The race is over. Below is a recap.
Friday, 2/8/10 - After a 3 hour drive, I arrive at Carolina Motorsports Park in a pouring, freezing rain. It is literally so cold and wet that my cell phone won't work unless I am sitting inside a heated car. Anyway, I see Team Kobayashi Maru's Skunk Car for the first time. It has a Webkinz Skunk for a hood ornament, the car is black with white stripes, and it has a three foot faux fur skunk tail attached to the trunk. Plus, the team has painted "We Stink" on the side.
A few minutes later, I meet my team. Although they all live in New Jersey, two of the drivers are from a European or Eastern Block country. Perhaps Poland or Germany. You may be able to tell where they are from because they painted their flags of origin on the car. All they knew about me was that I was from NC, so they gave me a confederate battle flag.
There is work to be done on the car, but it is too wet and cold to be productive, and my teammates have been up for 28 straight hours (since they drove down from Jersey), so they head back to the hotel. I decide to attend the optional "Introduction to Racing Meeting" for new drivers. Interestingly, although there are 65 teams, with 4 to 6 drivers a piece (e.g. approximately 300 drivers), I am the ONLY person who attends the meeting. . . Uh Oh.
On Saturday, I arrive at the track between 7-8am. The weather is better and work on the car is going smoothly. At the Mandatory Drivers' Meeting, the organizers announce a new penalty - the "Teach Your Girlfriend's Hot Little Sister To Drive A Stick Shift Penalty." This is how it works: if your team gets "black flagged" for violating a rule, then you might have to (1) find full racing gear for Chantelle, a 5'10" 20 year old blonde, (2) teach her the intricacies of manual transmission operation, preferably without destroying the race car or killing anyone, and then (3) let her drive a full-on LeMons race session for 30 minutes in your car. If it turns out to take all day...well, the LeMons Supreme Court has all the time in the world! Oh yeah! Later in the day, someone other than me received the penalty. Here is a photo of her learning to drive:
With 15 minutes to go before the race, we go to fill up the car with gas and it starts leaking like a sieve. We disassemble the top of the gas tank and determine that a breather hose is dry rotted. My teammates don't consider it to be a safety issue (and I'm not driving first), so we push on. John, our most aggressive driver, goes first. Just after 10am, the green flag drops and surprisingly, the car does not catch fire.
I may post video later, but for now you can check out some pictures of the other unusual vehicles in the field:
Caddy Shack:
Swat Team:
Nemo:
Notice the Panties in the mannequin's hand of the Enzyte car:
Our Lady of Perpetual Down Force, which uses the wing from a cessna:
The CoROLLa, which rolled over last year has, training wheels, wheels on the roof, and Animal from the Muppets drinking a Mike's hard lemonade:
After an hour of racing, we are shocking the world and are in 6th place! Fifteen minutes later. . . we broke down. Unfortunately, the throttle cable, which connects the gas pedal to the engine, came off. It took about 30-45 minutes to fix and we fell to 47th place.
While in the pits, we substituted drivers. Our second driver lasted only 25 minutes. During his stint, he ran off of the track twice and as a result, received two black flags and a penalty. After a brief deliberation, the judges decided that since our car says "we stink" on the side, and since our driving stunk, we should receive the stinky penalty. As a result, the judges poured an entire bottle of Walmart's cheapest perfume inside our car.
Although the car now smelled like a cheap massage parlor, I doubted whether we would obtain a happy ending. In addition to the perfume, the judges made us substitute drivers. I was next!
I quickly hopped in the car and headed back toward the track only to discover that during one of our last driver's off-road excursions, the car's exhaust became disconnected. So, with me still in the car, the team brandished its wrenches and reconnected the exhaust.
I drove for an hour and forty-five minutes with no problems. In fact, I set the fast lap for the team (e.g. 1:06 v. 1:11) and moved us from 47th to 37th place.
After a quick refueling, we changed drivers again. Our fourth driver drove for about an hour, and then . . . the transmission exploded in a ball of smoke. The car coasted back into the pits. Although we were only 5 hours into the 24 hour race, our race was over.
Despite my disappointment, I stuck around to see some of the other festivities and penalties, which were funny. For example, the judges forced a group of "macho" drivers, who were involved in an accident, to wear Village People costumes and walk around the pits dancing to Macho, Macho, Man.
I also saw the judges force a driver, who disputed that he caused a different accident, to go into their version of the NFL's instant replay booth to see what happened. Only there were no replays being played in the booth. Rather, it was merely a cardboard box covered with a black table cloth - effectively a time out for the offending driver. Check it out:
Finally, I saw the judges make someone write "I will not spin out" 100 times with a sharpie on their car's hood.
Even though I wish we performed better in the race, I had fun and can't wait to drive again. In fact, I am in negotiations with the Cullman Liquidation team (who finished in 20th at the So!
