Right after inspecting the entries at the 6th annual Gator-O-Rama 24 Hours of LeMons at MSR Houston, we braved the chilly, fetid, swampy exhalations of the Gulf Coast in November for the very first racing session. At the finish of the day, we had surprises in every of the 3 LeMons classes. Here’s what occurred.
Top Class A and the whole 85-automobile field is the Group Blue Goose 1984 Audi 4000S Quattro. This team’s members have been competing in LeMons because the extremely earliest Texas LeMons races, and they’ve come as close as you can get to an overall win with no in fact taking residence the Class A trophy… more than and more than once more. Zero visits to the penalty box, zero broken parts, and lap times nearly as excellent as the quickest automobiles in the field the Blue Goose Audi has done everything right so far and leads the field by 2 laps. Will some 12-hours-to-fix component fail on Sunday? Will a rainstorm come in and wash away the hopes of the 2-wheel-drive competitors on Sunday? We’ll know tomorrow.
Proper behind the Blue Geese is a team that’s spent almost as numerous years in spitting distance from an general LeMons win: the Vermont-primarily based Bert 1 and their Volvo 262C Bertone. With a mere 2 laps separating the Bertone-ized Volvo from the 4-ringed German, Group Blue Goose can not afford a single minor error on Sunday.
In Class B, the previously languishing-in-obscurity Inglorious Bastards 1991 Ford Thunderbird somehow managed to scrabble its way all the way up to P9 and a 5-lap class lead.
How? Why? We can’t say, but Team Speedy Monzales and their 1980 Pontiac Sunbird will be waiting for the slightest stumble on the element of the Inglorious Bastards.
For factors no one can comprehend, The Syndicate has taken a massive Class C lead with their Mercedes-Benz C107 coupe. This group won the Index of Effluency at the 2014 North Dallas Hooptie, but taking a class win seemed as far beyond their reach as is manage of the United States Senate by the Peace and Freedom Party. At this moment, even though, The Syndicate owns a mighty 15-lap edge more than the nearest competition.
That competitors is the door-handle-scraping 1993 Toyota Corolla of TGTW Offroad Racing. Yes, Class C is down to a battle amongst a single of the most prestigious cocaine-dealer automobiles of the 1970s and one particular of the most depressing rental cars of the 1990s.
The Dodge Neon campaigned by the Street Outlaws crew did a lot much better than we expected (provided the really low bar set by automotive Tv shows in LeMons), ending the day in 58th place and with just a couple of visits to the LeMons Supreme Court’s penalty box.
Meanwhile, many teams have deposited important engine parts upon MSR’s tarmac and have been traveling the area in search of tough-to-locate components. Escape Velocity Racing’s 1965 Dodge Dart spat a connecting rod out the side of its Slant-6’s block, but the team brought a components automobile: an original (if really rusty) Dodge Challenger, equipped with an allegedly very good 225-cubic-inch Leaning Tower of Power.
LeMons Legend Spank took a voyage all the way out from San Diego in order to get behind the wheel of the Austin America he Frankensteined collectively final year, but it turned out that most of the car’s elements had been stored inside a toxic algae bloom for the last 13 months. We heard news that the America‘s engine fired earlier this evening, so we may possibly see it on the track on Sunday.
We can not inform you what will take place on Sunday, but you can verify in later and locate out!
LeMons Houston Day 1: Audi 4000, Ford Thunderbird, Mercedes-Benz 450SLC Leading Classes
