Thanks! I've been racing an '87 325is for …*I guess this is the 7th year. Hard to believe. Harder to believe it's continued to run this long. My team consists of BMWCCA members from the White Mountain chapter. The initial cadre were all MINI owners, but we're now a solid crew of MINI and BMW aficionados. The car's a legitimate $500 piece of crap. It had 250,000 miles on it when we got it and there are a few spots where you can see through the floor and body. We stripped out every bit of extra weight we could, to the point that the doors, trunk and hood were down to flimsy pieces of steel without any reinforcement. We actually removed *too much* weight and now keep an extra set of wheels strapped to the trunk floor for better balance. The car's been pretty much bullet-proof despite the 15+ races we've done. We did break a couple of rocker arms in 2012, but that's not really surprising. It's a fun, fast car. I'd be totally happy driving nothing else on the track. It's so fast it feels like a cheater, but it honestly isn't. There are some opportunities now to take a LeMons car and run with other non-crapcan bodies, like the SCCA. We're probably doing our last year with this car and would like to get something that we can build a little more safely. Our cage -- a bolt-in Autopower job -- looks pretty marginal and I don't think any of us would be thrilled if we got into a big smashup with it.
We jumped at the chance to run LeMons when they first came to Stafford Springs, CT in 2008 (?), and then we did all the New Hampshire events plus the one at the Monticello Motor Club in NY last April. We pretty consistently finish in the top 10 (and there were 140 cars at the last race in October!). We're not an overly organized group of fellas; while we do a handful of work days before each race, we pretty much show up and hope for the best. :-)
I've been doing 5-7 days on the track per year for about 10 years, now. I did the BMWCCA club race school at NJMP last June with my BRZ (which was replaced by the ZHP). My teammates are all experienced HPDE students (with one instructor). Some of the yokels you see on the track at a LeMons event have never been away from traffic lights and road signs before (and some you'd swear had never seen the inside of a car). So there's a pretty wide range of ability. The racing (and organizing) have become more civilized since we started. Most folks behave well on and off the track, but with 140 cars and a minimum of 560(!) drivers, you're bound to have some moments. I absolutely love getting to go wheel-to-wheel with other cars, and it is "real" racing, as far as I'm concerned. 140 cars is too damn many by half and you spend a good part of the first of the two days in traffic or under yellow. That can be really frustrating.
This year we're going to do the NJMP race in May, plus a couple of others. I'm personally trying to strike a balance between racing, vacationing with my wife, doing track days with the ZHP, *repairing* the ZHP, plus doing other non-car-related stuff, all on a fairly limited number of vacation days. In addition to my day job I'm also working with a startup in Seattle (
Autosport Labs), and I'm hoping to get out there to do a LeMons race with them in July. Crap, that's a lot…
Uh, what else can I tell you? :-)