Bernal Dad’s Racing at the 24 Hours of LeMons
Most of you have undoubtedly heard of one of the most famous auto racing endurance events in the world, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. But how many of you have heard of the less famous 24 hours of LeMons? The basic idea of the event is to put a strict limit on how much money you can spend building a car for the race. $500.00! This limit not only includes the modifications, but the price of the car as well. Is this even possible? Apparently so! Here’s how the organizers describe the event, “The crowd. The spectacle. The pall of blue smoke and roasted clutch discs. In all motorsport, no event captures the universal human need to whale on old crapcans and hoover down greasy barbecue like the 24 Hours of LeMons.”

The following are excerpts from the weekend diary of a team racing partners from the last running of the race, held at Thunderhill in Willows, CA in December 2007. Their car of choice? A Volvo 240 wagon of course!

Bernal Dad’s Racing 1983 245 Racecar

Friday, 28 December 2007
We rolled up to Thunderhill around 3:45, having given up on the notion of getting on the track for the practice session. We had a bit of urgency about getting to the track in a timely fashion because Thomas (one of the co-drivers) had called while we were on the road, and he was already at the track, twiddling his thumbs.

Within five minutes of stepping out of the RV, the day brightened considerably, even though the sky was still quite overcast. Over the PA came the news that there was only one hour and forty-five minutes left in the practice session. This was rather more time than the ten minutes we thought were left. We scampered over to the track office to pay our $200 and get our wristbands, and rushed back to the car to get the car off the trailer. I claimed first run, got no objection, and hopped into a phone booth to put on my Superman kit. Yes, I was a bit excited.

Because we’d gotten there so late, we were on the far side of the paddock, some distance from the pit in. Thomas had time to walk around before we got there, and he said the entrance for the hot pits was just down and to the right. I eventually found it, and rolled to the end of the pit lane, stopped to show the man my wristband, and then floored it.

At the end of lap four, I was looking for the pit entrance, and totally missed it. I had noticed that the temperature gauge was a little above half, but it hadn’t gotten any warmer, so I wasn’t overly concerned. When I did find the pit entrance after the fifth lap and slowed down, however, the gauge shot right up to just below the red.

Fortunately, it did not overheat as I crawled back to HQ at the 10 mph paddock limit. I pulled in, broke the news to the guys, and we popped the hood to find water pouring out of the bottom of the water pump. We quickly made the call to have Thomas and Mason head off for a Kragen to get a new pump while we got to dismantling the parts in the way.

Next to us in the paddock was another Volvo 240, this one a sedan, that was done up in the very same baby blue and orange Gulf livery that I’d advocated for our car. It is a sharp looking car. Junior, one of their crew/drivers, came over to see what was up and offer assistance and/or parts as needed. It turns out he’s a mechanic at McKevitt Volvo.

We decided to wait for the new pump and our Volvo Expert (VE )before pulling it off. It had gotten dark, so Fiid and I took a stab at aiming the headlights while Nick ran into town for some beverages. They soon returned, water pump, beer, and chips in hand. Our Neighbor Volvo Expert (NVE), Junior, walked back over with some of his teammates, and the VE and NVE discussed the finer points of 240 water pump replacement, and VE got to work. By the time VE finished with the water pump, it had started raining. Perfect.

Saturday, 29 December 2007
Saturday dawned wet and cold. Fiid, Mason, and I started stirring around six. I started off the morning writing up the summary from Friday, and Fiid and Mason took the car to submit it for tech inspection. We apparently got some compliments on our preparation, and only had to cover the positive battery terminal and tape the non-drivers door pillars to prevent their opening if they got hit.

When we got back to the RV, we had to figure out the racing order for the team. This would have been pretty easy, but we had to figure out how to avoid putting the guys sharing helmets/suits back to back. We were pretty sure Nick would go first to give us the best chance of completing the first stint. We then settled on Thomas, Fiid, Mason, Me, and, finally, Mike. We took long enough that people were already moving out into the hot pits before Nick got in the car

The cars circulated for a solid fifteen minutes under yellow before the green flag (randomly) flew to start the race. Nick is a true racer. Even though we are down on power compared to many of the teams, he was passing people left and right, including four on the first green-flag lap!

We decided to do half-hour stints to make sure everyone got out on the track during the daylight and (we hoped) before any mechanical or racing calamity befell us. All too soon for his liking, we signaled Nick to come in. VE came next, and while he started off tentatively, he soon picked it up and was lapping at a good pace. And then his turn was up. We had Mason’s Flip video camera in the car, and we pulled it to download the first hour.

It was my turn to climb aboard. I got out on the track only to have the race go under a full-course yellow by the time I’d gotten to the third turn. So, I spent the first ten of my thirty minutes essentially twiddling my thumbs. They eventually turned us loose, and I started going after people with a vengeance. I got past a couple, but soon found myself behind a clot of about six cars going two-wide through every turn that would have offered the opportunity to pass. I was having fun, but was not going nearly as fast as I could have been. Nick had told me after his go that the racing was quite polite, and that if you put the nose of your car up the inside going into a turn, the other drivers weren’t shutting the door. Well, by the time I’d gotten out there, I think that some of these guys had decided they were tired of getting passed.

As I was nearing the end of my stint, I had a car trying to come up the inside of me into the second-last turn. I missed my braking point as I was trying to avoid him. I spun as I passed the apex, earning myself a black flag, the team’s second of the day, which would result in having to park the car for an hour while we thought about the error of our ways. When I pulled up to the starter’s station, though, they had no record of the first black flag, so our penalty was a forced driver change (not so bad, because the team was going to signal me in on the next lap anyway), the positions lost while I’d waited for a clear spot to turn around after the spin, and the three laps lost while I waited for the official to come over and mete out my punishment.

VE was back up, and it was completely dark by then. He got out there and was turning some good times. At one point, he got black-flagged for what they said was a lighting issue. There was no issue when he got to the official at the starter’s stand, so they sent him back on his way. Not too many laps later, though, we got the word: “Tow truck. Volvo.”

We ran down to the paddock entrance to see VE coming in on the hook, with a dent in the left rear quarter panel. Thomas said he thought the fuel pump had died. We knew the in-tank pump was dead when we left San Francisco, and we had a spare main pump, so we were confident we had things under control. We also found that we had headlight issues. While we got the left side of the car up on jack stands for VE to get at the fuel pump, Mason got the grill off the front to inspect the lights. He found a burned-out wire, and then Fiid got to fixing it. VE did some yeoman work to get the replacement in, and we got set to fire up the car. And. It. Did. Not.

We thought the main pump wasn’t getting primed, but we were not sure. VE was trying to jury-rig something, and we had forty minutes left before the checkers fly for the day. The replacement pump was in and running, but no gas was getting up to the engine. Several attempts to prime the pump in the absence of a functioning in-tank pre-pump included the ill-advised “let’s suck on the fuel line until we get gas” method. It didn’t work. What did work, though, was reversing the electrical connections on the pump. Because, um, it was wired up backward. Alas, the racing had ended for the day.

The team with the car

Sunday, 30 December 2007
Sunshine! We woke up to clear skies above Thunderhill. Shortly thereafter, we heard the first report of an air compressor firing up. Fiid, Mike, Thomas, and I roused ourselves, Mike a bit more enthusiastically than the rest of us. He headed off for coffee, and Thomas got to reconnecting the fuel vent line that had been blown off the tank during the effort to prime the fuel pump the night before.

Since Thomas had been in the car when the fuel pump died and been denied his full run, and had nearly single-handedly fixed the car, too, we put him back in the car for the first stint of the day. He had a nice, clean run and before we knew it, Fiid was back in the car for his hour. He, too, did a solid job, and, like Thomas, did at least his fair share of passing. We were still getting blown away by the fast cars, but our group of novices was acquitting itself quite well.

Somewhere in this stretch of time, we also cast our ballot for the People’s Choice and the People’s Curse awards. Our choice for the curse was a no-brainer. We hexed the Rockford Piles Firebird that had punted Thomas the night before with a well-placed bump to our right-rear quarter panel. We weren’t the only team less than enthralled by the driving tactics of this team, and we hoped they might get their comeuppance. For the People’s Choice, we were torn between the Pit Crew Revenge A team that swapped out a broken transmission on Saturday night; the Dirty Drifters who blew their motor in Friday practice, tried to fix it until deciding they needed a replacement, leaving for San Jose after midnight, and made it into the race; and cool Gulf-style liveried car of the Volvo team next to us. Fraternity won out in the end, and the Volvo got the nod.

I also got to experience the track in the superfast conditions that led to the car rolling the night before. Some of the other drivers were apparently intentionally nudging the tire barriers at the exit of the second chicane, opening it up enough that most of the cars could get through with a lift of the throttle or a slight tap of the brakes. The really little cars like the Rabbit GTIs could get through flat. That made entry speeds for the first corner substantially higher. It also made it worth it to take some chances to hammer it through the chicane to take advantage of (relatively) good cornering performance of our car. We didn’t have the power to catch people accelerating out of slow turns, but we could maintain decent speed through the corners. So, I took some risks. I brushed the tires on the exit of the chicane once and got away with it. Several laps later, I brushed them again and got black-flagged for it. The car was fine, but I knew I’d be getting out of the car. As luck would have it, as I was pulling up to the marshal for my talking-to, I saw Fiid walking into the pitlane with the GAS board. My racing was done for the weekend. I headed down to the fuel pumps to hand it over to Mason.

Shortly after I got out, the PA blared out the winner (loser?) of the People’s Curse. The “prize” was getting your car crushed by a track excavator. I ran down to the huge crowd in time to see the bucket of the excavator crashing down on the roll cage of the well-mangled Mazda 626 that had been blazing around the track yesterday and today. The power these guys obviously had, combined with the overtly racy sound of the motor apparently aroused the ire of the majority of the teams, because it was the runaway favorite for this award. The car was utterly destroyed. At one point, the car was dangling from its motor which was in the death grip of the excavator. The crowd roared its approval as the engine was eventually ripped free of the chassis and tossed to the side. The jaws of the bucket smashed one of the cam covers, revealing a camshaft that itself probably exceeded the $500 limit. Good times.

For the final hour of the race we put Quick Nick back in the car, and he did not let us down. The man was on fire. He was passing cars nearly non-stop. Sure, the truly fast cars were still bombing past us, but he even managed to pass and dice with one of them for a couple of laps. As it neared 3 o’clock and the end of the race, we would later find out that the fuel gauge was in the red, and Nick was experiencing the same hiccups I’d had during my run. He was praying that it wouldn’t run out of fuel before the checkers fell.

He needn’t have worried. He, and we, made it to the end. We can’t say the same for one of the other teams whose driver managed to flip his car on the last lap of the race. He was fine, and the 24 Hours of LeMons was over.

We went to the awards ceremony in the clubhouse, and greatly enjoyed ourselves as the prizes and trophies were distributed. Also, in case you were wondering, $1500 in nickels takes at least four guys to carry.

Bernal Dads Racing finished 33 of 71 entrants. Had we been more serious about competing, we probably would have changed that suspect fuel pump as part of our race prep. Between that and our egalitarian driver-change strategy, we realistically could have placed in the top 15. And that ain’t bad. I can’t say that I regret any of our decisions, though. We all had a good time, and, as far as I’m concerned, a frantic push to fix a broken car is part of endurance racing, whether it’s the 24 Heures du Mans or the 24 Hours of LeMons. If we weren’t going to win, we should at least have a story to tell, right?

The Bernal Dad’s Racing team will again be racing in the next 24 hours of LeMons in May 2008, and this time will be raising money for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library to boot! If you like to pledge per lap or make a donation you can contact the team at bernaldads@gmail.com. For more information on the race visit www.24hoursoflemons.com.