The People’s Curse Award winner, Mazda-saurus takes a beating post race.

Probably a good thing for it’s life to end this way!

Last week I dropped by Thunderhill Raceway to check out the 24 Hours of LeMons and walked around and took some photos but I didn’t stay for the entire race. Even though I was there for a while I was able to read comments made by teams and see enough photos taken during the race to know it’s the last place in the world I would wish be been caught in a car. Just take a moment to think about it… First of all you are required to have a “piece” of who knows what that is worth less than $500 and the cheaper the better. How many race cars worth $500 can possibly be considered safe all things considered. Drivers are not required to have any track experience and all they have to do is “purchase” a license. I talked to one team driver who had his girlfriend for a teammate and she has never driven on a track in her life. For those of us that have had many hours of seat time we have a very good understanding of what “not” to do and when “not” to do it which was taught to us on tracks by licensed instructors when there was “not” any other cars on the track for us to hit or lives to endanger. However, in this case anyone with fifty bucks can take the first turn as fast as they want with other untrained drivers as well. To make things worse, even if there are some who choose to drive within their known abilities, they are still on a track with other drivers who may either be seasoned race car drivers going at full speed or worse yet they are out there with the ones who don’t realize how unsafe what they are doing truly is and they too are going as fast as they can.
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Several weeks ago I was asked to run a car in this years 24 Hours of LeMons being held at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows California but since it was so close to the holidays I decided to take a rain check. As luck would have it my wife, our grandson and I just so happen to be driving by Thunderhill at lunch time on my way to Oregon to spend the holiday with my mother. I told my wife that since it was about time to stop and get a bite to eat it might be fun to stop and check out the race.

Since we had a long 8 more hours of driving ahead of us and not wanting spend too much time at the track my wife went to get some chow at the track cafe while I walked around and got some action photos. But instead of seeing cars doing battle on the track what I found was everyone in the paddock working on their cars. Now I had already been warned that the 24 Hours of LeMons was considerably much more laid back than the demanding rigors that I was used to and had even been told at some point they even take a lunch break.
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