The race was December 4th and 5th, and the weather was threatening.  On the way to the track Saturday morning it was raining hard.  I am glad we weren't on the standard limited tread Toyos from the 944-Spec racecars.  Tread depth is your friend in the wet.  Buttonwillow has many configurations and we found out in the drivers' meeting that we would be running clockwise, omitting Lost Hill, and using the Sweeper.

 

Through the parade lap lottery system of the 24 Hours of LeMons, Team Help Dubai started 91st out of 164 cars.  On the first ten laps, we went to 79th, 67th, 54th, 49th, 46th, 44th, 43rd, 41st, 35th, and 33rd.  That's a lot of passing, good practice and a fun game of sharks and minnows.  You don't need a racing license to do a LeMons race, so there are many drivers who aren't so fast; but for the most part, they were all behaved and predictable on track.

 

The Team Baconator guys have expanded to two cars and we were sharing resources for pit stops.  In addition to the "Help Dubai" 944, "The Most Interesting Car in the World" (a BMW 533i with 300,000 miles on the original motor) was running the crazy race.  They ran the race with a beer tap installed where the trunk button used to be and also served Dos Equis from a keg on Saturday night.

 

 

Though the race started in the rain, the track did start to dry quickly when the precipitation stopped.  Due to our giant gas tank, we took the lead on lap 43 and held it until pitting on lap 65.  LeMons pit stops are taken care of in the paddock instead of the hot pits, so that makes the paddock speed limit of 10 mph feel a bit slow.  Also important is getting paddock space near as possible to the hot pit.  After the pit stop, we were back in 4th, behind a BMW E30, a Geo Metro, and a turbo Miata.

 

 

On lap 126, we pitted from 2nd place for fuel and another driver change. 6th after the pit stop, we were in 5th place at the end of Saturday.  LeMons doesn't run in the dark and most cars have removed all the lights, except for the brake lights.  The "Help Dubai" car still has the heater core and all the lights so we could have continued into the night.  Standings at the end of Saturday had the "FedUp" E30 in 1st followed by the Geo Metro on the same lap, the turbo Miata one lap back, "Help Dubai" two laps back, with "The Most Interesting Car in the World" slotting into 5th, 3 laps back.

 

In Sunday's driver's meeting, they told us they were switching configurations to counter-clockwise and including Lost Hill.  Oh joy!  It was a dry start and we maintained 4th place to the first pit stop.  We re-entered the race in 6th behind a 1927 Model T Ford with 1986 Mustang V8 power driven by PCA time-trialers.  The Model T had the fastest lap time of the race, but experienced teething problems as this was the car's first race and only finished 9th overall.  I took the wheel for the second stint of the day and, once I was clear of traffic, I managed to drive four wheels off (brain fart), a black flag offense in the now tightened up rules of LeMons.  At the black flag station, a quick donation to Speedway Children's Charities got us back on track.  We still managed to lose 3-4 laps in the process though.  Now it was on!  I had to redeem myself and make up positions from 8th.  Through some light and not so light sprinkles on and off, we were in 3rd when the car stumbled for fuel after 76 laps.  A quick splash-and-go and we managed to finish 3^rd--5 laps behind both the E30 and the turbo Miata who both finished on the same lap after 15 hours of racing!  "The Most Interesting Car in the World"—our BMW 533i sister car--finished in 4th overall.

 

 

What a blast!  The 944 has great brakes and handling, power is a bit lacking though.  In hindsight, we could have saved carrying some extra fuel weight around.  We ran stints of 65, 61, and 17 laps on Saturday, and 63, 76, and 26 laps on Sunday.  Since we ran a stint of 76 laps Sunday, we probably could have gotten away with one pit stop on Saturday.  Sunday was a longer race period and two pit stops were going to be required anyway.  Next time maybe!