BeerTech Racing Presents: Team Mustache Ride at the 2008 24 Hours of LeMons at CMP.

I know what you’re thinking. This sounds stupid. And you would be correct. Here is some more information about the event that may reinforce what you already suspect. The rules? Find an automobile that can be raced for a 24 hour endurance race that can cost NO MORE than $500 total excluding safety gear. I.e. roll cage, seats, harnesses, tires and brakes. Okay, it’s not actually a 24 hour race but two days, 7 hours each day, with a break at night for beer and general debauchery. But c’mon, it’s a $500 car, you’re lucky if it completes the warm up laps without completely giving up and or trying to kill you.

If you want more info about the 24 hours of LeMons, see this short video;

THE 24 HOURS of Lemons

Let’s skip that crap and get right to our experience you say? Okay! Hopefully the other mustache wearing members of the team will give their perspectives as well.

THE TEAM:

Team Mustache Ride consists of 6 members, in no particular order, nicknames in parens; Brian Jones (Shady B), JP Coates (Lunch Box), Rob Maybach (Bobert), Ian Klass (Klauss), Steven Canterbury (Lurch) and our head mechanic and crew chief Big Tom Maybach. Special thanks go to Brook and her mother for excellent track support and money steaks on Saturday night.

JP, Steven and I are actual real live race car drivers. Rob and Ian are not but that’s the beauty of LeMons, you can buy a temporary race license for the event. This is pretty cool. Made me feel like I was really fast out there and knew what I was doing. Anyone who knows me will not be fooled by the videos but I don’t care. Screw you guys.

This was Robs first time on a race track and he did great. Ian has lots of track experience but has not been on track in about 5 years or so. Hopefully they can elaborate in their recaps.

THE CAR:

The weapon of choice, or circumstance, was a 1991 BMW 318is. This special ride was generously “prepared” for our use by a nice cell phone wielding driver who totaled the once daily driven race car. A $500 buy back from insurance and we have ourselves a candidate.

Yes. The car has a mustache as did all team members. We also had custom jean shorts, sweet T-shirts and cheap sun glasses to complete the ensemble. It was gross.

Since we are BeerTech and had months to prepare for the event we of course managed to throw this thing together in three days…the last possible three days mind you. Despite the efforts of some, we managed to get the car together and race ready. By race ready I mean the bare minimum safety gear that would pass the tech inspection at the track before the race began. Nothing like being prepared right?! Don’t forget to check out our sweet steering wheel in the pics and videos. Yeah, you like it.

A big thanks goes to JP for getting most of the car ready and many late nights to do so. Thanks also goes to MLT’s (Malt Liquor Tech) own Travis Wilson for some much needed assistance at the last minute.

Now that the car is complete we can race right? First you have to pass tech, no big deal but then you also have to endure the “judges” scrutinizing. There are two guys dressed as court room judges complete with gavels that pour over your car and insist that you are a liar and a cheater. They want to assess as many penalty laps as they can based on the Bull S**t Factor.

BSF points are based upon the judges decisions that you paid more than $500 for the car and or its performance enhancements or you are generally violating the spirit of the rules which is, s**t box cars for s**t box racing.

Luckily we got away with only one penalty lap. This means we start the race at negative one laps. They gave us one because they thought we were cheating but couldn’t prove it. Oh yeah and Rob called one of the judges a donkey, which probably didn’t help us but was funny. Penalties were normally between 5 and 30 laps. One team brought an all out race car and were assessed a 200 lap penalty from the start. More on them later.

The 24 hours of LeMons is technically a non contact race despite what you may find on YouTube etc. More on that later but the point is don’t bring a car you can’t afford to roll home in a little ball, if it’s not in one to begin with already. Oh, and to discourage cheating further, one car is voted on by its peers to be crushed by a 62 ton excavator. It truly is something to behold. More on that later as well as a link to the actual video. Aren’t you excited?

THE TRACK:

Carolina Motorsports Park (CMP) in Kershaw SC. Here is a track map for the race. In this configuration the track is 9/10's of a mile give or take.

TRACK MAP FOR THE RACE!

Executive Summary of our Performance:

I know, I know, blah, blah, blah, I don’t care about this anyway just tell me what happened. Okay here it is. Team Mustache Ride finished 12^th overall and 5^th in class. There are four classes in the Lemons and the judges also decide where you fall into these categories. They are; PW-prayer of winning, NPW-no prayer of winning, PF- prayer of finishing and NPF. We were in the NPW class. We finished 474 of 512 laps. The winner of the race did 512 laps over the 14 hours of racing.

MY RACE RECAP:

The race is set up as follows. Saturday race begins at noon and runs until 7:30 PM. Sunday race starts at 8:30 AM, stops from 11-12 to observe the quiet hour and resumes from 12 to 3:30. Actually went to 3:45 so we could finish the race under green flag conditions.

Our driver line up in order was JP, Steven, Me, Rob and then Ian. We inverted the order on Sunday.

Saturday started off great, we made up our negative one laps and then some. With three Spec E30 veterans leading the charge on our team we were gaining ground fast and completely embarrassing MLT as was expected. I was nearing the end of my stint, about an hour and a half in when it all went wrong. We were the overall race leader and had a 6 lap advantage over the second place car, see here:

BEER TECH LEADS LEMONS!!!

There were several lengthy cautions during both days as cars would inevitably give up and refuse to cooperate. The track would go full course caution as the wreckers came out to scrape up the remains and drag the steaming piles back into the pits.

When the track is FCY there is no passing. Once the green flag comes back out its easy to be caught asleep at the wheel and have many cars pass you. On the last restart of my stint I did like a always do and pass a ton of cars going into the chicane. This restart was no different except the #8 Miata (the car who was 200 laps down to start the race) tried to follow me, misjudged the braking zone and absolutely crushed me in the right rear. I’ve never been hit that hard in a car before. See the video here:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BRIAN'S RACE FOOTAGE<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

He knocked me through the tire barrier and through another car. He also managed to cave our right rear fender in against the tire. I had to limp around the track a full lap and into the pits where we went to work on the car.

We managed to get it banged out and stop the rubbing and get the car going again but we lost 30 minutes doing so. At about 1 minute 10 seconds per lap, this hurt our lead a little. We also got a 30 minute penalty for metal to metal contact! For getting rear ended. How do you like that? Then we were black flagged as soon as we got the car on track because we didn’t report to timing and scoring right after the incident to serve our penalty. Lame.

After that Rob and Ian kept it pretty clean and brought the car home for the night. All we did Saturday night was adjust our rear end a little more, rotate tires, flip brake pads and bleed the brakes. We were good to go for Sunday.

SUNDAY:

With an 8:30 AM race start and this truly being a full team effort, we took it easy on the partying Saturday night. We watched MLT battle several problems from afar. Man, I sure do love work. I could watch it all day.

We got Ian on track early and were the second car out. We started clean and he had a good run save one spin due to oil in turn one. Rob was up next and did well keeping the shiny side up.

The race was stopped at 11:00 for the quite hour and was a good time to crown the Peoples Curse. This was the car I mentioned earlier that would be crushed. It was decided by all the teams in the race and voted on. Looks like our pals at Salazar Racing or SaladBar as we refer to them, made lots of friends with their driving “style” on Saturday. See the video here:

SALAD BAR GETS CRUSHED!

Their T-shirts were pretty good though, I have to admit. “F**k BeerTech’s Mom” More like…F’ yo car homies! Man that made me feel good inside to see that happen. Does that make me a bad person? I did truly feel bad to see the poor E30 get crushed but it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of guys!

The race resumes at noon with me behind the wheel. I’m feeling good out there and car is still in decent shape, well, for what it was. It was still going and kind of stopping and turning also which is nice. Sunday was hot and dry. My stint Saturday was mostly wet and more than half of it was in pretty heavy rain. I like driving in the rain so I loved it. Sunday was a good change and was fun to get some dry laps in. I kept it clean tried to take care of the car but I was racing hard when I needed to. Camera was full so unfortunately no video from Sunday of me.

The car was doing great as long as you kept the heat turned on so it didn’t overheat. The little 318 was a champ but you can only beat on it so much. Steven was after me and as he went on track it was double yellow. He passed some cars under yellow and got black flagged. This gave us a 5 minute penalty and he came right back in to serve it. After he went back out the temp gage began to rise after about 30 – 40 mins or so. It quickly pegged in the red and he brought the car in.

We topped off the coolant after finding no obvious signs of a problem and then JP went out to finish the race. He was quickly back in and straight into the pits. Overheating again. Looking over the car we again saw no obvious issue. We bled the cooling system and this seemed to help. JP went back out after several lost minutes in the pits and was able to finish the race and bring us home in 12^th place. Nice work Team Mustache Ride. Looking forward to next year’s LeMons!

Some things I learned:

SC’s highways are amazingly road kill free I found out. Steven and I went out with Malt Liquor Tech Friday night looking for road kill. What else are you going to do with purpose built trap door in your trunk rigged up with a latch for the driver to pull? Put some road kill back there of course.

Ian got new nickname. He kind of grew a Wolverine style mustache/beard thing and he is a ginger kid so of course he was called the Gingerine for the weekend. Has a nice ring to it don’t you think?

Never let a Miata get in your trunk, the next day, your car will really hurt. That context may only be good to Chapelle show fans but I like it.

Bring documentation to the judges at LeMons for your car to avoid penalties.

Overall the LeMons was a great experience and I can’t wait to do it again. Another great weekend at the track with BeerTech, MLT and Salazar. Good to see you guys as always, hopefully you got all the good bits off of that car before it was “disqualified.”

---Brian Jones BeerTech Racing #380, Team Mustache Ride #88

Back from Lemons!!!

Beertech Racing's 24 Hours of Lemons 2008 effort is now complete. The results are a two sided coin: we and the car actually completed the weekend, much to our surprise. We are very VERY disappointed however, as we were solidly in the overall lead most of the day Saturday (again, much to our surprise), until a certain cheater Miata demonstrated its driver's lack of talent, and hit us hard on the right rear corner, cutting our tire and causing a lot of headaches, and effectively putting us out of the running.

Even with that, we had a great time and are scheming for our next years effort, learning the lessons of this year, and we'll be ready, cheater miatas or not.

More results and pictures as they become available!


Bobert aka Team Mustache Ride's Official Anchor

Zero Hour for 24 hours der Lemons!

After a lot of work on all of our parts, especially JP and Brian, the Beertech entry for the 24 Hours of Lemons- Team Mustache Ride- is close to completion, with a full cage, race seats, cool suit apparatus, fire suppression, race tires, etc etc. The final touch will be some clandestine visual enhancements to be performed tonight, most likely under the influence of Miller Lite, at the Track.

Saturday morning, the rest of Team Mustache Ride will arrive at the track, including me (Type Rob), our Yankee hotshoe Klaus, and Head Crew Chief Big Tom. Cigars, beers, lots of meat and lots of ice are packed and ready to go.

Pictures, stories, and videos will be shared as soon as they are available

Until then, take care, and don't let your PBR get too warm...

July 2008 Firecracker Run at CMP by BTR #380

Weekend Recap:

FRIDAY:
6.5 hours for me on the road means no enduro this time. I did show up in time to catch the end of the race and hear the lies from everyone about their motorsport prowess as usual. I knew it was going to be a good weekend when I started hearing about the MLT enduro award party favors...I mean c'mon, who dosen't like live chickens, malt liquor and fireworks? Sign me up!

SATURDAY:
Race was awesome. very intense, hard fought and a lot of fun. I qualified 10th but got a DNF for aggressive driving, doh! (would have been 4th but woulda, shoulda, coulda right?). Im fine with taking the DNF, it was completely my own fault. Ill post video as soon as its done uploading.

We had a standing start and I dropped the clutch with a few too many RPM's and spun the tires through first and most of second gear. Once the tires hooked up I was shot right past M3Bill on the outside and clear into T1. Lots of close racing ensued with R. Allen, R. Patton, Al Taylor, S. Canterbury and probably a few others.

I do want to apologize to Robert Allen again for running him off track. I feel really bad about that because it could have been a bad incident. Luckily Robert has great car control skills and managed to get the car back on track without hitting anything.

I botched T14, hit the rumble strips and then had to down shift into second. This gave R. Allen a good run on me and he went to the outside. As we approached the start/ finish line in a true drag race he was gaining. if all went as it should have we would have been side by side at turn in for one and I would have had the inside, no big deal. But since I was feeling racey, I wanted to practice some of what Ive been taught in my few races thus far.

As we went down the straight I started to take a line to the out side of the track to one, get a better approach into T1 and two, squeeze Robert to the edge of the track to defend T1. As I did so, I went a little too far and hit Robert right before the start/finish line. My passenger door hit his front wheel and he got sideways and went screaming off track in a cloud of tire smoke and dirt. I continued on but did feel terrible. I really didn't mean to hit him and it was a stupid thing to do. That was near the end of the race, and you can see it in the video.

I finished the race but was called up to Timing & Scoring to get a talking to and receive my DNF. I didn't argue.

Sat Race>>>http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8262836003680570314&hl=en

SUNDAY:
Sunday was a great race also, Qualified 7th, started 3rd and finished 6th after all the cheaters got by me. ;)
See video for action!

Sun Race>>> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7184612890027446906&hl=en
Of course there was some drama Sunday morning. As we made our way through the grass pre qualifying to take a team BTR photo with all three cars, I heard a loud clunking coming from the right front. Didn’t hear it on track but the front end felt a little funny when I ran through the kink, a 100+ MPH turn that you use a lot of curb in. When the front end would "land" after hitting the curb the car would bounce a little.

It turned out that the gland nut holding the strut in place was completely loose. Seems these have a way of working themselves loose. This left me with no right front shock, only a spring and my anti roll bar. Disassembled the front end, screwed the gland nut back in place and all was good once again. Seems the same thing happened to JP's car and Jim Robinsons the event prior. Will have to add this to the tech check before race weekends.

Congrats to R. Allen for a great Qualifying (2nd overall), and a great race (2nd place finish)

OFF TRACK HIGHLIGHTS:
1. Found out chickens can fly...sort of. and they will sleep in a tree.
2. Heard some of Travis' top shelf game for the ladies...pretty solid.
3. BRE Luke likes to have live chickens in his trailer at bed time.
4. Bicycle > pit bike...again.
5. Scott Mc can draw a kick ass possum on anything.
6. IndyJim has a generally negative disposition.
7. SC does have some laws that will be enforced...who knew?
8. Turnip can wreck anything with a motor.
9. As suspected, Sasha and Geeger are confirmed nancies.

Thanks for reading the blog, tune in for more accounts of the weekend and look for the 24 Hours of LeMons, should be ....interesting....

Brian- Car #380

Lemons Car Update

Finally got started on our steed. Stage one is to gut the thing, and I got most of that done today. I really need a garage. JP and Brian are picking to car up this week to take it to the Beertech Lake Retreat, where the prepping will continue. I remembered why I hate northern cars.

A couple of pictures...

Beertech goes Guerrilla

Beertech Racing Goes Guerrilla!

This is just a small update, but a precursor to a frenzy of near future updates. Beertech Racing (and its subsidiaries, trusties, hangers-on, lackies, and wenches), have officially been accepted into the 2008 24 Hours of Lemons on July 26 at Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, SC (http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/events/carolina/ ). We are excited because this event embodies the very essence of Beertech, and of course we’ll get to drink during the festivities (once the cars are parked that is)

Due to an unforeseen personnel change, Beertech Racing is pleased to announce that a member of our chief competitors, Malt Liquor Tech, will be putting on his drinking shoes and trying to hang with the big dogs. Hopefully Steven won’t embarrass us too badly, or at least no worse than we already do to ourselves (I’m looking at you Ian…). The storm of mudslinging has already begun, although hopefully both teams have better drivers than they do shit-talkers.

On the equipment side, a wonderful young Indian lady was gracious enough to total one of the Beertech Wench’s daily drivers, and now that a suitable replacement has been found, our trusty steed is being prepared to carry us onto the fields of battle, conquer the competition, and still start (hopefully) the next day. Pictures of our weapon of choice will soon be posted.

That’s all for now, please be on the lookout for updates in the near future!

Type Rob

Roebling Road Raceway BeerTech #380

RRR? Yeah…I was there. IFU2?...done.

I hated this track 4 years ago. I was there once for a DE during my first or second year of chasing the coveted HPDE championship. I was in my E36 M3 and this was before the track was resurfaced. I never did get comfortable on track and being new to HP driving didn’t like the various amounts of grip or lack thereof provided by the different surfaces.

I was excited to get back and try the new surface in my raze car. I kept hearing about what a great track it was to race on and after missing last years IFU I was chomping at the bit to try it out again.

I felt great once on track and after taking almost all of 2007 off from driving/racing, I felt like I was getting back to the level of confidence and comfort that I was used to.

Saturday- Practice was great, took it easy learning the line again and feeling out the track. Thanks to Mike Skeen for lots of good tips while we were walking the track on Friday, I was paying attention and able to remember what he said and apply it. That really sped up the process for me. I also learned quite a bit following R Patton around, nice work Robert, we had a lot of very close racing that was a hell of a lot of fun.

Qualifying was good, I qualified 9th and finished 9th in the sprint race. I was extremely happy with that performance. Had some great racing with Al Taylor and was able to hold him off at the end.

IFU. I started in the last spot of the 4th group and was moving up pretty quick, I caught lots of people and was running great until the restart. At the start stand it was Pantas, Lear, Skeen, Damion and I at the front. I had a good start and was holding my own coming out of 2 when Skeen and I had to quickly split Scott Lear, me to the inside Skeen to the outside.

Having successfully negotiated that situation, I promptly went wide in 4 and off track trying to keep the fast guys behind me. Oops. Oh well, I had good racing with Foushee for several laps and had great runs on him out of 9 but the car was starting to starve. I was getting starvation after turns 2 and 9 consistently with about ½ tank of fuel. I had a great run on Steve coming out of 9 on the last lap and would have passed him for the position but the car fell on its face and he was able to hold me off for 19th place.

Sunday: Wow, I thought I was feeling good during qualifying and my suspicions were confirmed when the times came out. 7th place. Uh oh, this means someone will be coming up quick! JP was right behind me as well as Travis and Geegar. I knew this was going to mean no mistakes to keep my hard earned spot. Oh yeah, Sasha was back there too but he was my whipping boy all weekend so he was more of a chicane for the others. Thanks for the help buddy.

I was holding my own for most of the race up front. I think I was up there until lap 2 or 3 when I went off for the first of my 3 offs. (Turns 6,7 and a good one in 9) I managed to turn my 7th position start into a solid 18th spot finish. Get some. I was bummed about not keeping it on track but I was still happy overall. I knew my comfort level was going to be pushed a little further and I needed that. Don’t worry, I’m coming. Give me some time to work on my race craft and consistency and chumps like Geiger and Wilson will be back where they belong…with Jim Robinson behind Beertech. That’s right, you just read that. ;)

Unfortunately I screwed up the AV portion of my weekend pretty good. I have no IFU footage, bummer, ½ of Sundays race and I think all of Saturdays race. I also didn’t have the image stabilizer on so the videos aren’t very good. Ill post what I have, hopefully some of it is good.

Thanks for reading teh blog. -Brian Jones BTR #380