Thanks for Buttonwillow (Page 1 of 2)

The flag workers and track staff were awesome. Lemons staff were great as always. The shark is now a very fast car and we can actually keep it under control when racing but we suffered from a laundry list of reliability issues:

Blown coolant hose x 2
Ruptured fuel line
Ruptured intake boot
Blown AFM
Over sensitive brake lights
Loose lug nut
Ridiculously slow fueling
Horrible useless mirrors

Special thanks to Zoom Zoom Boom and The Faustest Team for being great paddock neighbors.

Props to the Minis, Molly Maids, Blanco Basura, Dominic's Mad Max team, Evil Genius, Cryder, da judges, John, and others for support, being social, or just damn good.

Our first time out there as well and we had a blast!  Can't wait for the next one!

hear, hear!

Agree'd!  That was the best race we have been to as well!  I wished our motor would have survived the practice day, but the overnight motor swap was amusing.  I think we only lost a couple hours of the race.

Special thanks to the team of intoxicated men that wondered by around 2am to help us lift the car over the motor.

Big thanks to EVERYONE for not hitting us. Well, we did get tapped by the Mustard Yellow Volvo on Saturday but we should be thankful that we were "touched by the winners". I think on the drive home simply towing the car I was still pointing everyone by )

And by the way, in all the 4 Lemons events I've competed and the 3 others I've crew'd or spectated, this was by far the absolute best and most professionally flagged event in the history of Lemons.  The CalClub/SCCA flaggers were absolutely top notch.  They were precise, consistent and spot on with their flagging throughout the entire event.  I saw absolutely nothing to criticize.  Spectacular.  Most people don't realize the immense difference this one element can make in the enjoyment of the event for every participant (those of you who made the Dec.2008 THill event understand what I'm saying here), more so than any other element, dare I say even more so than timing and scoring...

I can only speak from my experiences here in Texas and New Orleans. 

MSR October 2008: had less (way less) than impressive flagging.

MSR Feb 2009: flagging was much improved and the hot pits were awesome.  Both great improvements which made the event much more enjoyable.  The differences were like night and day.

New Orleans 2009: good flagging and officiating.  Great participants and paddock.  Lemons racing by day, drag racing at night.  Action from morning to late at night.  Most hilarious thing was the scooter drag races. 

MSR October 2009: rumors of full course.  Will there be chicanes?  It will definitely be fun.

In spite of destroying pretty much every engine and transmission part on the Gnome we still had a great time as well.  Jay knows how to throw a party and we'll be there for the T-Hill race for sure.

Three cheers for Lemons!!!

So let me get this straight.....  The Driver Education Dropouts' BMW (sounded like an automatic) and the Crash Test Dummies BMW crashed into each other on my video?

Now that is kinda funny. 

We had a great race going with you guys on Sunday AM... until you (or your teammate) tried to late brake The Dummie BMW and myself (323)....   it was classic!  What was your penalty?

I spectated 2 races before, but this was the first time on the track (Lemons or elsewhere).

Thanks to all the track workers, judges, etc who were patient with us as part after part failed on our car (guibo, fuel lines, muffler clamps and hood pins).

Thanks to the (many) faster competitors for putting up with us on track. No racing skills and a mirror that preferred to point at the floor left us a bit of a rolling chicane.

We'll be back for Thunderhill!

And the good news is we're likely to come up from 74th place!

Thanks everyone for coming out and making our first trip to Buttonwillow a great one! Though we semi-lucked out on the weather this time, we'll still try for a cooler month in 2010.

Though none of our Lemons staffers got to run in the race (Jeff and I hella broke our Alfa--you know, more than usual--at Reno), based on participant comments, there's no question the flagging was the best yet.

The flaggers were provided by the Cal Club SCCA. Going forward, we definitely want to use workers of Cal Club's caliber, which can be a challenge when we're arranging things by remote. Hopefully, our Buttonwillow experience will help us sort the good from the bad on that front.

The feeling between the racers and flaggers was mutual--the corner workers told us that the Lemons was among the best racing they've ever seen (with a few exceptions, of course). So don't be too quick to blame your next on-track Lemons incident on a novice driver--maybe the other guy was from the SCCA!

Also, they commented on how friendly and appreciative everyone was when they were in the paddock--apparently being nice to the corner workers isn't standard in all racing endeavors....

Bottom line--the smoothness of the weekend was a group effort. Again, thanks to all!

Some pix from our archives: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=1 … 6766739494