entry form

Disclaimer: All below is my experience.  Maybe we've nearly missed getting in in both our races, so maybe my advice is bad.

What to have:
-An interesting or especially bad-at-racing car.  Pintos, Limos, Sebrings, Wartburgs, 2CVs, etc
-Have a good theme and essay.  Now having done 3 essays, I recommend picking a theme that has a good "schtick".  That is, it should have a good one-liner.  Example: for team 'corvette', I wrote "During the Battle of the Atlantic, a Corvette was a slow, uncomfortable, unmaneuverable, hunk of scrap built by the lowest bidder with a crew just barely out of school.  It is time to bring those days back!".  For our Civic-based beaver, I made jokes that its mating call sounded like a fart cannon and its typical habitat was mall parking lots and ditches.  Have jokes in mind when picking your theme.
-The more elaborate your implementation of your theme, the more likely you'll get in.  All paint, no structure?  bad.  400lb particleboard locomotive on top?  good.
-There are also teams based around what they can bring to the race (tools, pools, Atom 3s, BBQ, shrimp).  You could try for one of those.
-I have heard that a Prius or Insight would instantly get you in the race
-Look like you're actually going to make it to the race.  Have your roster full, have a picture up, have your essay look like your put thought into it and didn't just spew it out in 10 minutes.  I imagine it is annoying for them to accept teams and then not have them all show up, especially since most races are over-subscribed nowadays.
-In each of our applications we've had the car purchased and decorated by the deadline, with pictures up.  For team 'corvette', we had a big captioned collage of photos with more nautical 'jokes'.
-Finally, take a look at the 24HOL facebook group and look at the organizer's and judge's choice winners.  These are the teams to emulate to get in.

What not to have:
-Don't indicate an insatiable desire to win.  You may want to win, but my interpretation of Lemons says that they don't want the races full of jerks who want to win, so you should try not to make it obvious that you'll beat someone with a tire iron for a 1/10th of a second advantage.  They want people that are out for a good time.  Remember: there's only one award for winning the race, but 3 for either not trying (Index of Effluency) or being nice folks off-track (Judge's and Organizer's choice)
-E30s and Miatas, unless you've got a killer theme.

Bongle - thanks also I saw over 112 entires already for Thunderhill, YIKES!!  Ours isn't even in yet so man o mna, there maybe 125-150 entry applications for how many slots??

Also I watched some video's on YouTube and it looks like they run a REALLY SMALL track configuration, why is that, any one know?  I undestand the chicanes, but why not the whole track? 

It certianly will allow for more entires and FAR less congestion and SAFER distances between cars and SAFER passing zones.  The track has plenty of run-off area so it just seems to make a whole lot more sense to run the entire track WITH of course the front straight chicane(s)