Arse-Freeze-Apalooza Dec 7-8th 2013 - Sonoma Raceway

It was a mess of a weekend... things went wrong from the start with the Spitwad and ended wrong in the RX7..



The weather was not so bad during the day, the sun was out and there was no rain. The nights were freaking cold.. As for the race.. The 1300 motor in the Spitfire did not last the first green flag lap of the race. So we ended up spenind a majority of the track time Saturday swapping back in old faithful, which got us through it, allowing each driver to get their share of seat time.



There was some confusion and conflicts on our team, and between the two teams (RX7 and Spitfire) that took a lot of the joy out of the weekend. Don't get me wrong, I had my fun, got my wheel time, and had some laughs.. but this race has brought me to understand some people just don't see eye to eye, and it was not even all about the racing.. some of it was about personal space. Basically from now on.. no more cramming into the same RVs.. Lucky for us our friend Paul, who raced the RX7, let us sleep in his RV or I don't know how we would have gotten through the cold. My dad also had two guests sleeping in his RV. The cost.. well I took a pretty large hit this race. It is going to be hard.. but I will now have to require people to pay more because I was not including other expenses. I also will be arranging my own space to sleep as well. It is just not worth the conflict. We do this to have fun.. and when the fun is stripped away because of the social aspect.. why bother. So we will take a long brake and only do a single race in 2014, with a single car. The RX7 is finished and being parted out.



Now enough with the downside.. Before the wreck in the RX7.. it was hauling BUTT! The drivers were having a blast in it. My dad had finally got that thing sorted and out. I wish I could have had a chance to give it a go before it demise. .. Also once we swapped the motor in the spitfire, it ran great till the last 10mins of the race when something in the drive train failed.. Sure it was a little loose in the rear, but it was still fun to drive. I learned some more lessons with the setup and have a plan to get it hooked back up right before it hits the track again.



Paul made it out just fine.. not even a scratch from the crash. Understandably though, he likely wont be returning to race LeMons with us anymore. Every race he has been in with us, he gets hit, and now this one.. someone spun in front of him with no where to go. From his prospective it is just not worth it, he has a classic MGB to race anyways. It sucks because he is great to have around, but that is just how shit goes.

I took some photos at the race, some of them I uploaded HERE. I will go through the rest of them eventually, collect others from cellphones, and get them uploaded later. I also have some video to work on.. only one is done so far... check it out HERE. The video of the RX7 crash can be found HERE

Racing is something I will continue doing.. More LeMons races for sure, but a much needed break is going to be taken. I have a wonderful girl to marry in 2014 and that is much more important.

Getting Ready for 24 hour of LeMons Arse-Freeze '13 @ Sonoma Raceway!

Well.. we have been working on the car, did some things here and there, the car is running well at the moment. Tomorrow morning we leave to head up to Sonoma Raceway for the 24 hour of LeMons season ender, Arse-Freeze-Apalooza! And man is it going to be a freeze... Weather reports are showing temps in the low 20s°F. Good thing is the chances for rain are very low!





We got some tires, fixed problems we found, had some laughs.. It's not perfect.. but hell this is LeMons.



I set up the old xbox 360 with Forza 4 so everyone could get in some laps and learn their way around the track before we actually get there. Not the greatest simulator, the game wheel sucks, but better than nothing!.



We are as ready as we are gonna be.. if we can manage to keep the car running most of the race and not freeze to death, good times will be had!

We will be taking lots of video and photos at the race.. once we return and the dust settles, I will share the story of our hopeless adventure.

Sonoma Drift Series May 27th '13

Drifting... expensive, loud, flashy, and ruthless on tires. Though it is not a direct "race" these drivers have a lot of skill and are good at what they do. I would go so far as to say it represents more of a manly version of figure skating (yes there was a female driver, but you get my point), than actual auto racing. But don't get me wrong, it's pretty bad ass. Beat up with missing body panels and lots of dents, this series does not contain the nicest looking drift cars out there, but this group still puts on a good show. This event was even better than the last one I attended because it was on the actual race course, not just in the paddock.

Sadly, a good couple hours of the day I spent sitting in my car listening to the announcer repeat over and over again about how slick the track is when it's wet. Yeah so guess what? It rained at Sears Point... With my lack of knowledge of how to keep my camera equipment dry, how to dry it out, or how much moisture it can even handle for that matter, I decided against photographing any of the disappointing qualifying runs made in the rain. After qualifying was over, just about the same time I was going to give up and head back to my hotel room to be sadly pathetic, the rain stopped. After 10mins or so of no rain I got of of my car to watch the drivers line up their awesome machines for the announcement of the qualifying results. After it was over they drove off, in a reckless manor, doing doughnuts with smoke flying and sounds of motors bouncing off their rev limiters, and I realized the track had dried out. Thankfully I stayed that little bit longer as the show put on by the remaining cars was excellent.



Unlike other motorsport events I've seen, these nuts are not required to wear full racing suits, they only need helmets. Crazy be it to me but even the announcer cracked a joke about the one guy who wore a fire suit, and there I was thinking he was the only driver with any signs of sanity. Many times these cars would slide a bit too far and hit the dirt which can always lead to a roll and the announcer even mentioned one of the competing cars had been in a bad wreck.. Oh well it isn't my neck and skin out there. Besides, who likes normal sane people anyway?



These drivers were out there giving it their all for what I understand is only a $3,000 prize for winning the four event series. They are definitely not expecting any type of fame or fortune from running in these events with that prize money and with fans that seem to mostly be made up of friends and relatives. These fans, may I add, were very critical of the judges. Even those routing for other contenders booed the announcement of who was moving on to compete for 1st and 2nd. Clearly the crowed all agreed the driver who ended up in 3rd should have been given the chance to battle for the top spot. Hell if I knew though, the rules and scoring of drifting are foreign to me. I was just there for the show and to snap pictures. Speaking of pictures, the section of the track being used for this event gave little viewing that wasn't obstructed by the safety fence.. Kinda bummed me out but oh well..



I also got to enjoy a peek at this Chevy crate motor swap that I am pretty sure is an LS1.

All in all it was a good day of loud motors and burning rubber...

Videos from Sears Pointless '13 and Updates on the Sex Pistons Spitfire - 4/2/2013

So I have poorly put together and uploaded two videos from the Willy Wankel Grumpy Nerds RX7 at Sears Pointless. The first is the scary moment my pops had ...



That could have ended up much worse.. thankfully it did not. He was fine, but may have been a little wet in the pants. He checked out the car afterwords and went back out on track. - Balls of Steel

The next is a goofy mix of me behind the wheel. I am kinda a spaz, the camera and mic tell all...



And now onto the future.. or well the past cause it is the old car? Well whatever screw it.. The Team Sex Pistons Triumph Spitfire is to make a return at the 24 hour of LeMons race - Button Terrible '13 @ Buttonwillow Raceway.


My Spitfire is bad ass but does not photograph well. It's like a dirty hooker who could have been a model 10 years ago but took up a healthy habit of slamming heroin instead ~ Colin Craft

So it appears like we will have the same basic team we had at Chuckwalla back in December but one of the other girls is going to race as well. Another rookie to suffer the fate of a first LeMons race in a underpowered British tin can that is managed by me of all people. Haha sucker!

The Spitwad did start up, has good oil pressure, and ran cool this past weekend. The new rubber comes this week and the safety upgrades plans are solid. We have to remove the old backstays and install new ones that land in front of the rear most point of the rear tires. With a very precise plan, precision cutting wheel, and eyeballing... I used a fancy green garden pole to mark it out.





Will get the new tires mounted this Saturday but then I leave for two weeks on a work trip. When I return I will purchase the materials for the new backstays and spreader plates, then a friend and quality welder will help me install it properly.

Wish I had more time to work on the car, but work pays for this filthy affliction...

Sears Pointless 2013 - The Willey Wankel RX7

What a freaking awesome weekend! The weather was amazing and my dad's RX7 was a total blast to drive. It was the first race the car ran and there are some setup changes to be made like correcting the terrifically tail happy rear end. Otherwise, the Willey Wankel is a solid ride with great potential. I was the test driver and I might have missed a few points about the car, like say oh the rears lock up first under heavy breaking. There were sketchy moments for all 4 of the drivers so I guess I should have pushed it a bit more during testing. Being the third driver and with a good warning that the car handled this way, I still lit up the rear tires and slid into a slow corner like a bonehead. Lucky for me I caught it just short of a spin and the car behind did not cream me. (Thanks AJ)

We had a new driver this time named Ozer who got the full LeMons experience. We sent him out first, someone bumped him, and he spun. So obviously he got to meet the judges. He did a great job going out first. There was no one to warn him that the rear breaks lock up and the car is totally tail happy. He just figured it out on his own.



Cem returned to race with us and again was the fastest on the team, great driving as always. He even told off another LeMons driver in a very classy manner for speeding in the pits.. Another thing about Cem, he has this sweet helmet that I am jealous of..



The first goal was to finish the race and we did that. We also had fun and are home safely which are the most important things when it comes to racing LeMons. There was one scary moment for my pops when someone aggressively turned in on him going down the strait, but he did everything right and kept the car away from a major wreck. After a short break to calm down and look over the car, he went back out on the track. Later he laughed it off and we prepped the car for the next day. (Props to you Dad)



There is plenty of video and tons photos I have to go through, the video of the wreck will be first. Then I will look for the video of my bonehead spin to post that as well.

On to the results, the ones that matter anyway... The real winner was Rich with his IOE award for the horribly awesome IMP and his class C win with his Jag. Congrats Rich!





Good times were had and I can't wait to do it all over again.. which ever car we race. More pictures and videos to come soon. Here is the team pic with Chief Prep "Jay".. Keep it classy LeMons!

Other events at Sonoma Raceway - Photos

While up in the Sonoma, CA for a work trip, I had a day off which was spent at the race track. Nothing else in the area really interests me and Sears Point is just an amazing facility. Now sporting a Nikon D5100 with a $130 refurbished 55-200mm VR lens, I am learning to take motorsport pictures. The camera can take really good images and goes with me almost everywhere.

There was a racing school on the track hosted by Emotive that ran some nice Formula 3 Lola cars. Was fun to watch these machines cruise around the track with no one else around. The grounds were open and I was free to roam the whole place, which I pretty much had all to myself.





Another day I found out they had Drag and Drift racing Wednesday nights at the raceway. So two hours were squeezed out of my work schedule to go check it out and take some pictures. Most of my time was spent watching the drifters as it was more exciting than the drag racing. Some of these drifters obviously had no idea what they were doing except for enjoying themselves, though, others were quite skillful in the art. From what felt to be a safe distance, I snapped as many pictures as I could in the short time frame. Still lacking good panning technique, it takes me often a hundred shots to get one I like, but I am successful often enough to show some pretty good ones.





In all honesty, these times spent taking pictures at the track were to practice for the 24 hour of LeMons race - Sears Pointless. With my Dad and a couple friends, I will be racing in this event, so having an idea of where to take shots from was the plan.

Here are links to both albums from the Racing School and the Drag and Drift Night.

Enjoy!

Getting Ready for Sears Pointless 3/19/2013

Just a quick update.. this week we head up to Sonoma Raceway (previously Infineon, previously Sears Point)

The Sex Pistons Spitfire will stay home, as with lack of time and budget, we could only prepare one car. The Spitfire needs a lot more work and the RX7 is ready.

My pops has spent lots of time prepping the Willy Wankel RX7 and it is running well. Hopefully the weather will stay clear and we will stay out of trouble. The car has lots of potential and is a blast to drive, so we should have a awesome weekend.

The drivers for this race will be:
Jerry (My Dad - The team Captain and Car Owner)
Colin (Myself)
Cem (raced with us twice before - Fast guy)
Ozer (Cem's friend - new to Lemons)