Sometimes, it be like that

Racing in Lemons is nothing if not entertaining, as we learned in our most recent full twenty-four hour race at High Plains Raceway. Lemons races follow one of two formats

• a 14(ish) hour race that runs Saturday 10-6, Sunday 9-3
• a 24 hour race with a start at Noon on Saturday and the checkered flag Noon on Sunday

Like any emotionally mature, intelligent, and sane human being we greatly prefer the 14 hour format. It’s easier to keep a car going for 14 than 24, we get more sleep, and the Lemons Paddock Potluck Party on Saturday night is always wild.

A full 24, on the other hand, is physically and mentally exhausting. Sleep is rare. Temperatures during the race range from 95F to 45F. Night racing requires massive focus and patience. The track is unlit. Dirt, and sweat, and exhaust, and tire rubber, and small particulates from the disintegrating crapcans you are alternately passing and being passed by, all irritate your eyes while some chucklehead burns out your retinas with 8 LED lightbars trained on your rear view mirror.

It’s pretty great.

Except, when it is not.

We started this race hopeful - our car was sorted, with a fresh coat of Ferrari red gofastoleum.

And when I say paint, I mean we really got into it.

This being Lemons, our hopes were quickly, and firmly crushed. Arrival, unloading, tech and BS inspection all went great. Trouble began as we took the car out around 8pm for a shakedown run. Our driver reported electrical oddities and loss of power to the headlights. We quickly isolated the alternator as the cause. Awesome. Green flag is at noon, we’re 50 miles from anywhere. Where can we acquire an alternator in time for the race?

Denver’s only open-til-midnight Autozone.

While some of the team acquired a replacement alternator. The rest remained, prepping the car and ourselves for minor surgery.

The actual replacement went quickly, and everyone went to bed confident of our impeding D O M I N A T I O N. Personally, I was quite excited, as the forecast was for rain. Up until now, I had never raced in the wet. I had a tough SCCA regional Autox event 20 years before in the wet, but never wheel to wheel. Between wanting to do a 24, and also wanting to do one in the rain, you should, by now, have formed a full and complete understanding of the kind of lunacy that consumes us.

We awoke to the promised, and cold, wet

The team was kind enough to let me lead off, and the first few laps cranked off like a dream. Car was handling well, the track was greasy going in to turn 11 but manageable and then, with no discernible warning, 3rd gear just… stopped being there. I slowed and got off the line, trying various combos of shifting up from second, down from fourth, sideways from 5th… nothing. Just no 3rd gear. This is problematic. We typically run 70% of the track in 3rd. I pulled the car in and we started poking around. Changed the transmission fluid, and I took the car back out to the same, sad reality. We didn’t have third.

Oh well.

As I quickly learned, you can race without third gear. It involves a very disappointing, anti-climatic acceleration curve spanning 25-50mph, but you can race. And race we did. Lemons is about finishing, not about winning. So we ran.

We had great pit stops and driver rotations. We managed the car and ourselves.

Eventually, the sun set and the darkness overtook us.

Night racing, racing in the wet, racing without a gear. We were feeling pretty good, if not entirely awake or rested. Eventually the sun came back around. I think the sunrise on a full-24 hour race is a perfect example of Type 2 fun. We survived the night. We’re 18ish hours in at this point, and finishing the race feels like a real, achievable thing. You can almost let yourself imagine a shower after the race as a real, achievable thing too.

Hah! No, we were not through suffering just yet. Sometime around 9am we received a radio message that 2nd gear was now gone as well. Whether it was the retrograde of Mercury, our failure to offer sacrifice to the proper eldritch gods, or the fact that we were running 2nd gear extremely hot for 18 hours straight that caused the failure, we’ll never know. We parked the car and agreed to make Bret limp out right before checkered for one final lap, and started packing our gear.

As I said above, sometimes… it be like that. And as I also said above, Lemons is about finishing the race. Whatever goes wrong, however tired you are, whatever compromises you make, you finish. And we finished. And it felt pretty damn great.

What felt even better, was that our Ferrari shenanigans were appreciated, and we won the eBay Motors Halloween Meets Gasoline Prize!

But that is a story for another time.