Fleet Week - Coronado Speed Festival- September 20th-21st 2014

Each year in September the Armed forces celebrates with Fleet Week and though I am not in the military, many people I know have or currently are. Just so happens in San Diego, on the beautiful Coronado Island, they hold the Coronado Speed Festival. On the Naval Station North Island base they set up a race track on the airstrip and hold this special event. Since it has cars and supports the Armed Forces it is a feel good excuse to have a corn dog, a beer, and watch some classic race machines do their thing. There are also a good many show cars to drool over as well.







The only issue for me at this event is the restriction they have on camera lenses. (No longer than 100mm unless you get press access). So I just throw on my 35mm prime and spend less time with my camera and enjoy the lovely day with my wife. We also have a couple friends who were participating in this event who run MGBs so we wandered by their pits and harassed them for awhile. Always good to know fellow racers even if they race prettier cars then me.



Overall was a great day and money well spent.. an event that supports our Armed Forces, has the sites and sounds of classic race machines, in the company family and friends, what more could you ask for?

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

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...


Starting Grid Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)



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...





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...




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...


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..


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!


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....?



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.

The Mini Moke - Prepping for the LeMon's Race at Thunderhill

The team got together to work on this fine racing machine in preparation for the 24 hour of LeMons - Vodden the Hell Are We Doing? race at Thunderhill Raceway Park. The first plan was to pull the motor out of another Mini to swap in the race motor to test.



While Spank worked on the race motor, the rest of the team (Rob-above right, my Dad-above left, and I) took the motor out of the other Mini. Pretty much that was about as far as we got before my Dad and I had to take off.



Pretty basic day.. was nice to get wrenching again and b.s. with the team. Next weekend we have a lot more to accomplish but also more time to work. Being on a team with the two guys who got me started into this wonderful mess of a racing league, is a great spot to be in.



No matter the result and as long as no one gets injured, the race should be a blast. I have raced a classic Mini before, but never this heavily modified beast crap can. Still haven't started my theme costume and the race is only 8 days away.. time to get busy.

Formula 1 - Summer break is over with an interesting result at the Belgian Grand Prix

#454073842 / gettyimages.com

Well if you didn't see it.. the race for Mercedes was, in a way, predicted by Niki Lauda. Before the race he was interviewed and mentioned something to the tone that he was worried about their two drivers (Nico Rosberg & Lewis Hamilton) taking each other out. And guess what? They came together on the second lap while running 1st and 2nd with already a few car lengths between them and 3rd place. Nico tried to pass Lewis and did not back off, Lewis followed his line and his rear tire was clipped by Nico's front wing leaving Lewis's tire punctured and Nico's front wing was damaged. Mercedes has come out saying they blame Nico for the incident, fairly, as he should be more careful when battling for the lead with his teammate so early in the race. If it were another team's car it would have been called a 50/50 racing incident as Lewis was also partly to blame not leaving any room. The end result was a retirement for Lewis.

Since I am not rooting for them I could not help myself and just laughed and began to wonder who would capitalize on this Mercedes mistake. Hopes began raising that Valtteri Bottas of Williams would get them their first victory in many years.. but not surprisingly, the win went to the new super star of F1 Daniel Ricciardo. This kid has shown that Sebastian Vettel how it is done pretty much all season long with his 3rd win of the season. Nico was hot on his tail trailing him by only a few seconds in his Mercedes when the crossed the finish line. Nico was much faster but, after losing so much time getting his front wing replaced after the tangle with Lewis, there just was not enough time.

In the end it was a great race to watch with Bottas once again getting Williams on the podium in 3rd earning them much needed constructors points. Hopefully the rest of the season will continue to be this exciting... and just maybe Williams will get a win.

The Serious Prep Work for a 24 Hour of LeMons Race

So with one of the main aspects of Lemons racing being the goofy themes, I have about a month to design and create a costume that contains a large stuffed head. Don't worry, it has nothing to do with a phallic object, or should I say, Sadly it has nothing to do with a phallic object... Either way, there will be many hours of arts and crafts put in due to my character choice for the team's theme, but I won't give away any details about it yet.

I will however display just a few examples of greatness derived from blood, sweat, tears, and more importantly inner child, that I can only hope to come close to achieving.


Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)


Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)


Photo - Judge Phil (AKA Murilee Martin)


Photo - David Moore

Is the LeMons racing culture crazy? Maybe.. well yes, but it is sure damn fun! Going to need to start making some runs to the craft store and dig deep for greatness...

Formula 1 is Returning to Mexico in 2015!

Awesome news, F1 is returning to Mexico! So close to home and now another race in North America. The agreement is "concluded" but no final date is set. The track is Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez (The Mexico City Circuit seen in the above picture). Read more HERE.

Hopefully I can find the time and money to make it to this event...

Oh and go Williams! Up to third in the team points standings now.

Porterfield RallyX - Glen Helen - 3/16/2014

Now this is something I will do sometime in the near future, RallyX. It is like the SCCA Solos but on dirt. Cars go sideways, throw dirt everywhere and the smell of stressed cars is in the air, what else could you want? There are classes for everything from stock 2WD vehicles (Civic, Focus, Miata, etc) all the way up to full race prepped rally machines. The idea, run the course in the shortest amount of time as possible without hitting cones. You are scored by your total time, not your best time of the day. So consistency and care is important.. though the temptation to go nuts takes over as you could see many of the drivers blowing corners going sideways throwing up huge amounts of dirt. Looks cool, but it isn't always the fastest way around.



From a spectating point of view, this was a lot more fun than the SCCA Solos at Qualcomm. Plus Glen Helen is a full blown motorsports park for dirt machines. There is a large MX track and a Offroad truck / buggy course. If you don't mind getting gritty, check this location out during any event they have there.





There is more to say and more pictures to go through from this event.. but that will have to wait until I go through more photos and have more free time on my hands. So check back for another post with more details about the Porterfield RallyX. -Colin

Cal Club Pacific Coast Road Racing Championships - Buttonwillow Raceway 10-26-2013

This was a really cool event to see, not as fun as driving though, that is for sure.... We went up to watch a friend of ours race his classic MGB and enjoyed the nice day at the track. The event had less cars than expected because of other events, but there were still plenty of cars to see.



I decided to put this Tamron 70-300mm Di VC USD lens to the test and work on my panning technique. I had recently looked at some photos where the photographer did panning shots with the camera angled, so of course I had to try this.. The lens's vibration control was able to auto detect and handle the panning motion even when at an angle, pretty fancy...



I took a majority of my shots at 1/60 so a low percentage of my shots came out to my liking.. but the ones that did really made it worth it. Honestly, I really over did the angled panning.. so there is not much variety. A few more mistakes I made were shooting into the sun when I could have just shot elsewhere, and over exposing many of the images. These were not much of a problem though, I was able to clean most of it up with the View NX 2 software that came with my camera.





I am starting to learn to take a better look at "mistakes" as they can turn out to be quite interesting photos, like the one directly above. The front of the car was cut off, but by cropping the image, it really turned out quite interesting. Or like the black & white image above it, just by being lazy and removing color.. it solves a lot of lighting, color, and exposure problems after a few simple adjustments.



Shooting into the sun was quite difficult, but really I was impressed with how many of the photos came out. I am not exactly sure if it is the glass in this lens, the longer lens hood, personal improvement, or a combination of all three, but back in March at the Sonoma LeMons race, no shots I took into the sun were worth a damn..







Most importantly for me.. was that I had a great day with my girl, and a few friends, watching race cars do their thing while taking pictures to my heart's content.

The rest of the photos from the event that I uploaded can be found Here Enjoy!