The 24 Hours of LeMons trekked to Sonoma Raceway last weekend to open its West Coast season with the annual “Sears Pointless” race. California’s colorful competitors placed their craziness on full display while Hooniverse’s own Tim Odell served on the LeMons Supreme Court, doling out a couple of creative penalties for miscreant drivers.

Of note, the “Sonoma Raceway Boys” lampooned the idea of “grid girls” (above) while elsewhere all manner of incredible Class C shenanigans carried on. Somehow—perhaps in spite of all that—great races broke out at the front of the field and at the front of Class B. Porch Racing repeated their Overall win at Sonoma in December in a nailbiter while Hella Shi**y Racing (aka Sonoma Raceway Boys) similarly snuck to their second-straight class win. Get the details after the jump. 

OVERALL

As predicted in the race preview, Cerveza Racing factored heavily into the race, leading more than 150 laps of the race. However, their BMW E28’s motor starting packing it in late Saturday, though they finished the session up two laps on Porch Racing’s 944 (above) and down on power. The overnight break gave Cerveza the chance to swap in a replacement motor, but its water pump failed Sunday, knocking them far from P1 (though they’d recover to claim a P10 finish).

Cerveza’s departure from the  lead left a raging two-car battle at the front. Porch Racing had led Sour Aviation Racing’s Mustang by 40 seconds to end Saturday, but the  Sunday restart put them nose-to-tail and Sour Aviation passed for the position at the green flag, giving them the effective lead. Porch Racing’s driver, however, came back with a grueling performance that regained the P1. With Sour Aviation two laps arrears after making the first of two fuel stops, the 944 pilot stretched the day’s opening stint past the session’s halfway point, eventually clocking more than four hours and 112 laps in one sitting while logging competitive lap times.

The ensuing Porsche stop was lengthy and gave the lead back to Sour Aviation (above), but the Mustang’s second and final stop dropped them about 90 seconds behind, where they would stay until the checkered flag. Porch Racing’s victory marked their second consecutive win at Sonoma Raceway (with a sprint race second place in between) after a 944 had gone more than 100 LeMons races without one. Sour Aviation’s runner-up result is one of only eight Mustang podiums in LeMons history and the first Mustang podium on the West Coast. Don’t be surprised if they soon become the first Mustang to win outright since 2009.

[Cheaty BMW paragraph]The Faustest Team rounded out the podium with a quiet, quick, trouble-free weekend. Their E30 always been one of the quicker teams but had never done better than 13th.  Similarly, D.A.R.E. had previously finished P15 in their best outing, but they assembled a solid race to finish fourth place overall.[/Cheaty BMW paragraph]

Idiotarod Racing’s snowmobile-engined Mazda Miata (aka Balto) ran as high as P2 late in the race, but it was dogged by late-race issues, running out of fuel and then breaking a CVT drive belt. The car ran consistently fast and even relatively efficiently, getting around two hours on a tank of premixed fuel. They picked up P5 late in the race from Tired Iron Racing’s stock Miata, which ran a perfect race but lacked the outright pace to make the podium.

How Are Those Guys Winning? (Eagle Talon) also made a late pass for position, picking up P7 in the final 10 minutes from Alfa Romeo Syndicate Eccelente #35. That Alfa GTV6 made its best result, though a couple of long stops early in the race cost them a at least five minutes on the track. Dirty Duck Racing (VW Rabbit, above) snuck into the Top 10 in the final hour with a consistent race buoyed by quick stops.

Sonoma sprint winners Pistola Alto finished a lap outside the Top 10 with a strong run of their own and Team Mayhem finished a solid P12 in their F-U Haul Mazda RX-7. 

Eyesore Racing broke the Sonoma Raceway LeMons lap record (I think..LeMons has run many different configurations of the track so it’s hard to know for certain) with a blistering 1:58 lap Saturday. However, any chance at competing ended Saturday when the turbocharged Miata caught a spinning car and suffered pretty significant damage. 

Roadrace Jones’ Nissan Sentra SE-R, the BLowe’s Racing Mitsubishi Eclipse, and Alfa Romeo Syndicate Eccelente’s “A” entry all looked firmly entrenched in the Top 10, but each took a tumble Sunday to fall well back in the rankings. 

 

CLASS B

Class B presented the biggest fireworks show with five cars in the hunt until the very end. Fiero Libre led most of Saturday in the class, including at Saturday’s checkered flag, but 25 minutes off the track early Sunday after collecting a spinning Camaro ceded the lead to Hella Shi**y’s dual-control, Subaru-powered Volkswagen Beetle (above), fresh off a Class C win in the sprint race at Sonoma last month.

With a little more than two hours remaining, the top three in the class at one point were separated by a mere two seconds with two more cars on the lead lap. Fuel strategies played out such that Hella Shi**y  barely hung onto the class win over the thirsty Mercury Zephyr from Super Troop Racing. 

Parada/TSL (Mazda RX-7, above) and Team Tinyvette each finished a lap behind the class winner, having put together good races in their own right. Tinyvette’s Opel GT overcame some recent rotten race luck and ran like clockwork, particularly Sunday where driver stints last exactly 50 laps (about two hours). Team 5150 (Datsun Z) finished yet another lap back from there in the car’s debut.

How close was the entire class? The top five Class B cars all finished comfortably inside the Top 20 and the class’s top 10 wound up within the Top 30.

 

CLASS C

On Saturday, Class C looked to be shaping up for a grand two-vehicle battle between the Pinewood Dirtbags Chevy LUV (above) and the Billy Beer Ford Futura with both cars on the same lap to begin Sunday. However, several small setbacks knocked the Futura back about 10 laps mid-day and the Dirtbags hung on with their V6 pickup to win the class handily.

LeMons Legend Mike “Spank” Spangler brought three cars to Sonoma with the idea of selling them in a most Cal Worthington-like manner. His 2008 Prius—with 340,000 miles on the odometer and a full interior still—finished mid-pack with NPR blaring from the stock radio (and it found a buyer who is now driving it home cross-country to South Carolina). The 1967 Oldsmobile Toronado ran reasonably well, aside from shearing wheel studs while the Harley V-Twin-powered Prius (the Toyohog) struggled all weekend while jostling its drivers like “a washing machine full of hammers,” to borrow a phrase from Midwestern LeMons Judge Sam Stevens. The collection of oddware earned Spank and his crew the Organizer’s Choice trophy.

The glacially slow 1961 Rambler Classic from Panting Polar Bear Racing chugged to the top half of the standings in full column-shifting, double-digit-horsepower glory. The Rambler clocked the second-slowest best lap of the weekend but hardly whimpered for wear on the way to P5 in class and the Index of Effluency in its debut.

Elsewhere in Class C, Dudes Ex Machina finally got a full-ish weekend out of their Plymouth Valiant Scamp and LOL Racing continued to improve with their Volvo 1800, finishing P9 and P4 in the class, respectively. The Team -Ing With Bad Ideas Volkswagen Beetle even got a much deserved break, lasting more than two laps before packing it in.

However, the co-Hooniversal Car of the Year Plymouth Reliant managed to wreck another Mitsubishi V6, the ninth toasted engine in the car’s 16-month race history. Somehow, current owner Chris Overzet seems to have found a rube potential new owner for the K, which will seek to become a double-ace in blowed-up motors win Class C or at least run more than one race without breaking all of its engine internals.

 

OTHER NOTABLE CARS:

Directionally Challenged Racing cannibalized the team’s former Ford Mustang to paste (not literally…I think) onto an International Scout chassis, which allegedly also included some Ford Aerostar bits. I haven’t heard much to the contrary, so I’ll assume everything with the MuScoutang (my word, hoping it will catch on) went completely perfectly and the 128th place finish was a fluke or timing error.

The Fat and the Furious debuted with the former Geo Metro Gnome, a Honda CBR-powered Geo Metro. The team were clearly working with the tiny, temperamental mid-engined beast and managed a respectable 2:05 lap in a car that is probably trying to kill its driver at least half the time.

The much-anticipated Volkswagen TDI-powered Porsche 911 from Hella Shi**y/Sonoma Raceway Boys finished P130 after some overheating and oil-leaking issues. It turned reasonable laps with its fastest—a 2:17.5—right on pace with the Mercedes oil burner of Dirty Little Freaks, who clocked a 2:17.6. The Sonoma Raceway Boys previously tried to campaign team member Ryan Doherty for inclusion into the Sonoma Raceway Girls nominations if you’re curious about the lead photo’s origin. (You can read the start of that campaign over on another site, written by Hooniverse friend and commenter Stef Schrader.)

 

Finally, a Fremont high school helped built this remarkable Toy Story-livery Mazda B2200 pickup. Nevermind that it finished next-to-last with 12 laps turned; just look at how perfectly it resembles the Pizza Planet Delivery truck from the movie. And then take a moment to applaud the young hoons who prepared it for race duty.

 

BY THE NUMBERS

 

If you’ve read any of my overwrought postings on LeMons, you probably know that I like numbers. So here are some of the numbers to show how the Top 10 and the Class B winners got where they were. Class C wasn’t quite close enough to merit further investigation (See standings at bottom).

Just as with the last time I looked at these kinds of numbers, “stints” simply refers to time between stops, though I think Sonoma’s paddock setup means it was easier to differentiate between black flags and driver changes. You can get the raw data from MyLaps or you can see some of the semi-processed data on this Google Spreadsheet. It’s also worth noting that this race saw a lot of long full-course caution laps, sometimes pushing 5:00, which ballooned the average race laps.

Overall Team	# Stints	Avg Stint	Avg Stop	Avg Race Lap	Laps
Porch	5	70.60	11:22	02:25.4	353
Sour Aviation	6	58.83	07:39.5	02:26.8	353
Faustest Team	9	38.33	09:35.4	02:24.9	345
DARE	8	41.75	10:25	02:25.6	344
Idiotarod	10	32.20	10:38	02:22.8	342
Tired Iron	6	57.00	9:44	02:29.5	342
How Are  These Guys Winning	6	56.17	08:23.5	02:32.8	337
Alfa Romeo Syndicate	7	48.14	10:41	02:29.6	337
Dirty Duck	9	37.44	7:54	02:30.4	337
Cerveza	7	48.00	15:09	02:26.2	336

Let’s notice some things worth noticing:

• Sour Aviation essentially made up for the additional stop by being much faster in their stops. Without a dedicated hot pit for refueling at Sonoma, it’s possible that Porch Racing had a bad paddock space and Sour Aviation had a good one. Or it could be that Porch took longer to put in more fuel because the car could take on more. Regardless, they were closely matched.
• Idiotarod’s numbers would have been much closer to D.A.R.E.’s if they hadn’t needed a tow into the paddock after exhausting fuel. A long stop can kill you.
• The P7, P8, and P9 finishers all arrived on the same lap through different means: How Are These Guys Winning ran long, mistake-free stints, Alfa Romeo Syndicate also ran long stints but had two lengthy stops early, and Dirty Duck ran more stops but they were far faster on their driver changes.
• Cerveza lost nearly an hour of track time with repairs but still salvaged a Top 10 finish. If you exclude those two long stops, they only made three in-race driver changes, which would have averaged about 6:30 with an in-lap. Ever wondered how Cerveza has won five races? Yeah, they’re fast, but they also minimize pit time. 

 

Class B Team	# Stints	AVG Stint	Avg Stop	Avg Race Lap	Laps
Hella Shi**y	11	30.09	7:53	02:30.4	331
Super Troop	13	26.23	7:41	02:29.9	331
Parada/TSL	12	27.50	8:03	02:30.4	330
Tinyvette	9	36.67	9:01	02:31.6	330
Team 5150	10	32.90	9:06	02:31.3	329

 

• Hella Shi**y very nearly screwed themselves. They made their final stop with a little more than an hour remaining and more than two laps in hand. However, they had to stop on the next lap to correct a mistake or make some minor fix, which put Super Troop back on the lead lap, though they were unable to close the gap.
• Super Troop’s thirsty Zephyr required 13 stops that, as far as I can tell, would have been fairly routine refuelings. Their stops were fastest and they were the fastest of the Class B cars. Ordinarily, I would suggest that a car that needs to stop every 80 minutes or so has little chance of winning the class, but they showed there’s more than one way to skin a Class B car. Interestingly, Parada/TSL split the difference in number of stints but their pit times were just long enough to set them back.
• Team Tinyvette were precise, running what I can figure were exactly 50-lap stints (~2:05). They threatened the Class B lead late Sunday but had to make a final stop in the race’s last hour for a splash of fuel.

 

OVERALL (Full results on MyLaps here)

1. #942 Porch Racing (Porsche 944) – 352 Laps
2. #737 Sour Aviation Racing (Ford Mustang) – 352 Laps, +1:40
3. #186 The Faustest Team (BMW E30) – 344 Laps
4. #415 D.A.R.E. (BMW E36) – 343 Laps
5. #149 Idiotarod Racing (Mazda Miata) – 342 Laps
6. #189 Tired Iron Racing (Mazda Miata) – 341 Laps
7. #4 How Are Those Guys Winning (Eagle Talon) – 336 Laps
8.#35 Alfa Romeo Syndicate Eccelente (Alfa Romeo GTV6) – 336 Laps, +36 Seconds 
9. #83 Dirty Duck Racing (VW Rabbit) – 336 Laps, +1:06
10. #2 Cerzea Racing (BMW E28) – 335 Laps

CLASS B

1. #71 Hella Shitty Racing (VW Beetle) – 331 Laps
2. #178 Super Troop (Mercury Zephyr) – 330 Laps
3. #56 Parada/TSL (Mazda RX-7) – 329 Laps
4. #8 Team Tinyvette (Opel GT) – 329 Laps, +11 seconds
5. #13 Team 5150 (Datsun Z) – 328 Laps
6. #26 Swedish Monarchs Racing (Volvo 740) – 324 Laps
7. #171 Old Crows (Ford Mustang) – 323 Laps
8. #538 Car Error Panamericana (Saturn SL) – 321 Laps
9. #57 Uber Vogel: Hans Am (Mercedes 190) – 320 Laps
10. #94 Communists R Us (BMW E21) – 319 Laps

CLASS C

1. #184 Pinewood Dirtbags (Chevy LUV) – 311 Laps
2. #180 Billy Beer Racing (Ford Futura) – 300 Laps
3. #390 Rep-Eat-Offenders (Volvo 240) – 283 Laps
4. #1 LOL Racing (Volvo 1800) – 272 Laps
5. #785 Panting Polar Bear Racing 2 (Rambler) – 260 Laps
6. #24 Gentrification du LEMons (Toyota Prius) – 246 Laps
7. #124 D5 Racing (Triumph TR7) – 241 Laps
8. #210 B210 Racing (Datsun B210) – 228 Laps
9. #172 Dudes Ex Machina (Plymouth Valiant) – 224 Laps
10. #113 Sub Par Motorsports (Honda CRX) – 215 Laps

[Photos: Murilee Martin except lead photo from Team Jaywatch/Hella Shi**y Racing and Pizza Planet truck photos from Bryan Wood/Piledriverz.com]