I agree with all sorts of things in this post but disagree with it's beginning.
I have raced with SCCA, NASA and PCA guys all on my team in my car in Lemons. If they didn't like it, they wouldn't keep coming back.
I have raced with a lot of Spec Miata drivers too. I have not seen the attitudes attributed to many of the stereo typical "real" racers from these guys.
Although the PCA guy did get the car stuck in the gravel.
We got involved in Lemons at the first race at MSRH Oct 08. At that race Jonny and Phil even commented on how clean the racing was.
My car got it's first actual dents thanks to the nudists at MSR Feb 10 in our 5th race. They are minor but the left headlight bucket is a bit of an oval now.
The racing and cars have steadily improved over each race. Themes are improving too.
We never experienced anything like Altamont in Texas and only a couple of teams were experienced Lemons racers when the first race happened at MSR. So we don;t know anything differently.
In our market I see and hear from SCCA and NASA driver's looking to get into Lemons. We may have been looked down upon previously and occasionally still today. However, many "real" racers feel like they are missing the party and want to come to Lemons.
There are drivers with bad attitudes everywhere, even in Lemons. In Lemons they get an attitude check or they get trailered.
Regarding the flipped Escort at MSRH. If that was the red City Garage Escort ZX2. It comes as no surprise to me. They almost hit me and about put me two off. I was up on the curbing pretty far and I could have reached out and touched them. It is unfortunate if they wrecked their car but it wasn't necessary to crowd anyone like that and they had it coming. I believe I was not the only person on my team to have a very close encounter with them either.
The "real" racers I race with feel like Lemons is real racing.
To me we have a $500 Unlimited Class. There is no Spec this or that. We try whatever we can come up with. Our cars are different in all sorts of ways yet many very different cars complete well together. We do what we can with what we have.
I believe there is far more racecraft going on than anyone gives us credit for. We have to judges our abilities and our cars abilities as we work our way through a field of very different cars and drivers. We are not all driving the same cars on the same "line."
We are going several cars wide through turns due to differences in cars and driving ability. We have to chose our battles.
We run piles of crap for hours on end.
Sprint races don't require pit stops. There is no fuel management in sprint racing. Our tire management has to go well beyond 20-40 minutes. Competitive teams are juggling all kinds of variables that never happen in sprint races.
This is all just the racing part of Lemons. Then there are the themes, costumes, crazy engineering and paddock parties. The real races I have been to not nearly as entertaining as Lemons or as much fun.
A side note, the show Madhouse is an excellent example of what is wrong with a lot of racing. Those guys or assholes and they push cars out of the way in a turn. We could use the car in front of us to slow us down as we push them out of the way in a turn. That's crappy driving in my opinion. I'd like to see driver's like that get some Lemons justice. Same with Nascar. We are driving to a higher standard in my opinion and I like it.
Long live Lemons!
Troy
#35 LRE
1973 Datsun 240Z