It’s 10am, Saturday morning at Buttonwillow Raceway in central California, and the sun is finally starting to take the bone-aching cold out of our toes. Around one hundred thirty crappy old hoopties and ultimate driving machines circle the track in a motorized spectacle that can only be described as part Burning Man, part mid-20th century NASCAR, waaaay back when they actually raced street-based cars. Teams gather along the pit walls to watch the start of the race – chatting nervously, giggling and pointing out various goofy themes and creations as they cruise by.
Suddenly the green flag drops, the din grows to a screaming roar, smoke billows and cheers fill the air. The 24 Hours of Lemons “Arse-Freeze-Apalooza 2011” has just begun; a 2-day battle of endurance, perseverance, absurdity, a little strategy and a big steaming pile of plain old dumb luck.
The Killer ZomBee MGB meanwhile, is still in the pits. As laps begin ticking up and the clock begins ticking down, the team is still struggling to get a special racing seat fitted. While the old one still works it will no longer be legal for the next racing season, thus one of our teammates has brought a seat from his own racecar for testing. “We’ll just throw it in before the race” came the battle-cry, “How hard can it be?”
Aaand the race started without us. Which, pretty much answers that question.
The team captain has an inner-ear inflammation brought about by an allergic reaction to a certain type of Sycamore trees (and a rare ill-timed tequila bender), thus over the last week every time he moves his head the world spins in vertigo. This makes simple things like eating, showering, tying shoes or working on the car a fall-down-at-random challenge, not to mention 5 nights of sleep deprivation thanks to a bout of Sudafed induced insomnia. The captain really IS a walking delirious Zombie and a complete mental/physical wreck. This could be a long, looong weekend.
20 minutes pass and the seat is nearly installed, the driver is fully suited up and the car, an infamous battle-hardened 1977 Rubber-Bumper MGB sits otherwise ready for its final race of the season. The team is on edge as the bare threads of the captain’s sanity begin to fray. No one knows what the captain is trying to say, making sense to no one – not even himself.
The terse moments finally pass when the seat is declared done, the driver gets belted in and the Bee roars to life, then sent out in record time to join a race already underway. At the end of the first hour we had settled into a mellow 98th place out of 131 entries.
This last second push would set the tone for the weekend, in which the team would keep functioning as a well oiled machine every-time it mattered most. Not that we had any chance in hell of winning anything. After all, the car had already won the top Lemons prize of I.O.E (Index Of Effluency) earlier this year in part by driving all the way to Oregon from the Bay Area Ca for the “Pacific Northworst” race – all while towing a silly 1-wheeled Calistoga trailer. And with our consistent 2nd or 3rd slowest laptimes of every race we weren’t likely to beat anyone with speed.
But winning is not why we are here. We came for the same reason the other 6-7 cars in our little area of the paddock did. These teams were all crammed into a small area that came to be known by the organizers as the “Hardcore Class-C” compound and included a Mini Moke, an Austin America, ghetto-charged turbo Mini cooper, a French Simica, VW Bug, Malaise era Triumph Spitfire and of course the Zombee MGB. The sheer number of automotive misfits crammed into our ¼ acre of paddock space was almost frightening. But what we all lack in speed and reliability we generally make up for with being towed off the track, great food and a good laugh.
We just keep trying to see how far the silly things will go.
But then something amazing happened. At the end of day 1 we found ourselves at 58th place overall, and just a few laps behind our class C leaders and friendly arch-rivals “LaHonda Bandits” in their Porsche 914. “WHAT the hell happened?!?!? How could this be?” Answer; we just kept turning slow consistent laps and stayed out of trouble. But there was still a long race ahead of us, so no one got their hopes up.
At this point I was sure everything was a sleep-deprived hallucination, and decided to chance laying off the Sudafed in exchange for a good night’s sleep. I hadn’t been in the car yet but I was up for first stint in the morning, and either my ear would be better or it wouldn’t. There was no way I could drive with vertigo AND continued sleep deprivation.
That night we had the enjoyable company of our own BZR/Blake Rong, 2 kegs of home brewed beer, beer-boiled bratwursts, thick juicy steaks, and Killdozer-Jozwik’s delicious homemade Limón cello. And in spite of a live punk band playing right outside the door of “Brownie, the World’s greatest Crappy Old RV”™ I hit the rack early… and slept. Finally.
Sunday morning I took the car out hoping to be well enough to do a full hour and the team was on-standby just in case I suddenly had to come back in. But the hour passed and I felt great. The car was a bit down on power and smoking but kept chugging along, and I got into a great groove and found the fast line around the track. I even set our team lap record of 2:36, which is not bad for a car that was rated at a whopping 63hp at the crank over 3 decades ago (that we have admittedly cheated and brought up to a blistering 90, maybe).
2 hours and a wicked-fast pit-stop later the car went back out with the second driver of the day. Rumor had it we even gained a few positions. However the Porsche 914 was back out tearing up the track after fixing some mechanical issues and it was now running on all 4 cylinders, which made them quite a bit quicker than us and able to gain 2 laps an hour. Mathematically it was obvious we were out of the running yet again.
Still, we. never. gave. up.
And then, a miracle. We saw them in the penalty box. Then twice. And then a third time. Scuttlebutt said they had incurred a 30 minute penalty – which gave us the lead, but still a calculated two laps down at the end. Suddenly it was a real race in the C/Ugly class. It would all come down to pit strategy and zen driving, but essentially be theirs to lose. Talk about a rush!! We’ve never been seriously “competitive” before!
I was just thrilled to have been in a chase of ANY sort, so even if we blew up or crashed at that moment it still would have been a incredibly great weekend. But somehow the car kept going, and going, and going, burning 2 quarts of oil at every pit-stop (still on the wife’s motor). The starter gave up the ghost, it had a wicked stumble and was losing power, and the front-end felt like it had finally had it and started to scare us over the bumps. Then the wipers shorted out and went berserk for the last stint.
But it kept going. Like an evil English sewing machine someone said.
With half an hour left one of us checked the standing on the wireless timing app, and we realized we had somehow… mathematically clinched the @#$% win!!! They retired with a mechanical problem and we kept going with our electrical system going haywire, the next class C car a full 24 laps behind us.
(scene: cut to a bunch of chubby guys in bee costumes jumping and screaming like high-school cheerleaders).
We finished 37th overall out of 131 cars, having clawed our way all the way up from 98th place at the less than perfect beginning, and in spite of having the 4th slowest laptimes. Only the stretch Limo, Austin America (I stand corrected, it was a Simca!) and that horrible 1979 Ford Futura were slower, and yet the plucky little ZomBee somehow beat 94 other cars.
In its 3 years as a racecar, the Bee has won “Worst-British” trophy at a car show for too much duck-tape, a Judge’s Choice trophy for being “awfully nice”, and the highly coveted “Index Of Effluency” (IOE) grand prize for being stupidly brave. It has even won the hearts of hundreds for just being plucky and virtually indestructible.
But now, after 3 long, incredibly hard years, 12 races, 5,930 miles in-tow behind Brownie, the World’s Greatest Crappy Old RV™, 2,395 miles pulling its own silly little wagon up and down the freeways, and approximately 4,859 competition miles squealing its tires on 7 great tracks, the Bee can now say – “Yeah, (puts on shades) I finally won a race.”
“I am Lazarus. I am the Killer ZomBee MGB. And I am awesome.”
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