After a cold and windy day at the Monticello Motor Club, during which the cars we admired yesterday got down to racin’ business, the checkered flag waved and we have the results of the first race session of the There Goes the Neighborhood 24 Hours of LeMons.
Because some people care about such things, we’ll start with the teams currently shooting for the win on laps. When Saturday’s session ended, the top three teams were locked together on the same lap. With a hair’s-breadth edge over its competition, the drivers of the Team Pro Crash Duh Nation ’87 Alfa Romeo Milano can’t even blink tomorrow without losing the top spot. This team has always been a strong contender in East Region LeMons events, but has yet to take an overall win.
Another team with many finishes in the top five (but none at the very top of the standings) is the Near-Orbital Space Monkeys and their ’89 Ford Mustang. This well-driven car features a bunch of weirdly engineered (but effective) backyard suspension modifications and has led the field in several past races, but last-minute minor mechanical problems have led to the Space Monkeys’ downfall in the past.
Just seconds behind the Near-Orbital Space Monkeys lurks the Saab-powered Nissan 300ZX of Rust In the Wind. This car’s rise from goofy, blowup-prone Engine Swap Disaster to the machine driven by the dominant team of East Region LeMons racing has been as improbable as you might imagine, and its best lap time is a full five seconds better than that of the Pro Crash Duh Nation Alfa (to give you a sense of the lack of importance of raw lap time here, the top lap time of the 120-car field was put down by the 22nd-place Volvo 244T of the Keystone Kops).
For most of the day, the Class B lead looked to be nailed down and fully secured by the ’90 Volvo 740 wagon of Fast Al’s Racing… but you never know what will happen in endurance racing.
Late in the afternoon, the Fast Al car limped off the track and clattered to a smoke-belching halt right in front of the penalty box. We’re not sure what broke, but we’re sure it isn’t going to be a quick fix.
With the Volvo wagon out of the way, the Elmo’s Revenge ’92 Saturn SL2 stormed into the Class B lead. Elmo’s Revenge has been around East Region LeMons races since the beginning; such a seasoned team should be hard to catch.
Class C, which tends to produce the most exciting race-within-a-race in LeMons, has a most unlikely car on top: the horrible Buick V6-powered Triumph TR7 of the Three Pedal Mafia. We’ve already discussed the nightmares that befall Triumph racers in this series, so let’s just say that a TR7 leading its class (and in 17th overall!) can’t be happening.
Now, let’s talk about the matchup that has the most avid LeMons aficionados on the edges of their seats: the struggle between the two forced-induction-equipped brown AMC products. At the end of Saturday’s session, the 1974 Gremlin of It Ain’t My Fault Morrow’s Racing (featuring supercharged GM 3800 power) holds a quasi-comfortable 20-lap edge over the 1975 Hornet of Rally Baby Racing (featuring turbocharged AMC 258 inline-six power).
That’s P42 for the Gremlin, P70 for the Hornet. The Gremlin is faster, probably due to its better-prepped suspension, but the Eaton-blown 3800 V6 engine has a wretchedly bad reliability record in LeMons racing. How will this battle of the Kenosha titans turn out? Check in Sunday night to find out!
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/caranddriver/blog/~3/MblKBO4Kgrs/
Mike Harris Cuth Harrison Brian Hart Gene Hartley Masahiro Hasemi
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