Tunachuckers Can-O'-Blog

As many posts as I've done on LeMons racing, there's one type of picture that I love the best.  What picture genre is that?  Well, here's an example:

That's right: it's the, "It's late at night, after the first day of racing, there's something wrong with the car and we're fixing it", picture.  What's going on here?  Who knows?!  Look, there's a tire off!  And there's something sparking/illuminated/burning underneath!  Of course, the hood is up, and there's piles of tools and parts scattered about.  Beer is undoubtedly near at hand.  Yep, this is what racing's all about.

Oh yeah, there was some driving on a paved circuit course with 80-odd other cars, too.  So here's my detailed, nothing-left-out account of that part of the weekend:

Saturday:

It rained.  The track was very slippery.  Lots of cars spun out.  Luckily, we did not.

The car did not run very well, which probably helped us not get into trouble.  We were very slow.  Our pit stops were very slow, with lots of hand-wringing and head-scratching over why the car was very slow.

Sunday:

The weather was cool, but at least it was mostly dry.  Occassional spits of weather did little to hamper our performance.  Bad driving and continued lacsidaisical pit stop attitude did more in that regard.

The engine made decent power, we were very fast in the strightaways, but the smaller vehicles (everyone else) beat us around each and every one of the 14 corners.  Luckily, we didn't hit any other cars, which they were all very thankful for.

Anthony had invited some of his co-workers to come watch the race, and Lucie, shown above, decided to try out sitting in a real race car for the first time in her life.  She's French, so I'm not really sure what she's saying all the time, but I'm pretty sure she liked it.

We finished the race!  Brian took the checkered flag, which was fitting considering he had never taken a checkered flag before.  At this point, I believe everyone on the team (with the exception of Stephen, who's only on his second race with us) has taken at least one green flag and one checkered flag.  It's little things like that that makes everyone feel like part of the team.  We have to remember that, above everything else, we're in this to have fun.

This was even more important to keep in mind this race.  For the first time ever, even though we finished a race with a running car, we were completely shut out of the awards.

(On race #4, when we cooked the Volvo's engine and never made it back on the track, and left before the awards ceremony, we didn't score a trophy either, but then, that was a weekend I think we'd rather all forget anyway.  Phil later told us we might have qualified for the "I Got Screwed Award" had we stuck around, but an arguably more deserving team ended up with it.)

Oh well.  We finished mid-pack (48th place?), still have a running car, and are still all on speaking terms.  Above, the ceremonial end-of-race team picture.  Left to right:  McCall, Brian, Mike, Stephen, Anthony, Rob.

Interestingly, this was also the first race that Matt did not attend.  He and his wife were in the process of picking up their lives and moving from western NY to warmer climes, closer to Tunachucker Racing International HQ.  While his wife claims the move was to find gainful employment, I'm fairly certain it was more so Matt could become more involved in the team.

The Future beckons...