Lemons Race Day 1 Recap

Team Coronautski, AKA Bunch of Idiots, AKA Team POPCOPY
24 Hours of Lemons
Hellasweet
Miata Power
I AM THE MANAGER

Brian Nixon and his team-mates from Team Coronautski Kyle Ray-Smith, Luke O'Hara, John Fatcheric, and Jason Rucker, AKA "Bunch of Idiots", have finished the first day of the fall 24 Hours of Lemons at CMP in South Carolina in an excellent 10th place overall! Unlike many great driving accomplishments highlighted here on the NMS blog, this 10th place is really good stuff, because it's out of 93 crappy $500 cars that have completed at least one lap. Over the first day's 8 hours of racing, the Bunch of Idiots has completed 183 laps, which means they are only 12 laps out of first overall. Oh, and the Miata is themed as the POPCOPY racer, which is a reference to a funny skit on the Dave Chappelle Show.

Last minute prep before racing on Saturday

From what we can tell from following along on the Race Monitor app (only about 4 bucks for a month, you can cancel any time), they've been lapping without any engine issues, and only stopped for fuel so far, as well as driver changes. The track at Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP) is 2.27 miles per lap, so if we call on our technical analysis team at NMS HQ, they've "done the math" and come up with 415.41 miles covered so far. Compared to this team's previous car, the mighty 72 Dodge Coronet, we'd estimate that the current Miata has gone through about 2 less engines, 8 less tires, and 50 less gallons of gas after 8 hours on the track too! OK, seriously, a lighter, newer Miata will use fewer tires/gas/brakes/engines, so the team has got to be happy with a lighter impact on the old wallet at this point!

The Miata and Team Altima prep for Sunday

Again, turning to our technical analysis team and their super-computer, 415 miles in 8 hours works out to 51.92 miles per hour, so you can tell that the team is tearing up the track. To be honest, that time and  mileage includes the 3 or 4 pit stops to swap drivers and refuel, as well as at least two full course yellow or black flags that has cut down the laps for all the teams. The team's fastest lap clocked in at 2:02.974, so that one lap averaged 66.45MPH. The track does have a few pretty good straights where the car is likely hitting 100MPH or close to it, but we'll have to study the data to give you any more specifics. Keep in mind that all this racing is in traffic with cars that are mostly slower, so there's generally a lot of traffic on most laps.

Friday Night Block Party
All the Racecars

Let's see, in other technical analysis, we believe that the team has run as high as 8th overall, and their current 10th has them just 3 laps out of 7th overall, so we're looking to see them running strong on Sunday and moving up a bit higher.

Ready to Parade into Camden SC for the Block Party

Besides the overall competition, the cars are split into 3 classes, with the Miata in the likely fastest Class A, and in Class A the team is in 8th overall, with a couple of Class B cars somehow in the top 10 too. The Coronet had won the slowest Class C a year ago on this same track, so this is a step up into the faster mo-better cars of Class A. The classification is a totally non-scientific best SWAG (scientific wild-ass guess) from the easily bribed judges, but that's just part of what makes Lemons racing so much fun!

POPCOPY

Stay tuned for a more complete wrap up from NMS driver Brian in the next few days, and the thrilling conclusion of how this thing turns out on Sunday. If this 24 Hours of Lemons doesn't make sense, don't blame me, go check it out on their website: 24 HOURS OF LEMONS