Class C!
Meanwhile, the most exciting battle of the day took place between the Zero Budget Racing 1975 Chrysler Cordoba and the Team Sputnik 1971 Plymouth Fury. The Sputnik crew decided that the morning of the race would be the ideal time to upgrade the front brakes from drums to discs, courtesy of a greasy pile of junkyard C-body brake parts. While this inexplicable detour put the Fury up on jackstands for the first few hours of the day, the Cordoba cruised onto the track with the smoothness of Ricardo Montalban.
When the rusty-but-still-beautiful Fury did rumble into action, the spectators cringed from the terrifying levels of body roll. It turned out that the new disc brakes interfered with the factory front swaybar, so the crazy Russians of Team Sputnik removed the bar. The Cordoba was slow (best lap time: 2:18), but the Fury was even slower (best lap time: 2:22).
Both of the heavily oxidized old Chryslers suffered from frequent breakdowns, but at day's end the Cordoba had finished 60 laps while the Fury managed just 43. We hope to see both cars climb higher in the standings during Sunday's race sessions; check in later and find out how it sorts out!
Photographs by Nick Pon and Murilee "Judge Phil" Martin
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
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