Day 2: 24 Hours of Lemons

Team Festivus finished the 24 Hours of Lemons! We finished 17th out of 71 entries, and 7th out of 20 in our class (The "Prayer of Winning" class, which appeared to be somewhat arbitrarily assigned). We completed 396 laps. The winning car completed 461 laps.

The running order for Sunday was:
Wade
Erik
Bryce
Jessica
Wyatt

Doug didn't drive on Sunday. I got two stints on Saturday, so we all drove the same amount.

Wade went out and showed us why he's a driving instructor at Thunderhill. He was turning some very fast laps, passing lots of cars. Unfortunately, the thermostat failed and the car overheated not long into his stint. He brought the car in, and Wyatt and Bryce fixed it in a hurry. Wade went back out and promptly punted a Porsche off the course... earning him a black flag to "cool off". In fact, Wade got punted into the Porsche by another car. Anyway, there was no real harm done.

Erik went out next, planning a short stint to try to avoid the nausea he'd experienced on Saturday. He ended up driving nearly a full hour, and was really picking up speed.

Bryce went out and turned some fast laps, but noted that the tires were wearing- especially the right front. This wasn't a real surprise since we'd been abusing these tires all weekend. At the end of his stint, we rotated them.


Jessica got in next. She was nervous because the pace had really picked up and she didn't want to be a moving chicane or hit anyone. She thought she'd be slow. In fact, she did just great! With a little more practice she'll be fast and much more confident. She showed off her fine driving skills after dropping a wheel into the dirt on turn 3... the car went off course at high speed. Jessica kept it from rolling and got back on course. She was greeted with a black flag for going off course, but only needed to endure a stern talking-to from the officials.

Wyatt drove the last stint and also earned the team's fastest lap time of the weekend.

The "People's Curse" award was given the a Mazda 626 that was leading the race from very early on. This car had obvious "real race car" underpinnings and no car could match it's speed. Unfortunately, the population of Curse voters noticed that the car was a little too fast and most likely worth far more than $500, so it was destroyed by an excavator in artistic style.

Here's some video of the destruction in progress:



Team Festivus was happy to finish in 17th out of 71. We acted as a good team all weekend, despite the fact that many of us didn't know each other. We stuck to our common goal of just finishing and having fun.


Offical Lemons Results (We are car #20):
http://www.mylaps.com/results/newResults.jsp?id=713849

An interesting site with lots of Lemons news...
http://jalopnik.com/tag/24-hours-of-lemons/