Here's my cliff notes version of it (as memory serves): Friday night practice: The car is on snow tires. I don't remember why, but we haven't put the Azenis on yet. We send drivers out to get a feel for the course. Dick comes back white as a sheet. It's slippery and our lights went completely out mid lap. Turns out the circuit had grounded on the bumper, problem fixed. Also, we'd turned our e30 into a pickup, it was super light on the back end. It took 2 guys almost no effort to pick the back wheels up off the ground. Looked around for parts. Can we build a wing? Yeah, piece of shelving, some sheet metal, and a couple of posts. We're in business! Saturday: We must've put 4 drivers in the car within the first 5 hours, this is not a way to win an endurance race. Dick was out for 10 minutes, spun, kept going, and then cut someone off to earn a black flag. Not long afterward we sent out Alex and he passed on yellow. He was forced to go shirtless and mimic some weird shirtless cowboy calendar for every month while the ladies judged his accuracy. All the while we were working on our megasquirt tune, it was nowhere near right, but it didn't mean we weren't still fast. The car came back to paddock about 3 times for no good reason. It was a disorganized mess. Into the evening we were around 120th place, pretty embarrassing. Later in the day I went out and stayed out a little over 2 hours until I thought fuel was low. It was insane out there. Cars were flying off of corners, someone was spun out right in front of me, complete madness. The wing helped, on sweepers we could easily leave most cars in the dust. Doing the kink flat out saw about 100-120mph before braking. However there was traffic to contend with and very few of them were not in my way at the pace I wanted to go. We started to settle in for the night and got down to business. Sunday night: Things finally started to go like clockwork. Drivers were staying out a minimum 2 hours, we had refueling in the hot pit down to a science, and the car was staying out of the penalty box. Alex charged out of the pits through a red light, that pissed us off. He did his time and went back out and redeemed himself. My shift was pretty wild. Our lights were weak, there's no other way to say it, we weren't well equipped. The giant mirror installed on our left side did nothing but blind me. People were diving into corners too late and too early, coming into my line and throwing mud everywhere. After 2 hours of cruising around in complete blindness it happened, first contact. Going into turn 1, screeeech, BAM! All of the sudden I'm spinning. My front windshield fills up with headlights, somehow I steer the car off the track while going backwards. It doesn't want to fire up, takes about 5 tries. I drug the bumper and rear taillight all the way back to pit. About 30 minutes and the car is back out there. Sunday morning: Our fastest guys weren't comfortable with their nightvision. Maybe that was for the best, we took care of business and were pretty tired. As soon as the sun came up people responded by trying to go faster and usually overestimating their cars/abilities. Tons of people off track. We'd risen to about 60th overnight. Sending Dick out again on the anchor leg to drive the last two laps. He doesn't know the meaning of maintain. He's driving it like he stole it, passing, bumping, and getting the bird from other drivers. This isn't to say that he isn't fast, he did a 1:26, and that's right up there with the top guys. One contact too many and he got black flagged with 30 minutes to go. Dang it, Kevin and I had suits on but I was too far from the radio. Kevin the reluctant went out and made us look good, took the checkered flag with no further drama. We finished at 49th place. Given we were at 120th the day before I felt pretty good with that. Being the fastest car doesn't mean much out there, but for our lack of strategy we were pretty laid back and still had way too much fun. It was respectable. There should be some video forthcoming, but unfortunately the camera needed recharged everytime I went out. Here are the pictures so far: http://picasaweb.google.com/emajkut/Lemons2009?feat=directlink#
