Thursday, September 18, 2014

Spank the Builder - 24 Hour of LeMons - Thunderhill Race - September 13th-14th 2014

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What an awesome weekend! The Moke ran great and everyone loved Mike's (Spank) theme based on the Bob the Builder children's show. It was wonderful to be back at a 24 hour of LeMons race again and being on this team just made it all the sweeter. Thunderhill is a really fun track, and the new section bringing it to over 5 miles per lap just added to the enjoyment. On top of all that, there was also something quiet special going on at this race...

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Starting Grid Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)

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This event had so many cars start that it was officially a world record attempt for the most cars in an endurance race! As long as the data is accepted it will soon become official. There were some 222 cars in the picture above, but the recorded number was 217 as a handful of cars broke down before the green flag dropped. So many fantastic piles of junk...

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In the typical 24 hour of LeMons event fashion, there were lots of great themes and things to see.. but damn it was hot so I did not spend much time away taking pictures. There was one team (besides ours) that really stood out beyond all the rest...

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Limping around Peugeot Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)

The Peugeot Daddy 1963 Peugeot 404 sedan - this team was horrible in all the right ways.. slow awesome car, annoying yet well done theme, and they even played french music out of the car all weekend. Man did that car look awesome racing limping around the track. Word is their fastest lap time was actually under full course caution! Congrats to this team for completely dominating...

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ZomBee Hauling Ass Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)

Just because I like the car and the team so much.. it was great to see the ZomBees back on track whom, by the way, got a rebuilt motor put in and ran some amazingly fast laps for a little british car. Shout out to ZomBee Nation! Sadly though, with all this greatness there were a few bad moments of the weekend..

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Damaged Volvo 1800 Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)

The guys who run a Volo 1800 put their car into the wall, but thankfully no one was hurt. The car had a well built cage by the Evil Genius Racing shop that stood up to the hard impact. Hopefully the team will shake it off and return with an equally sexy ride. Also a VW rabbit flipped and I heard a lady crashed her quad in the pits.. Yikes!

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Tractor on track Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)

Now back to the grand team I was a part of.. we were told many times over how sweet the tractor looked going around the track and course we all agreed. The theme came together nicely, Spank's Moke ran great all weekend, and was so damn much fun to drive. I remember clearly the first 15mins of my last stint on Sunday just smiling and laughing while racing the Moke Tractor side by side with the other cars.. it was surprisingly quick and handled pretty nicely to boot! Well and would't you just know it....?

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We won an award!!! The highly desired "Organizer's Choice". This basically means you're team & car put smiles on the faces of the event organizers and kept out of trouble.. from all the positive feedback, it was not just the organizers that were smiling, many others at the event got a lot of childhood joy seeing a tractor go around the race track. I am just glad I was apart of it and that people liked my Spud the Scarecrow costume head.

Ah what a weekend but for now it is.. back to the cubicle.

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