Race Report: LeMons New England 2009

OK this is way past due, but there you go. My first official automobile race was at the LeMons New England (in Stafford Springs CT) last July, and it was an absolute blast. I even slept in the race car the first night, which was great until the fire extinguisher acidentally went off and... well nevermind. Explaining it to the EMTs was embarrassing enough.

We held 5th, 6th and 7th place (out of 56 cars!) pretty much the whole first day, until the back concrete wall decided to merge with our front fender

Sunday we started in 13th place (time lost spent repairing car after wall) and held 13th until the VERY LAST LAP when we let someone by we should not have (it's a long story).

Video news story here: http://www.fox61.com/news/­wtic-lemons-story-0713,0,­5382994.story

More pictures here: http://cid-ecf7ab830246e19f.skydrive.live.com/albums.aspx

Here we are, car #22 on the second day of racing. The white Impala next to us would eventually pass us to claim 13th place - it was a fight all the way and very very fun. The turn you see is at the end of the high-speed straightaway and it's quite the pinch point - everybody waiting to brake until the last possible moment and throwing their cars into that turn. At least one car lost a wheel on that turn...




Ever see the movie "Days Of Thunder"? It's kinda like that, only without the Scientology:




Here is the car being towed off the track after kissing "The Wall Of Shame" Saturday evening. Coming off the high-banked 180 turn at the back of the track the driver tried to whip it around to gain on another car but got a mouthful of concrete wall instead. No injuries. We worked on the car the rest of the night and couldn't make much progress with it; drove it Sunday in it's wounded state and did our best to hold position. The handling was nearly dangerous at times, and we kept it pretty slow most of the day, just trying to reach the finish line.