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[cjlmlml]

Lemons Summary

I am using all of my allotted words for 2009 in this post.

Location- MSRH Houston ( Does the H for Hospitality? )

Team - Formula M (As in Mullett)

Drivers in driving order 1. Dave Schwarze Sat AM
2. Richard Painter Sat PM
3. Steve Kent Sun AM
4. Chris Lyons Sun PM
Crew- Michael Painter
Billy - Michaels Friend

Pics so far :

http://www.aicmctexas.com/forums/gallery2.php?g2_itemId=190&g2_GALLERYSID=ffb1c23bf89bacf507cfdebc4aefe1d5


Thursday Night - Dave comes to my house & we drive down to Sugarland to spend the night at my cousins house. We are transporting our crap , including the souped up Mullett golf cart. We arrive in Sugarland at about 12 pm and go right to sleep. Richard, Michael , and Billy drove down to the track, arriving about 2 am & attempted to get some sleep in gale force winds.

7 am Friday morning- Drive to MSRH, meet up with the rest of the gang. Unload crap.
The car is mostly prepared, go over last minute prep. Each team member takes the car out for shakedown runs and all seems to be going well. Pitted next to the very slow Slaab teams and their multi million dollar transporter. They don’t seem to like us . Fear the mullet.

Our biggest concern on Friday was our bribe, after last years bribe,

http://www.autofiends.com/index.php/2008/10/great-moments-in-texas-lemons-judging-part-2/



We knew it would be hard to top:
The value of the car was not a problem since we had a $400 value from Jay Lamm.

The thing we had to overcome was the V8 bias and the judges perception that we were running some kind of non-302 motor. They accused us of having a 460 last time.

We decided on 2 bottles of Johnny walker, a 12 of shiner and 2 twenty dollar bills strategically placed.

http://jalopnik.com/photogallery/LTX09FridayBS/1007401803


I told one of the judges that it was going to be hard to beat last years bribes and they agreed. They were super cool and assessed a penalty of 0 laps.

With that out of the way, we ran the car a little bit more and settled into Friday night cookout and festivities which included:

Richard Painter cooking up chops and a bunch of food ( big thanks to him for manning the grill all weekend in addition to his regular duties.

If I am not mistaken, I believe he also set our fastest lap time.

Hanging out with some bmw guys from Lewisville who brought a real margarita machine that had a more aggressive sounding cam lope than their car.

Playing toss the bean bag.

Having foot races in the parking lot (Why?)

Playstation 3 on the side of the trailer outside.

Friday night is the night to do your partying as the Saturday session doesn’t start until 11:30 am.

Most people were up late and were imbibing. As team Captain, I had to fine Steve $1,000 for violating team rules.

Saturday Morning- Weather was windy and mid 50’s.

Ahh I love MSRH. Drivers meeting starts, there are a crapload of people here! 100 teams entered was the number I heard. We are also told that there is a $50 per person camping fee if you are going to sleep at the track. This was based on the honor system. More on that later.

Refueling was also moved from where it was last year. It was all done at the pumps over at the little refueling station. Imagine all the racers crowding around two fuel pumps and hauling jugs and funnels everywhere. Chaos. This time , it was moved to the hot pit. Your car pulls up and you jump over the wall and refuel. Very Easy. I made a mental note to tell all of our team members where our fuel was.

Mental notes shouldn’t be relied on.

We decide to have Dave start off driving Sat am. He is level headed and we wanted someone who could drive cleanly and stay out of trouble. He did exactly that for his whole stint. During his 1 refueling stop, he turned off the hot pit and off the track because he didn’t know where our fuel was, and our radio guy didn’t catch him in time. We had to send him back onto the track and have him come around again. Thankfully this was all under full course yellow, but this could have been costly. I forgot to tell him where our refueling was before he got in the car. Woops.

About halfway through Saturday, Dave turned the car over to Richard for stint number 2. At this point we were in 3rd or 4th place. The car was running great and we weren’t having any problems whatsoever. Richard went out and drove aggressively setting our fastest time of the race of 1:18.3. Lap times compared to last Octobers race were much slower, probably due to the additional cars on the track.

We had to remind each other to just keep turning laps and not worry about racing anyone.

Refueled the car and parked it.

Saturday Night.

We are in 3rd place, 4 laps down from Schwing team. I am starting to get a sense that they could/should be the peoples choice.

Nobody (except them) wanted a repeat winner of last years race. We got the car back to our pit area, tracked down some brake fluid, and bled the brakes. Tightened up the rear drums, this seemed to help our mushy brake pedal a little bit. Richard went to check the oil & the dipstick tube came out and wouldn’t go back in easily. We decided to silicone the dipstick hole at the pan and hope for the best.

Did some tire and wheel management to get our best tires on the front so we would be ready for Sunday. Saturday night was subdued compared to Friday. Grilled up some food, a little play station, and we were all in bed by about 10:30. 4 of us were sleeping in the back of Richards’s big trailer, with a small space heater in there for warmth. Man it was cold! I slept in full clothes with a pillow over my head, and eventually put my shoes on to stay warm.


Sunday Morning
Wake up, sunny, 36 degrees, still windy.

8:30 am driver’s meeting- It is cold as a mofo. The meeting is short thankfully. It turns out that only 5 people who were camping at the track decided to pay the $50 camping fee suggested by the track. Hmm, too bad.

Jay Lamm cracks a couple jokes.

Meeting over, walk back to our car.

People are starting to lineup to go out on track.

Richard says, why don’t you drive the car around to make sure the brakes feel ok?

Ok, good idea. I hop in and drive to the back parking lot and hear something clanking on the front every time the wheel turns. Drive back to our pits. Wheel weight is hitting one of the front struts. Pull the wheel off and grind down the weight. Still hitting. Put the car up on jackstands.
The wheels we put on the front of the car for Sunday have a different offset than the ones we had on the front Saturday. We need to make a quick decision. We decided to return the wheels to the position they were in on Saturday and hope for the best.

While car is jacked, up we notice fluid on the ground. Looks like a power steering leak. Dave checks the reservoir, its empty. He fills it and I tighten a hose clamp on one of the lower lines and we are in biz.

We belt Steve in to the car with a couple water bottles and prepare him to go out. He drives a solid stint. He did have one 4 wheel off excursion on the back half of the track which was apparently not picked up/ignored by the corner workers. He drove fast and clean.

Problem- we start to notice puffs of smoke under deceleration on the front straight. We may have a leak where we siliconed up the dipstick tube hole. The weather was so cold Saturday night, maybe it didn’t fully cure. We decided to add a little oil each time we refueled and hope for the best.

We refueled him under a full course yellow. We gave him some apple slices to eat and he was on his way.

Through consistent driving and a little bad luck/ penalties to the cars in front of us, we made our way into first. The old BMW 2002 finally broke. If it hadn’t, I am not sure we would have caught it. Schwings got some penalties and were knocked down. The caprice was in front of us for a while and dropped back also.

Time for me to get into the car for the last stint. I remember thinking; I should go pee before I get in the car.

NO TIME

Full course yellow!


Steve comes in, we refuel, belt me in, add gas, a little oil and I am off for the last 4 hours or so of the race. I go out under full course yellow and circle for a while. I remind myself to just drive clean, and not be an idiot. At this point the race is ours to lose. No pressure.


I reach for the tube to our water bottle. It is a wide mouth Gatorade bottle. I drink a few sips and nothing will come out. I can see it in the rear view mirror and it is empty. I call in to the pits and ask them to thank Steve for drinking all of the water. What a pal. They radio me back and said there is another bottle wedged under the parking brake. DOH! There sure is. Ok, I need to concentrate.

My stint was a lot of cautions and traffic briefly interrupted by a clean track. It was crowded.

The Wondur Bread car was in second place and was a couple laps down from us. The crew radioed me and said that Wondur was behind me and to take it easy and let them pass if I wanted to. I let them around me and repassed them just to make sure I could get back ahead of them if I needed to. After they passed me again, I hung out on their rear bumper for what seemed like another hour or so until they had to pit.


Full course yellow.

We stopped and refueled, I had just under half a tank. Man I really needed to pee.There was probably an hour and 45 left to go.

We refueled and added a little oil.

Off again, track went green just as I was pulling out of pit road and we were off. Our guys were absolutely perfect on our pit stops all weekend.


Had one contact incident. Convertible camaro comes off pit road, cuts right in front of me. I slam on the brakes and someone tags me in the bumper. Oh well, punch it and keep going.

The way to avoid contact in Lemons is exactly the same as driving around town. Assume everyone is going to hit you and that there is no racing line.

I start driving about 7/10. Letting people pass who were really aggressive and that I could see were charging up , No sense fighting them. Jeremy on Schwing team came up to pass me on the front straight. I punched it just to hang with him for a second and let him go.

HEH HEH

Did I mention I had to pee?

There were more full course yellows. They were the worst because there was only one thing I could focus on , peeing.

Once we were back running at full speed, I was somewhat distracted and didn’t have to focus on 100% pee.

During one full course caution , I reached back and grabbed our Gatorade bottle and started to unzip and loosen the belts to try and get some pee relief. I just couldn’t get it done before we went back green again.

What else could I do ? Hold it or:

Option B- Just go in the seat and get it over with. ( My thought: We are leading and if we win, I am going to get out of the car with pee all over me) Not good for our team image. Wait a minute, we are the mullets, most people don’t even expect us to own shoes. Alright, I will hold it more

Radioed in to our pits- How much time? 20 minutes
OK, now how much ? 5 minutes.
The pee pain was excruciating.

I drive by the flagstand and they point a rolled up flag at me. Right after that, they threw the checkered.


Huh?


Not suprising really , as the flags/flaggers were spotty all weekend.

My team radios to me that we won. YES!!!!


They suggest I go through the front straight again to make sure the
checkered is ok.

I agree, one more lap.

This time the checkered is thrown before I pass under the flag stand.

YES YES YES !!!!!!!!


Take that Obama, you aint gonna redistribute THIS victory!

That’s great, we win, but I need to pee. I want to do a huge burn out, but I have to pee so bad its all I can think about .

I drive around the track once more.

All the other cars got the checker 2 laps ago and are pulling off the track.

By the time I get around, I am at the end of the line .


I say politely to myself, F this!

I then drive to the corner station in the middle of the track, jump out and use the porta pottie.

Corner workers are cracking up and high fiving me.

GLORIOUS! RELIEF!

I hop back in, fire up the car and drive to pit lane.

People are high fiving me in the car.

Car dies. Wont restart. I may have not been turning on the fuel pump. My mind was fried from pee back up.


Car gets pushed to winners circle. Awesome moment. I wish I could relive it .


Everyone was gathered around, yelling etc. Grabbed a Lawnmower? Beer and chugged it.

Chugged 2 water bottles.

Lamm gave us the award and our team decided to donate the $ back to the mechanic who got in the accident.

We have a classy bunch of guys on our team.

I want to thank everyone who congratulated us and helped us out. Our team was great. Richard, Dave, Steve, Michael , Billy, you all kicked ass.


We were so focused on executing all weekend that we didn’t really take many pictures. If you have any of us please send to chris_lyons@ml.com

[David Love AI27]

On sunday morning, I asked CL how they were doing... response: "I don't want to talk about it..." I said "aren't you guys in like first or second..." response: "I don't know..." I said "But I thought I read that you guys were on top..." response: "Look I don't want to talk about the race... if you really want to talk to me, lets talk about the weather..." sure is cold and windy see you later Chris.... LOL

[Al Fernandez]

LOL er...congratulations then Chris!

[David Love AI27]

[AI#97]

[cjlmlml]

Sorry loveman, I was just focusing. Thanks for the good words

[Waco Racer]

Congrats Formula M! Awesome job.

Now, after reading the write-up, I have to pee. Thanks, Chris.

[rpoz27]

Congratulations, Chris and Formula M!

[michaelmosty]

Nice picture, a big high-five right after the pee!

[David Love AI27]

[Todd Covini]

Huge congrats to Formula M!

I'm so proud of Texas AI/CMC as a whole. So many of us have branched out and done even more in their Motorsports "Careers"...and the rest of us get to be a part of it too!

Thankyou!

[rpoz27]

[cjlmlml]

This guy looks familiar.............


http://jalopnik.com/5165999/the-penalties-of-the-gator+o+rama-24-hours-of-lemons

[David Love AI27]

[Shortcutsleeping]

Congrats to the winners, we never had a chance.

http://www.witchdoctormotorsports.com/ch132.htm


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