24 Hours of Lemons

This past weekend was the 24 Hours of Lemons. What is that you ask? It's a hilarious and enjoyable junk car race that you can read about here. This is the fourth time that Jason has participated in the race with his team - Automotive Engineering Outcasts.

This is the second time that I've been able to watch Jason drive a race car and let me tell you, I sure do love it!! It's wonderful to be able to support Jason in something he's passionate about. He does an amazing job supporting me in all of my racing efforts (although a totaly different kind) and it's a nice change to be a spectator cheering on my hubby.

Look at how handsome this race car driver is!! :-)

In 2010, Jason and three of his friends invested in a Nissan Sentra SER that had participated in the race previously and already had a lot of the safety specifications required for the race. The stipulation of the race is that the car needs to worth less than $500 total (not including safety requirements). The team has to keep track of all the expenses/modifications added to the car and prove to the judges that they have remained within the "junk car" category.

Here's the team's car:

The past two races I was able to make the team some themed treats - car cookies and Cars 2 cakes. Unfortunately I didn't have time to make a themed dessert for this race, but I hope they still enjoyed their peanut buter cookies and brownies! :-)

The weekend got off to a rocky start when Jason called me on Friday to tell me that their car's transmission was broken. They were working to fix it or find a new one. By Saturday morning they were able to find someone and I headed down after my Katy Fit run and arrived just in time to see them hit the track with only a few hours of race time sacrificed for repairs. There was just one catch to their fix - they only had 3rd gear!! All six of the team's drivers did great despite the challenge of one gear!

This is not a good way to start the race off...

This car had it worse...it caught on fire on the track! Fortunately, the driver quickly got out!!

Here's my handsome race car driver!! :-)

Here's the team on the track!

There were a couple minor glitches again on Sunday... (hey, it's a LEMONS race people - that's half the fun!). I saw a super quick (under 8 min) brake rotor change.

Time for a quick pit stop!

Uh-oh! That's not a round tire... the team had a super-quick tire change and got back on the track with just 15 min left to bank some more laps.

Here's the trophies for the winners:

On Sunday, the team got on the track once the race opened. Jason raced third that day and despite having the untimely bad luck of hitting yellow flags on the entire course (which happened to him Saturday too!), he still got some great lap times in and raced wonderfully!

Overall, their team did great! They placed 32nd overall and it was wonderful to see how passionate they all are about racing and what fun they have being on the track! We can't wait for the next Lemons race February 2012!