Well, the black tie/potluck fell through. I'm not sure if anyone else did anything, but EVR was still busy finishing Olds prep Friday night and I didn't notice anyone over in the penalty box area. The documentary folks emailed us a few days before the race saying the film wasn't ready due to a couple editors getting sick, but maybe we'll see it in the future.
Anyway, the race was awesome for us. The Resistance surprised the hell out of us with their Soviet space program-themed 1963 Dart, which they'd been working on in secret for a year and a half. It's hard to adequately describe my feelings about this build: honored, humbled, touched? Anyway, those guys are awesome and we love their shit. The Lemons judges put us back in Class C with 20 penalty laps so we could race head to head, and although our car had a few issues we still managed to beat the commies to the Moon again. The Resistance even made a trophy out of slant six and Dart parts, which we "get" to keep!
The 1941 Oldsmobile caused just as big of a splash as we expected, although the car was only about 90% ready when we got to the track on Friday. Luckily our crew (including a few IoE all-stars from California) had no problem getting the build over the finish line. We got our final tech inspection done Saturday morning, and the car hit the track about an hour after the green flag dropped. What we didn't expect was how well the car continued to run all weekend. We had a couple small issues to deal with over the course of the race, but everything important stayed together. This was extra surprising considering how horribly the car handled itself. It wallowed like a boat even going in a straight line, the transmission liked to shift randomly in both directions depending on directional loading, and while the non-self-adjusting drum brakes were inadequate at best, the rear axle would still unwind and start bouncing a rear tire like a basketball if you hit the pedal too hard. It was a great exercise in smooth control inputs. Utterly terrifying, but also hilarious; I was laughing my ass off the whole time. The fact that the engine and transmission worked long enough to drive the car onto the trailer Sunday afternoon, and that the rear suspension is still attached to the car in any way, are a bit mind-boggling. The old saying that "GM vehicles run like shit longer than most cars run at all" seems to be in full effect here. Our "stretch goal" was to make 98 laps (the same as the model number of the car), but we made 255 with a best lap time of 2:49.672 according to MyLaps. (Anton was hooning the shit out it for the last couple hours.)
All in all, it was a great weekend that only would've been better with more sleep and more time to hang out with friends. Now that this race is behind us, I am definitely looking forward to the next standard 14.5 hour we do...