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THE MOTORSPORTS GROUP 25 HOURS OF LEMONS NEWS Team 8NSK8 finishes 7th in the first ever Lemons Texas race!
Credit Vu Bahn for Race Recap and Photos Well, team 8NSK8 (Nick Ault, Jeff Dinges, Scott Hanba, and myself) finished 7th overall and won an award for what I thought was No Prayer of Winning or maybe it was Finishing...it was something like that. In any case, we'll have to wait for the official results, but we did take home a trophy. Friday was a test day as we tried to figure out the track but got no more than about 5 laps per person due to overheating issues. It was pretty much a blown head gasket, and we ended up replacing it that night in the dark. Only 4 hours, a sawzall, and some jack stands and it was back to running shape. Our first day of racing was wrought with pit/driver change blunders and an improper fueling strategy. We did end that day in 10th place. Sunday we came back with a strategy and a fire in our bellies to win. Needless to say, we had been conserving tires and brakes on the first day...but that was no longer. We put a fresh set of Pirelli P Zero Neros on the front of the car and battled our way up the ranks. At one point we were up to 3rd place, then a final driver change and the unfortunately timed decision of the event staff to actually do their job policing the fueling area got us a 10 min penalty for not shutting off the car during fueling and not having everyone handling fuel in a firesuit. We were having hot start issues and were able to get away with it on the first pit stop driver change. Of course, the entire weekend, people were in shorts and t-shirts fueling cars...up until this last 2 hrs of the race. This penalty was exacted on Jeff as they forced him to play the bongos for 10 mins in front of the crowd in the grandstands. The other unfortunate...and eventually fortunate thing was that a small coolant hose blew while in the penalty area. They allowed us to fix it, but we were out 35 mins and had lost a good 15-17 laps. At least it didn't blow on the track and we would have lost even more time if that had happened. We clawed our way back up to 7th and that's where we finished. At least next year we'll already have a proven car and will bring good bribes for the judges so we can cheat our way to victory! |
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