24hr@CMP Afterthoughts from Rookie Team (Page 1 of 3)

Get some 245 BFG rivals on 15x10 rims. You’ll be a lot faster and it’s all budget exempt.

Hey I feel ya, we certainly have a lot to learn.  It was more of a surprised to see it kinda thing than a how do I compete thing.  We weren't really paying attention to the laps seeing as we took a 5 hour break in the middle of the night to sleep.  I was more focused on how fast they blew my doors off on some of the straights.

Glad to see some of the true Lemons finished right up there at the top.

Good news is that Biffle Crown Vic is now in Class A... Forever.

FWIW, I'm notorious (in my own mind) for whining about Class C cars that aren't Class C cars, but I'm trying to get over it. Took me a while to realize that what I think are Class C cars are really Class F.

I respect that the judges have a heckuva time trying to figure this stuff out. It's pretty darned amazing how exciting the Class racing is at the top when all they are doing is going off of their own noggin-knowledge and occasional whim. And I'll bow to their decision-making genius and accept their occasional mis-classing in favor of not having to read a multi-page rulebook and circumcise fleas to try and do the "Class Racing" baloney.

Oh, and something The Great Pendejo once said echoes just as loudly today:

Winning a Lemons race is like bragging that you clean your toilet twice a day

Just keep at it and you'll be surprised how quickly your results improve. As the other have said, get some good tires and brakes. And you are correct, the $500 limit really doesn't apply anymore. Sure some people have cars that fit that bill, but most don't. If you're like us you'll slowly end up improving the car after each race, along with your driving skill. Before you know it you won't be getting passed as much and if you stay on the track turning laps you'll be surprised how well you can place.

We did awful our first several races but we had tons of fun. Finally we got the car reliable and had it run all weekend and we were amazed how close to the top we were. Then of course we got hungry for a win which has been elusive.

Another thing you may have already learned is that there are lots of different things people want out of Lemons. Some do it solely for the comradery and to get out on track, not caring about speed or finishing position, and other are out there trying hard to win regardless of the flack you seem to get for it.

Now, go buy some better parts for that car and sign up for the next race. And don't take a nap half way through

For all those whining about Biffle's class B car, the fastest lap of the race was also set by a Class B car, the Lincoln Mark VIII driven my buddy on our sister team, Silver Senior.

If you finished higher than 26th you beat us..

Your biggest lap time improvement will come with seat time, not power, brakes, etc..  Your biggest finishing order improvement will come from team improvement whether that be pre-race prep or pit stop speed.  Throughout the series, pro drivers have guest driven different people's cars and turned lap times consistently way faster than it's ever gone before.  And the margin is greater than the same team would achieve with more power/brakes/etc.  To paraphrase, It's You Homeslice.  Once you get better at driving, then you'll be able to take advantage of more power/brakes/etc but until then work on your driving.

I too questioned the crown vickie in B but figured it might be because it was stockish.  Now that I hear that it had a manual trans, I agree it should have been an A car.  The Reno 911 team that ran pink CV's got bumped from B to A once they put manual trans' in the cars so I assumed that was something the judges still did.

Agreed, I actually caught whoever was driving their car around 3 pm Saturday (or thereabouts)  with our Class b car running a best of 2:02. I passed him going through 11-12 and he passed me back,  I passed him back again in the same corner but held him off through 14 this time right before I pitted. The #2 car is my old Honda Civic and I ran the quickest time in that car before i sold it, 4 seconds faster then their quickest time but I never placed that high.  They must have been very consistent and didn't have any black flags with quick pit stops cause thats the big key to winning Lemons.

This guy is legit, 2x grand prize, he's a pleasure to race with on track, and he will help you in any way he possibly can off the track. Doesn't get much better than this guy.

Both of your cars are a shoe-in for a C win whenever you want to downgrade from winning IOEs.

Agreed!  Although we've spent $1,600 purchasing our three builds, so I guess that puts us $100 over.

I feel shame.

I think people just have a mindset that $500 means you can only show up with a junky falling apart c-class car. Our 2008 Saab is a legit $500 car.  Daily driver for 8 years and 254,000 miles. When it was time to trade it in a bunch of high tech things were broken like the auto leveling headlights, the xenon lights themselves had flickering issues the whole life of the car, the backup sensors didn't work, the fuel level gauge didn't work. Best trade in offer we got was $1000. So we went with that, then sold the interior and other bits for well over $500 as the rules outline. Never had any of the judges question it. We've done nothing to it performance wise except brakes, brake cooling, fuel cell because we had one from the last car, and cooling system upgrades when the old parts started literally falling apart.

People forget that 20 year old cars were build in 1999. You can get a decently performing car from the 90's or early 2000s for the $500 budget still, and it will be that much better than an 80's american crap box.

We know we have cars capable of Class-C win we just keep having either dumb (lack of) luck like getting beat by Chrysler turbo 2.? that ran ALL WEEKEND without blowing up or we have a mechanical failure on the car we are running normal stints on instead of shorter stints to help newbies develop, guarantee seat time, etc.

And we brought our newest car to Autobahn specifically chasing IoE only to robbed by a slightly crappier crapcan.