So how did we do at Nelson Ledges? (Page 4 of 7)

I think (and those on my team agree) that the track was great. The drivers liked the fact that they could run the whole track (almost as much as that awesome seat I spent their money on). The rest rooms were always clean and garbage cans were being cleaned all the time. Scott, you and your crew did an outstanding job!

Hats off to all the corner workers. Some time ago I used to do the same thing and it is not easy to do for a day full of racing. Doing it for 24 hours must be doubly so. Thank you for taking the time to come out in the cold and rain to keep an eye on us hooligans on the track. We could not do it without you.

Buzz, I'm a little defensive about the corner workers because none of us would be able to enjoy this sport without them.  But mostly because they were put in a bad situation because they were handcuffed to operate in an effective manner.   We do appreciate all the feedback and I know the corner workers are always asking for feedback.  I hope we will be able to let them do their jobs they way they are supposed to in the future, then when they screw that up we can really bitch at them just like normal.  I know they are usually at fault for most of by bad driving. 

Serj,  A yellow flag is displayed at the station before the incident, or Lemons car, in this case it not supposed to be displayed at the corner station just past the incident.  The zone for the yellow starts at the first station that it is displayed at and stops at the incident.  On some occasions a corner station may request a back-up yellow be presented prior to their station because the car is in bad location ant they feel the drivers could use some additional warning.

If we have another race next year I'll have a brief summary of flagging put together to help explain things and provide a tool for noob training.

Scott, Bryan, I didn't mention this before, but the hot water in the shower station (regular restrooms) was WONDERFUL! I think I used half a tank warming up saturday morning. Thank you. It's funny how showers are one of the more neglected areas of the track (Grattan, I'm talking to you!), but make such a difference in the experience. Once you can get clean and warm, nothing matters!

Please have another race next year.

Facilities were great, clean, and almost always warm :-) .

The corner workers were great too!  Could have done without the long yellows at night, but thats not their fault, its ours, I'll be the first to admit I suck at night driving, real hard to pick up cars on the low side coming from behind you (couldn't notice the lights because you were surrounded by it) .  We had a fairly powerful light setup ourselves, but once the windshield got oiled by a smoking car or two, I couldn't see a damn thing.... good thing that happened relatively  late in my stint and we were able to clean of the windshield quickly during our stop.

We rolled in around Noon on Friday and ended up parking at the south end of the paddock, not far from Turns 2/3.  I don't even know who the guy was in the 76 car & I'm pretty sure that I'll try to keep the status quo after his performance this weekend.  If he had been a NeOhio SM regular, he probably would have known where to direct you

We MIGHT have heard any PA announcements looking for parts, as I had the radio on in the trailer most of the weekend, but I think Buzz has the best idea.... 

I normally look at the ads outside of the bathroom at Nelson, but as crowded as the paddock was, we parked close to a Johnny-on-the-spot & I never went near the regular bathrooms.  An "I really need..." white board near the hourly results would be the best bet.

Eric

You should let me, Jonny, or Nick know when you're looking for parts. I do a lot of roaming around looking for heroic fix info and I often know who's got what parts stashed (some teams bring crazy hoards of crap totally unrelated to the car they're running). We can also promise leniency to busted miscreants in exchange for canvassing for needed parts.

Hell yeah we'll be back. With a C4!!!

Team Reynolds Style Capitan or shortest straw drawer here -

First off... Nelsons crew and Lemons crew -

Gold star next to everyone's name, what a fantastic, well organized event.  To have that many cars on that track and still be able to keep it cool out there was a MIRACLE of some note, masterfully done.

Corner Workers / Flagging System  -

We were very familiar with the Blue / Yellow stripped flag - we were struggling with a an engine that was progressively deteriorating and was very angry above 3K RPM by the end of the race - so we all caught on rather quickly what that meant..

I think we saw a Red / Yellow flag once which I am guessing was debris on the road - someone failed to replace their divots after a solid drive through the grass.

This was the first time any of our drivers ever:

Drove our car at speed
Drove our car at speed on a Race Track
Drove our car at speed on a busy race track
Drove our car at speed on a busy race track at night

The sensory overload was palatable - we tried to just stay out of everyone's way on the track and we had a BLAST - the people were awesome, everyone was super helpful

Some thoughts:

- Someone, I have no idea - saw me driving my car to join the parade late for the start (kill switch) and was able to identify that my harness was not configured correctly.  Him and an associate picked out no less than 4 issues with our safety harness - all of which could have potentially severely compromised me as a going concern in a bad accident. For that - I want to thank them for potentially saving my ass.  While I agree 110% that the issues our safety harness is the responsibility of the team - NONE of us had every seen a 6 point harness before this race - let alone knew what one was supposed to look like set up correctly (we fixed it all and got on the track 'round 1:30)- can there be some addition language in the rules that maybe better identify the harness situation?  Or maybe have an optional tech for safety harnesses for those of us who are truly clueless?

- The Friday Morning meeting should have been done in full before Friday nights meeting.  I'm guessing it was assumed that everyone was going to do both - It was certainly my intentions to do both - except the car was you know, not finished.

- Please please please come back to Nelson - Scott - please have us back

- Inter paddock communication - we cracked our kill switch 40 minutes before the race and then we rotted through a brake line which required a flare kit which I'm sure someone had if we were able to ask everyone... many people came by and asked for help and we obliged when we could - If there was some way to know what you could do to help a fellow racer - 9/10 that help would come so - is there a creative lemony way to spread the word that help is needed? A community board to post? A town crier would be fun (and a good penalty) just thinking out loud.

Thats all I got - we are looking forward and are planning on coming back next year - hopefully we can get the theme done this time and be a little more involved in the lemony spirit

Cheers!

We did amazingly well!!  We had to endure a lot of people saying "thats not a $500 car its too nice looking!"  on Friday.  Serisouly??  Its a CAMARO with tracor paint covering the rust holes!  But on the upside we had many MORE people telling us how cool we looked and lots of people gave us the Van Halen sighn as they drove by.  The car passed its tech inspection with ease and it was simply mocked at BS inspection.  Jay actually suck a boroscope into our valve covers to look for cheating roller rockers, instead he found lots of carbon buildup so all the BS judges laughed and told us to "get this peice of shit outta here!!"  To show them I was a good sport I still gave them the beer,cheese and sasage that we had for a bribe,  I mean why not??

In the race we started things off on the wrong foot.  We managed to score a trio of black flags as well as getting the car stuck in the mud in turn one (my fault...I'm no hero!).   So we ended up spending way too much time...duct taped to each other in the pits..but ANYWAYS after that we put our heads down and got back to turning laps.

Frankie (our Camaro) just kept on trucking the whole race!  About 4 hours into the race the gauges all died.  I tried to fix them but to no avail,  so from that point on we just had to guess how much gas was in the car, how fast it was going in the pits, and so forth!  So we made an extra stop or two for gas (the yellows really screwed us up)  but beyond that Frankie pretty much spat in the face of all the negative waves that the Camaro has as a Lemons car. 

The car and the team ran great for the rest of the race, at the 22 hour mark we started to think we might just be able to finish this crazy little event and then...another black flag.  Turns out we were leaking gas, not able to tell how much was in the car we overfilled the poor thing and it was pouring down the fender.  So we siphoned some out, washed the gas off, got the OK from the judge and went back out.  Two hours later the checkers started to wave!  Last year we didn't see the 4 hour mark, this year we finished the whole thing,  SWEET!!!    So I guess the only way to do better is to try and win next year.

See you guys then.

Nelson ROCKS!...   It IS Lemons and we are hoping for at LEAST one crapfest there in 2010..

(RAFTRACER=D. Popp= Vette Supremacy)  am I name dropping? Yes I am..  lol..  Glad he is on our team.. along with Trippinbillies and the rest...

Just how badly do ya'll wanna see a C4?  Has it been done??  I thought it had, but I can't find it???

I think one of these two teams needs to come to the next race as Team Mistaken Identity.