MANY thanks to Total ClusterSpank participants & Buttonwillow Racers

I am immensely grateful to everyone who helped to get 7 cars to Buttonwillow raceway by Friday, then to get 6 through tech before it closed at 5pm (the ToyoHog was ready but I waited too long to push it up there) and then for all 7 to take the green flag on Saturday, and finally keep them running so 6 could take the checkered flag on Sunday.

The car that didn't take the checkered was the ToyoHog and, well, that's mharrell's story to tell. But it's demise was certainly no surprise. And for ensuring that the ToyoHog will never take the track again, MikeH, I thank you.

So in Spank Math, 6 of 7 is 100% Success!

I am also very thankful to the majority of teams who did their best to avoid contact with those 7 heaps. There were a few instances of contact, but they were of the typical "chop" variety where cars think they are past us before they are really past us and we get a front corner rounded off and wheel bearing / drive flange replacement and need to dial out the newly earned 1" of toe-in. And it's an all-fault situation anyway so I'm very thankful to the drivers of my crap for taking such good care of them so that 6 could drive on and off the trailers when it was all over. But I appreciate those of you who gave a little extra room.

The cars had a mixed bag of hella-experienced drivers and some complete track rookies, which I'm sure made it more unpredictable. I'm hoping the Red & Blue light bars helped you identify them way ahead and before you were potentially surprised by them. (Seeing the video of the Starlet being used to scrape off the Super Troopers was an example of what I most fear when my cars go out on track.)

Several driver team members, including Colin, LTDScott but most especially AJ (who is also my right hand, left leg, and 3/4 of my brain), came to my house in the weeks before the event and their help was instrumental to help make 7 cars functional enough to be worthy of trailering to the track. In the 5 weeks leading up to the race, the only car that didn't have an entire engine, transmission, or both installed/replaced was the MG Metro. The ToyoHog engine didn't come out, but a jug was bored, piston replaced, and both heads gone through.

Bill came down to help on the Yugo and then once we got the major chunk done, he trailered it home to do the rest of the final prep himself.

I even had 2 non-crew members come over to my house and give super-essential pre-race aid; cheseroo and Robb helped make sure the donor motor came out of the Plymouth Colt and into the Hyundai even though neither of them were going to be driving any of my cars and Robb wasn't even going to the track!

I was incredibly fortunate to have lots of help from crew-only participants: Dave, Woody, Craig, and Larry all came to help prep cars before the race and were also on site at the event to work their assess off, and Chris was able to come to the track to jump in and wrench both Sat and Sun.

Hamsa flew in Wednesday night, hopped off the plane, put on his Superman cape, and proceeded to pull a near all-nighter helping me load up my truck and cheseroo's borrowed van with tools and spares for 7 cars. He then drove the van to the track on Thursday towing the Hyundai.

Getting all 7 cars to the track on 7 different trailers with 6 different tow rigs (1 trailer had a blowout on the way to the track Thursday night and was swapped out with a different trailer to get the mini to the track around 3am Fri) was quite the juggling act. Q , bro Taggart and dad Charles drove out from Sierra Vista and swung by my place in Escondido to back up to a borrowed trailer in my driveway and hauled the ToyoHog to the track. They then dropped the mini back off in my driveway on their way home. By Sunday midnight, 5 of the 7 cars were back in my yard. One, the Yugo, was sold and paid for at the track so it went home with its new owner, and I still need to arrange to retrieve the MG Metro from the LA area.

First-timer Sara came out before the event and made all of the light bars that were on top of the LMPD cars. She and other first-timer and husband, Zak, did the lion's share of the painting of the cars at the track. Sara had made a bunch of extra light bars at my request because we wanted to get as many other cars behind us at the start to also have light bars on to help recreate the defining photo of the freeway slow speed chase, but some details (like asking the owners of those cars!)slipped us by. She was also thrust, at the last second, into driving the mini in the opening laps on Saturday and I didn't want to frazzle her by rushing her into the harness of a rhd 998cc "racecar" and jamming her into the # 7 position on the track to be passed by EVERYBODY by turn 4 after the green flag dropped. So that's why the mini doesn't appear at the front of the field at the yellow flag transponder check laps.

Van, Michael and Melissa were total Rock Stars with Michael and Melissa seeming to have cleared out the entire bargain bins at their local craft stores, making news helicopters for the moke/Bronco and "Spank.J. Spankson" signs to emulate the signs and banners that greeted the freeway chaos of so many years ago. And may I say, what simply amazing  people they are.

Ron C. and his wife brought yummy cookies and a tolerant attitude for the chaos, David C. (a first-time Spank participant) also showed remarkable resilience when asked to pilot the America around for the opening laps only to have him suffering a leaky main seal forcing him to nurse a slipping clutch until he could bring it in to get fixed following the photo ops. Jerry drove from Colorado and came out of his Lemons retirement to pilot the Moke/Bronco around on the opening laps. Denise, the fastest woman on a bicycle, was able to leave behind her busy schedule post-World Record effort and new found fame to remind us that she's still one of us and still Denise. Rick made his triumphant return to Lemons and was there with me to the end packing the garage back up into my truck and the van. Marc flew out and was always RIGHT THERE ready to do whatever. He kept suffering short-stints because of mechanical glitches, but he never complained and I think finally got a few good laps in before having to fly out a little before the award's ceremony on Sunday.

Anton and Sophie brought a period-correct camera to our taping of The Paddock v. Spank.J. Spankson. I asked Anton to bring the Hyundai across the checkered on a hook, but it still drove in. And poor Sophie-- I was trying to give her predictable, more-reliable cars to run her stints in but apparently I kept suggesting hella-butt-turrible cars that were suffering from various ailments for her to climb into instead. Sorry Sophie!

I had some driver's suffer family emergencies in the days leading up to the event and both Johan and Ron showed up and volunteered their cash and their bodies on Friday to be thrown into the chaos as replacements. The people you/they helped reimburse are incredibly thankful. (There was a 3rd replacement that I swear checked in with me on Friday but I think he disappeared when he saw how hopeless things looked in our quadrant of the paddock.)

Amanda kept everyone well-fed and made sure someone watched me to make sure I ate what she sent my way.

There are so many more people to thank and who helped pull this off and I'm sure I'll forget some names.

Thanks to Steve, Pagel, Eric, Tim, and the rest of the HQ crew there and to Roland and Jeff for sticking up for my cars in the tower even when the moke was getting it's 5th tow on Saturday. Big thanks to the Fire&Safety crew and the flaggers for being there so we could pull our shenanigans.

The biggest Thanks of all go to my wife and my son, who without their support and understanding, none of this could have been possible.

During the race we replaced:
1 windshield
2 drive flanges
2 cv joints
3 sets of wheel bearings
2 head gaskets
3 exhaust hangers
1 rear main seal
Several wire connectors
Lots of oil

The car that started it all for me in 2009 was the mini, and it suitably ran problem-free all weekend long. And, unless there's a 24 hour event on the west coast in 2017, I think we all just saw it's final participation in the Lemons series.

I'm not going away. I'm just going to try and move on to some of the cars that I've been sitting on for far too long and try and wash my hands of the old guard. I need to approach things with a bit more levity, and I'm going to build my first Class B car because I think the writing is on the wall that Class C is more Class B- and Class A is more SCCA/NASA, so I need to adapt to the times and learn to drive a faster car.

I still intend to field the occasional moke and possibly the America, and the mini is going to be handed off to another member of our SDMinis club to see if they can come up with a better way to get more people to use it outside of Lemons, but the rest are available for sale including the Caged Prius shell, the MG Metro, and the Hyundai Excel.

Thank you all again for helping me punctuate this point in my life and to mark this turn in my trajectory.

--Mike "Spank" Spangler