Here is some in car footage from the Chase Race 1952 Hudson Hornet competing in the 24 Hours of LeMons event held at The Ridge Motorsports Park on July 20 and 21, 2013. This car is incredibly fun to drive and was very warmly received by the LeMons judges and competitors. Later in the week I’ll have a more detailed post, with pictures and more videos.
Long story short: we won! The Hudson won the top prize in LeMons, the Index of Effluency.
The 24 Hours of LeMons continues to be a healthy and fun series of races run all around the United States. We have done this before and loved every minute. This year we’ve built a Hudson Hornet, a car with a long history of racing. We’re told this is the first Hudson entered in LeMons.
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This post is an experiment of sorts. I’m going to write about my racing exploits to allow me to publicly challenge myself to develop as a driver and hopefully regain or improve on my former level of performance.
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StartingGrid friend, Pujo! co-driver, and mechanical wizard Doug Chase, of Chase Race shared this video from an event he was crewing at last weekend. I’ll let Doug describe the video, “Last weekend was the Mt. Hood rally and we were crewing for our good buddies at Roshambo Racing. Unfortunately our rally was ended just a little bit early. By a deer.” The video has clear audio that shows a little concern about conditions. Rally is awesome.
Video credit: Doug Heredos
Pujo! is on his way down to Shelton for our race weekend. Stay tuned to StartingGrid for updates as the weekend progresses.
Here’s the schedule:
SCHEDULE
Friday, 20 July 2012
7am: Gates open
8:30am-5pm: Testing with a 1-hour break for lunch. Details above.
Noon-5pm: Mandatory Friday tech inspection. Every car and at least one driver per team must be present for Friday tech. No Saturday tech will be offered.
Saturday, 21 July 2012
7am: Gates open
9:30am: Mandatory drivers’ meeting
10:30am-8pm: Race session I
8:30pm-?: Optional LeMons Drag Racing (ie, blow up your diff on the 1/4-mile for the promise of one measly Get Out of The Penalty Box Card).
Sunday, 22 July 2012
9:15am: Mandatory drivers’ meeting
10am-3pm: Race session II
3pm: Checkered flag
3:30pm: Awards
6pm: Gates close
Feel free to come by and say Hi! I’ll be the guy in the gorilla suit.
Go here for more details.
We’ve been working late nights at Chase Race getting Pujo! ready to race. In order to comply with the strictly enforced budget cap in the LeMons series, we are often forced to find creative ways to do things. The latest Pujo! Penny Pinching Project® involves the relocation of our electrical kill switch and the installation of a push button starter.
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Here is a quick update on the Perils of Pujo!. Of large importance to a race car is keeping oil on the inside of the engine. Pujo!, as you saw in our last installment, had become quite adept at converting the oil inside the engine into smoke outside the engine. To determine the source of the oil, we consumed some beer, grabbed some hammers and took apart the turbo.
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The first work party on Pujo! was a tremendous success. Being a team of drinking gourmands, Doug and I set the tone for the day by first procuring adequate beer to fuel the wrenching. The choice of the day was Churchkey, a northwest brewed pilsner perfect for hydration and idea inception when hammers and cursing fail to reveal a solution.
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The Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys are competing in the 24 Hours of LeMons race in Shelton in July. Since that’s just a little over a month away, we should probably put down the wine for a few minutes and pick up some wrenches.
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Friend of StartingGrid, Doug Chase – Chief Everything Officer of Chase Race, drove in last week’s 24 Hours of LeMons event at Sears Point Infineon Raceway. He was driving the Autosport Labs Merkur “Lab Rat”, which is pictured above and is worth a post just highlighting its unique features – live telemetry in a $500 crap can racer!.
Doug recently said the following about being behind the wheel of the Lab Rat and it resonated with me as a great explanation of what racing really feels like.
“Last Saturday I spent two hours at the wheel of a race car, and it was the most relaxed that I had felt in months. Never mind that we were racing in the rain, or that the windshield wipers broke, or that there were 170 other cars on track.
At that moment, nothing else in the world matters. Work is gone. The internet is gone. I couldn’t answer the phone if I wanted to. For those two hours the only thing that mattered was piloting the race car, a task that happens to be quite fun, and that I happen to be reasonably good at.
When my stint was up and it was time to come in and change drivers, I climbed out of the car relaxed, refreshed, and feeling more at peace than I had felt in a long time.
Then Sunday we did it all again, except without the rain.
And life is good.”
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