Topic: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/11/rabbitwithpancake-800px.jpg

See this car? The Bunny With A Pancake On Its Head fried its clutch early on Saturday and its drivers spent the entire day unable to apply more than half throttle. They decided to keep limping along rather than spend a couple hours swapping the clutch, and so the Rabbit plodded around and around and around while everybody else pointed and laughed. Saturday night, they had to run back to the Bay Area to get another transmission (turns out the problem was worse than a simple clutch failure) and had the car fixed by 2:00 AM Sunday morning.

They finished 11th overall, out of 156 entries. Think about that next time you decide that your team needs to run 3-hour driver stints, or that your engine needs 14:1 compression, or that you must pass NOW in some hairball 4-abreast driving situation.

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

MurileeMartin wrote:

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/j … -800px.jpg

See this car? The Bunny With A Pancake On Its Head fried its clutch early on Saturday and its drivers spent the entire day unable to apply more than half throttle. They decided to keep limping along rather than spend a couple hours swapping the clutch, and so the Rabbit plodded around and around and around while everybody else pointed and laughed. Saturday night, they had to run back to the Bay Area to get another transmission (turns out the problem was worse than a simple clutch failure) and had the car fixed by 2:00 AM Sunday morning.

They finished 11th overall, out of 156 entries. Think about that next time you decide that your team needs to run 3-hour driver stints, or that your engine needs 14:1 compression, or that you must pass NOW in some hairball 4-abreast driving situation.

Perfect example......do we know what their laptimes were??  It really doesn't matter since they were OUT THERE the whole time.....also how many black flags did they have...chances are not many

Richard Doty
1984 Porsche 928 "Estate"
Porsche- "there is A substitute" Racing
Dirt Poorsche Racing #2

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

okay I looked it up......they were in 17th place at the end of Saturday..with a best lap time of 2:33.843 with their ailing car.....after the repair they got their times down to 2:28.931 on Sunday.....and got as high as 10th......the best we ever got was 22nd.....

its all about STAYING OUT THERE.....no penalties, and good pit stops

Richard Doty
1984 Porsche 928 "Estate"
Porsche- "there is A substitute" Racing
Dirt Poorsche Racing #2

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

icemang17 wrote:

okay I looked it up......they were in 17th place at the end of Saturday..with a best lap time of 2:33.843 with their ailing car.....after the repair they got their times down to 2:28.931 on Sunday.....and got as high as 10th......the best we ever got was 22nd.....

its all about STAYING OUT THERE.....no penalties, and good pit stops

Where did you look? Pics of the timing sheets? I don't have any data on mylaps yet...

To finish first, first you must finish. -Rick Mears
Pandamonium Racing

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

laz wrote:
icemang17 wrote:

okay I looked it up......they were in 17th place at the end of Saturday..with a best lap time of 2:33.843 with their ailing car.....after the repair they got their times down to 2:28.931 on Sunday.....and got as high as 10th......the best we ever got was 22nd.....

its all about STAYING OUT THERE.....no penalties, and good pit stops

Where did you look? Pics of the timing sheets? I don't have any data on mylaps yet...

We took pictures of the final sheets and a few over the course of the weekend...of course I can't figure out how to upload it here.....  I heard we got down to 19th at one point, but only have proof of 22nd...vs the rabbit which was in 10th at one point..

Richard Doty
1984 Porsche 928 "Estate"
Porsche- "there is A substitute" Racing
Dirt Poorsche Racing #2

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

Thanks, guys.

More than just working with not more than half throttle, our driver actually moved up several positions!  When I got out of the car around 12:30 on Saturday and reported the clutch problem, we were in 17th.  Per the live timing data in the tower, we re-entered the track 23rd.  By the end of the day, we were back up into 17th!!!!

That guy got a serious education in being smooth Saturday afternoon.

We managed to only take two black flags all weekend, in spite of deserving more.  It seems as though the corner workers were very busy or something...  I took no fewer than four contacts in the 2 1/2 hours that I was in the car, but wasn't flagged for a single one.  None of them were serious, nobody got hurt, and there was no damage other than a caved-in door (simple application of boot fixed that), so we feel like we did skate a bit.  I'm not sure how the corner folks missed me getting t-boned at the apex of 5 (I may or may not have made a mildly optimistic move under braking...), but I shunted the apex cone 20 feet down the hill and changed direction very rapidly.  Just sayin...

We drove as cleanly as possible all weekend, and I think a large portion of our finishing came from our drivers arms getting tired from waving people by in tight spots.  Really, we're not going to win the race in one or two laps, so we're happy to let that chowderhead blow by us on the entry to nine and re-pass him again on the exit of 11.  In fact, our team meetings consisted mainly of me reminding our team to "just let them go".  It sort of became our mantra. 

Hell, we beat a lot of really good cars with nothing more than a mostly-non-cheaty, cleanly driven, mostly reliable 25 year-old economy car.  We're happy with that.

See y'all at Sears!

(oh, according to live timing, we were at one time in 9th for a couple of laps...)

TST, fool.

It's a Bunny.  With a pancake.  On its head.  Really, is it that tough?

Re: More proof that you don't have to be fast to do well at Lemons

BTW, thanks for pointing out the pointing and laughing.  We were too busy having fun to notice any of it.

I hope that the pointers and laughers finished higher than we did...

TST, fool.

It's a Bunny.  With a pancake.  On its head.  Really, is it that tough?