Amateur Endurance Racing
Be a racecar driver without really knowing how..
Amateur endurance racing is the game. The basic idea is you get a cheap car, put a lot of time and effort, and some expensive(ish) safety gear into it. Then you go out and race it against a bunch of other people that are willing to be as dumb as you are. Race fees average around $2000 plus consumables like tires, gas, engines, etc.. But don't worry you might win $601.00. So you can tell this is done for the fun of racing (or in our case the fun of wrenching). Pretty much anyone with a valid drivers license can drive, so expect that half the teams have no idea what is going on on the track and drive accordingly. We have focused on the 24 hours of lemons so far, but there are a couple of other leagues out there that we may try and run in soon.
Lemons is real racing, but they don't get too hung up on it. The rules are pretty simple, but the judges havea a lot of latitude to make sure that everything is being handled as safely as possible. How fast do we go? I am not sure to be honest, but am guessing the car hits triple digits on the long straight. The fastest lap yet in the Mitsu at MSR was a 2:04 which means the car was averaging almost 70mph over the 2.36mile course that has 17 turns... I can honestly say that when you get strapped in the car in your fire suit and helmet and line up on the grid it definitely feels like racing.
A big part of the sport for our team is race prep, it takes quite a bit of effort to keep a 1996 Mitsubishi Mirage operating under the best of circumstances (let's face it: Mitsubishi is not generally regarded as the most reliable Japanese brand). We usually have several workdays preparing for the race. Right now we have a complete funstional spare divetrain (engine, acceessories, transaxle) sitting on a dolly, just in case.